GLOBAL ECONOMIC TRADE WAR!

[Doktor Howl]

What argument? 

1.  That we got beaten by the Chinese, and

2.  That Korea is an American vassal.

Thanks.

[Requia ☣]

I wasn't arguing for the first one, I was trying to give some perspective on where Pickle is coming from.  I'm still processing new information from this thread and reevaluating my impressions from high school history.

On the second, no.  That was more half joke and half the cynicism I developed hanging around here.  Let's call it failed pedantry.

[Doktor Howl]

Okay.

[Doktor Howl]

Cliff's notes:

North invades, runs UN forces all the way to Pusan, which is a little zit on the bottom of Korea.

MacArthur holds them there by the nose, and invades behind them at Inchon, basically doing the same schtick he did to the Japanese about 50 times.

Without supplies, the North Korean army dies on the vine.

MacArthur chases the remains of their army all the way through the peninsula, toward the Yalu River.

The Chinese say, "Douglas, you better stop."

MacArthur says, "I think I wanna mess with bigfoot".

700,000 screaming Chinese beg to differ.

MacArthur freaks the fuck out, loses his shit, and demands the use of nukes.

MacArthur is sent to "spend more time with his family."

General Ridgeway beats his way back to the 38th parallel, the original starting point, in a long series of minor (and a few not so minor) engagements, after beating the mortal shit out of what passed for the Chinese supply lines.

Everyone gets sick of the whole thing, and an Armistice is declared.

Everyone forgets to formally end the war.

[Requia ☣]

I have decided that the impression I got from history class (a draw) was simplistic.  The US failed to capture North Korea, but the main reason for being there was to protect South Korea, and South Korea is still standing.

[eighteen buddha strike]

In a related tangent, Chan Wook Park directed a pretty awesome Rashamon type story set around the Korean DMZ called Joint Security Area.

[Adios]

Cliff's notes:

North invades, runs UN forces all the way to Pusan, which is a little zit on the bottom of Korea.

MacArthur holds them there by the nose, and invades behind them at Inchon, basically doing the same schtick he did to the Japanese about 50 times.

Without supplies, the North Korean army dies on the vine.

MacArthur chases the remains of their army all the way through the peninsula, toward the Yalu River.

The Chinese say, "Douglas, you better stop."

MacArthur says, "I think I wanna mess with bigfoot".

700,000 screaming Chinese beg to differ.

MacArthur freaks the fuck out, loses his shit, and demands the use of nukes.

MacArthur is sent to "spend more time with his family."

General Ridgeway beats his way back to the 38th parallel, the original starting point, in a long series of minor (and a few not so minor) engagements, after beating the mortal shit out of what passed for the Chinese supply lines.

Everyone gets sick of the whole thing, and an Armistice is declared.

Everyone forgets to formally end the war.

And there it is. In the Readers Digest Version. You guys need to learn to history with Dok and I on the job.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I don't remember being taught anything about the Korean War at all.

Me too. I didn't even know about the Korean War until I was a senior in High School, and only then because I felt like I wasn't getting the whole story when they said the only thing that happened between WW2 and Vietnam was that waitresses at drive-in diners invented roller skates. So I looked up the history myself and found out OH HEY LOOK THERE WAS ANOTHER WAR.

Anyway, I think America's problem when it comes to dealing with China is that everybody in power still seems to be basking in the glow of our (alleged) victory in the Cold War, mixed with a little bit of bullshit wishful thinking about the USSR failing because Communism Doesn't Work (and therefore China's nothing to worry about either), and we think we're sitting on top of a world that's so post-modern that history itself is a thing of the past.

Nobody in America seems to think America is in any kind of actual danger, unless it's because of random Arabs with suitcase nukes, or gays, or Fred Phelps or Sarah Palin. America won the game, and now we're just playing extra innings for the hell of it, I guess.

Which is also why they don't teach anybody about the Korean War -- because it's a wide open door into the world of GIGANTIC, LOOSE ENDS that nobody knows how (or cares) to tie up.

[Cain]

On South Korea as an American vassal state, American leaders supported the dictator Syngman Rhee much in the same way they supported Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam.  And, even when Rhee was being thrown out of power, the CIA saw fit to whisk him away from the mob who would've rightly put his head on a stick, and instead he went into exile in Hawaii (with up to $20 billion he had embezzled from the South Korean state, which while no small sum now was an especially large amount of money in 1960).

The next leader of the country was Yun Bo-seon, but he was merely a political figurehead, power resided with Parliament.  He was overthrown a year later in a coup led by General Park Chung-hee, who was tolerated by the USA until 1979, when he was assassinated in....unusual circumstances by the head of the Korean CIA, Kim Jae Kyu.  Like many Asian-allied intelligence, the KCIA rarely made moves without CIA approval, and Park had a history which led people within the CIA to suspect him of Communist sympathies (he had served in a Communist cell in WWII, but then sided with South Korea in the Korean War, and he had run South Korea on ultranationalistic and anti-market principles).

Kim Jae Kyu, by the way, was installed as the head of the KCIA at American insistence, after Lee Hu Rak, the previous director, had visited North Korea to discuss the process of reunification.

Choi Kyu-hah succeeded Park.  He was another general, but because of civilian unrest, promised democratic rule.  Other members of the military disagreed, and pressured him to take on certain anti-democracy officers in key government officers, including Major General Chun Doo-hwan, who was de facto head of the KCIA since the assassination.  Chun put the entire country under martial law, sending in troops to break up pro-democracy rallies.  In 1980, Chun forced Choi out of power and was installed as President (since he was the only person running).  All political parties were dissolved and he rewrote the South Korean constitution, which by this stage had been rewritten about...4 times?  Something like that.

Inititally the USA did not recognize his goverment, but after recieving promises that they would not develop missiles with a range over 180 km or with a larger than 453 kg warhead, they changed their minds.  This may have had something to do with the secret South Korean nuclear program of the time.  After these requirements were agreed upon, Reagan's administration fully recognized the government.

Chun was succeeded in a peaceful transfer of power by Roh Tae-woo, another South Korean army general.  This time there was actually a vote, but with two civilian candidates and one military one (who had the blessing of the previous leader), the vote was split between the civilians, allowing Roh to win.  Roh was more committed to democratization than Chun, however, and kept his word, allowing himself to be succeeded by Kim Young-sam, the first democratically elected President since Yun Bo-seon.  Since then, South Korea has been ruled by civilian, democratically elected Presidents.

So in conclusion:  Rhee was definitely an American supported puppet.  Park wasn't (though his support of the Vietnam War bought him a lot of credit in DC), but was killed by one.  Chun initially wasn't, but gained a lot of support after the missile agreements.  Roh wasn't and since then it hasn't mattered too much.

[BabylonHoruv]

Wars also keep people employed. A lot of people.

However, it is not as efficient as other economic activity, for reasons George Orwell outlines rather clearly in one of his essays (cant remember which, but he points out building a bomb, or manufacturing bullets, are essentially "dead investments" which create very little wealth, in comparison to other activities).

In the short term, it would probably help.  That is, help enough to give a ruling political party a boost in the next elections.  But it's not sustainable even in the mid-term.  Total war a la the 20th century would quickly wreck a nation if chosen as a purposeful policy without end.  I mean, hell, even the current attempts at counter-insurgency, in two of the weakest countries on the planet, would be taxing the world's richest nation, if it were not deferring those costs to a future date.

I agree with you. However, do you see it as a trap? I mean if the US were to stop fighting right now, DX a shit ton of soldiers and slow down munitions plants where would we be?

Conservatively, this would throw another 300,000 jobless people into the fray.

300 thousand Jobless who have been trained to kill.

Also, I agree with Pickle that we did not win Korea.  I don't think we lost either.  It was an unpleasant conflict for both sides and at the end, we agreed to stop shooting one another.

I'm not Anti-USA here, we were checking how things would go in a conflict with China and we discovered how it would go.  China apparently learned more about us than we did about them, judging from Vietnam.