commanders boasted, could end by Christmas. By mid-October, the war seemed nearly over, with just the opposite result of what looked imminent in August. In just two weeks, the United Nations (almost entirely the U.S.) armies had fought back to the 38th parallel, where the war had begun.ĭismissing Chinese warnings not to push farther north, the UN/U.S. An amphibious assault at the city of Inchon turned the tide. Korea (and Vietnam and Taiwan) were redefined as vital strategic interests, and American troops were rushed to Korea via Japan. The invasion, however, prompted the United States to reconsider its defensive posture in East Asia. By early August - just six weeks after the war began - South Korean forces, supported by hastily assembled United Nations troops, had been pushed south into a small perimeter around the city of Pusan. Though not quite that fast, the plan seemed to work. Kim was able to use these statements to persuade both Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 and Joseph Stalin to support, at least tacitly, the North Korean invasion, and he expected to unify the peninsula within weeks, maybe even days. forces) but explicitly excluding Taiwan, Vietnam, and Korea. The reason for that expectation stemmed from declarations by American officials early in 1950 that the United States was done with the Chinese Civil War - and with the legacy of World War II in Asia more generally - drawing a defense perimeter that included Japan (then occupied by U.S. When he sent his armies to invade the South in June 1950, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung did not anticipate that the United States would intervene. Whichever orthography we use, this artificial lake in North Korea, some 50 miles from the Chinese border and nestled among 6,000-foot mountains, was the setting for a fight that reshaped the histories of not only both Koreas, China, and the United States, but really the entire 20th century. American sources refer to the battle as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, using the Japanese transliteration that was written on U.S.
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