Skip to comments.Chinese article admits N. Korea began war in 1950
Posted on 06/25/2010 7:11:38 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
A feature article from a Chinese magazine was struck from the Internet after news spread that it stated that the Korean War was started by North Koreas invasion of the South.
The lengthy feature in Xinhuas International Herald Leader, timed for the 60th anniversary of the start of the war, had a time line that stated: The North Korean military crossed the parallel on June 25th, 1950 and Seoul was taken in four days. The article was widely distributed among Chinese news portals and agencies.
After news of the story spread in Korean yesterday, the original article was found to have been deleted from all Web sites it had been posted on, including Xinhua.
Textbooks for Chinese students still teach that the conflict was a civil war started by an invasion by the United States of the North. Pyongyang has always insisted the same thing.
A diplomatic source in Beijing who asked for anonymity said the initial publishing of the article received a lot of attention because it was the most detailed and direct explanation of the Norths invasion of the South in the Korean War by a [Chinese] state-run news agency.
Kim Young-hwan, a professor of Chinese studies at Namseoul University said, If the Chinese government did erase the articles, it may be because theyre being sensitive to North Koreas stance.
(Excerpt) Read more at joongangdaily.joins.com ...
Was this article saved by online viewers or archived?
I had never realized that the North Koreans claimed that the South Koreans started the war. Amazing. I can understand the Chinese siding with the North Koreans since they are all Communists, but will China lend Obama all those trillions of dollars the North Koreans are demanding in reparations?
The North Korean military crossed the parallel on June 25th, 1950 and Seoul was taken in four days.
The people of Seoul have archived it.
The communists had good intelligence on our side. They knew in advance Truman would not nuke them. If Truman had instead told his staff that he was just waiting for the chance to send China to hell, the war would have ended with a united free Korea.
So the attack on Fort Sumter was all fiction? Who knew? ;-)
The lengthy feature in Xinhua's International Herald Leader, timed for the 60th anniversary of the start of the war, had a time line that stated: "The North Korean military crossed the parallel on June 25th, 1950 and Seoul was taken in four days." The article was widely distributed among Chinese news portals and agencies. After news of the story spread in Korean yesterday, the original article was found to have been deleted from all Web sites it had been posted on, including Xinhua. Textbooks for Chinese students still teach that the conflict was a civil war started by an invasion by the United States of the North. Pyongyang has always insisted the same thing.Thanks sonofstrangelove.
Yes, if Truman had been more militant the war would have ended earlier, but there are a number of factors which have been hidden from U.S. citizens. The Chinese were certainly there goading the North Koreans on and providing troops in the later stages of the war. But the role of the Soviets is largely glossed over by the liberal media. You don’t here those folks on M*A*S*H mentioning the Soviets unless they are razzing Frank about his anticommunism.
It wasn’t really a war. It was a “conflict” under to auspices of a U.N. directive. The participation of the U.N. could have been prevented by a single veto by any permanent Security Council member. The Soviets were conveniently boycotting the Security Council when the crucial vote came. I have yet to see a political analyst comment why they sat it out and allowed the U.N. to come into the fray. They clearly WANTED U.N. participation!
Second, as my father used to point out to me, the North Koreans were using a boatload of U.S. military gear. This was courtesy of Roosevelt and the lend-lease program. The Soviets supplied the North Koreans with the gear that we had manufactured. Lenin used to say that the West would sow the seeds of their own destruction. How prescient!
After the death of Stalin the Soviet people were restless due to the amount of their industry diverted to the war effort. Kruschev came to power promising more butter and fewer guns. The Koreans came to the bargaining table within a few months. Apparently, the Chinese were not capable of supporting the war effort on their own.
This is not surprising given the primitive condition of the Chinese economy. Even in the late 1970’s my company delivered computers to China and had infrastructure problems during the installation. The units were the size of refrigerators and were crated in wood. The Chinese not only did not have simple crowbars, there were no hardware stores where equipment could be acquired. Our field engineers had to open the crates using their screw drivers for levers.
Life Magazine, in about 1957, published an interview/story with a high-ranking Polish Intelligence Official/Soldier named Monat Pavel, in which he detailed the Soviet involvement in starting and guiding the North Korean invasion of South Korea. His defection was a great boon to the West in that he gave an insider’s view of what actually went on before the June, 1950 invasion.
I strongly recommend historians interested in this period to read this article.
Did Stalin know when the North Koreans were going to launch their invasion? If so, he should have made sure his ambassador was there at the UN to prevent what did happen--the UN voting to help South Korea repel the attack.
The Chinese were the primary combatants.
The UN involvement probably helped the North more than hurt it, lol.
It is not the first time this kind of thing happened. After the Cheonan incident, some article very critical of China's policy toward N. Korea appeared on prominent Chinese publication. It was taken down, too.
Whatever some scholars or experts there feel, PLA has the last word. We should not get too excited about episodes like this, however many Chinese feel the otherwise. The current regime undergoes fundamental change first, and it won't be voluntary.
“Even in the late 1970s my company delivered computers to China...”
Charlton Heston in the final scene of “Planet of the Apes” comes to mind when I read things like that;)
“South Carolina demanded that the U.S. army abandon Fort Sumter, which was refused. When the ultimatum deadline passed, an artillery barrage ensued, lasting until the fort was surrendered. Once the Confederates had fired, full-scale war quickly followed.”
The North could of avoided the conflict. It takes 2 to start a fight.
You are leaving out the main key that led to the conflict. The south was building an Army because Lincoln (a known anti slave advocate) looked as if he was going to win the election. After Lincoln was elected and the south had their army, he said the south could keep their slaves. This was because he saw the issue dividing the country. At that point the south didn’t care. They felt Lincolns announcement was a day late and a dollar short. They still wanted to separate from the union even though their original reason no longer existed. The war was inevitable in retrospect. It boiled down to whether or not the laws and rights of our constitution were going to be enforced by the feds or not.
Ironically the Deep South states, by jumping the gun, ensured the end of slavery. In those states the slaves either outnumbered the whites or were almost as numerous as the whites.
In all of the slave states, the majority of the whites were not slaveholders so had no direct profit from the institution. They may have bought into the need to maintain the system to ensure white supremacy, but racism was just as prevalent in the free states--Tocqueville thought that prejudice was even stronger where slavery no longer existed, and some free states forbade free persons of color from settling there.
It was said of South Carolina that it was too small to be a nation and too large for an insane asylum. They were nuts to secede and nuts to fire on Ft. Sumter, but the majority of the people of South Carolina were on the winning side in the war--slaves were over 50% of the population in 1860.