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When did the Korean War end? Most people would say: “On July 27, 1953,” but lawyers would probably argue that technically it has not ended. And when did it begin? The common knowledge reply “June 25, 1950” also seems suspicious to a good international lawyer who might counter that the war never began ― or, perhaps, began as early as Sept. 9, 1948 (or, if you prefer, Aug. 15, the same year).
And who were the war’s major participants, apart from North and South Korea? If you think these were China and the U.S., you are wrong again. China insisted on being strictly neutral even when its best soldiers and best generals were fighting in Korea, and foreign forces fighting on other side never called themselves the “U.S. army.”
Until the end of World War II the world generally followed the legal rules of warfare which existed for centuries and were codified in the 1600s. Our ancestors lived in an honest, if brutal, world where war was seen as perfectly normal. It was supposed to be formally “declared” by an ambassador or a head of state and then concluded by a peace treaty.
When country A declared war on country B, it essentially said: “We are going to invade you. We will definitely kill your soldiers and, sometimes, civilians and perhaps will rape and slaughter your women as well. And, of course, will definitely steal everything we like, and destroy the rest. We will continue doing this until you give in and agree to such and such conditions!”
Such brutal honesty, however, is not appreciated in our age of political correctness, therefore a new approach has been developed (the essence of war has remained more or less the same, of course: maybe, less raped women but more killed civilians instead).
As far as I can recall, not a single war has been formally “declared” since 1945 (I vaguely remember that some clashes between India and Pakistan might have been the sole exception). Nowadays war is thought of as an abnormal and abhorrent act, so nobody wants to take such responsibility that a formal declaration would constitute. The Korean War was the first of the contemporary era conflicts, shrouded in a multitude of legal hypocrisies.
First of all, when did it begin? General wisdom tells us that it broke out when the North invaded the South in the early dawn of June 25, 1950. However, no war was declared since from a legal point of view this was merely a police action. When in September 1948 the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the North, it made clear that it saw itself as the sole legitimate government of the entire Korean Peninsula.
From this point of view, Syngman Rhee’s government was self-proclaimed and separatist, and operations against it could be seen as a police action ― a bit like raids into a gangland. Incidentally, the South Korean government also saw itself as the only legal authority on the entire peninsula, and would treat any of its own actions against the North much in the same vein, as an action to restore law and order and drive away the criminal gangs which described themselves as the “North Korean government.”
Then, the ROK was saved from complete collapse by an American intervention. But, technically speaking, MacArthur’s armies were not American at all! He led the “U.N. Forces” in Korea.
When the news of the North Korean invasion reached Washington, the U.S. tried to secure a U.N. resolution which would authorize the use of force. No doubt, Americans would have gone ahead without such a resolution, but it gave them a wonderful opportunity to pose not as a great power saving its ally and furthering its geopolitical interests, but as a law enforcer at the service of the global community. Fortunately for the U.S., in late June 1950 U.N. Security Council meetings were to be chaired by a representative of Taiwan.
The USSR which supported Mao’s government in Beijing boycotted all meetings chaired by the Taiwanese. Thus, in the absence of the Soviet representative, the Security Council voted for resolution which gave military action against the North Korean Army formal U.N. approval (had the Soviet representative attended the meeting, he surely would have used his right to veto decisions not to the Soviets’ liking).
And what about the forces which moved from China in November 1950 to drive the “U.N.” (read “U.S.”) forces back to the 38th parallel? These Chinese armies were not, technically speaking, Chinese! In order to avoid all-out war with the U.S. (with all its grim implications), Beijing stated that these forces were, actually, “Chinese People’s Volunteers” as if they consisted of Chinese people who wholeheartedly volunteered to go to Korea and fight the “imperialists” there. Officially, the government of the People’s Republic of China had nothing to do with all these soldiers whose columns allegedly marched to Korea completely on their own initiative!
As fitting such a conflict, the war ended (did it?) with an armistice signed in July 1953 by the “U.N. forces,” “Chinese People’s Volunteers” and the North Korean Army. The Armistice (essentially, a ceasefire) was meant to be followed by a formal peace treaty, but it has yet to be concluded. Thus, the war is not over yet.
The subsequent decades provided us with a number of other international hypocrisies, some of which are related to Korea.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.
