Korean War “Summer Storm” 1959 US Army; The Big PIcture TV-445

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First in a 3-episode summary of the Korean War, with guest war correspondent Jim G. Lucas of Scripps-Howard Newspapers, a 1954 Pulitzer Prize winner.

Episode 2: “Winter War”

Episode 3: “War’s End”

Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

The Korean War (in South Korea: Hangeul: 한국전쟁, Hanja: 韓國戰爭, “Korean War”; in North Korea: 조국해방전쟁, Joguk Haebang Jeonjaeng, “Fatherland Liberation War”; 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States of America fought for the South, and China fought for the North, also assisted by the Soviet Union. The war arose from the division of Korea at the end of World War II and from the global tensions of the Cold War that developed immediately afterwards.

Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and—by agreement with the United States—occupied Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently occupied the south. By 1948, two separate governments had been set up. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of Korea, and neither side accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. On that day, the United Nations Security Council recognized this North Korean act as invasion and called for an immediate ceasefire. On 27 June, the Security Council adopted S/RES/83 : Complaint of aggression upon the Republic of Korea and decided the formation and dispatch of the U.N. Forces in Korea. The United States and other countries moved to defend South Korea.

Outmaneuvered and suffering heavy casualties in the first two months of the conflict, South Korean forces were forced back to the Pusan perimeter. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations contributed to the defense of South Korea, with the United States providing 88% of the soldiers. An amphibious UN counter-offensive at Inchon was launched, and cut off many of the North Korean attackers. Those that escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north all the way to the Yalu River at the Korea-China border, or into the mountainous interior. At this point, Chinese forces crossed over the Yalu and entered the war on the side of North Korea. Chinese intervention rapidly forced the United Nations Command back into South Korea, and the last two years of the war saw stalemate and attrition warfare. The fighting ended on 27 July 1953, when the armistice agreement was signed. The agreement established a new border between the Koreas close to the previous one and created the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 2.5-mile (4.0 km)-wide fortified buffer zone between them. Border incidents have continued to the present.

The war has been seen both as a civil war and as a proxy conflict in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. While not directly committing forces to the conflict, the Soviet Union provided strategic planning, weapons, and material aid to both the North Korean and Chinese armies. From a military science perspective, the Korean War was initially fought in a manner sequent of the mobile style of warfare that emerged in World War II, but by the second year of the conflict, fighting tended toward holding operations while the details of an armistice were debated. For the last two years of the conflict, World War I trench warfare tactics became the norm. The war also saw the first combat between jet aircraft—such as the F-86 Sabre used by the UN and the MiG-15 used by the Chinese—in warfare…

Jim G. Lucas (June 22, 1914 – July 21, 1970) was a war correspondent for Scripps-Howard Newspapers who won a 1954 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting “for his notable front-line human interest reporting of the Korean War, the cease-fire and the prisoner-of-war exchanges, climaxing 26 months of distinguished service as a war correspondent.” He also reported on the Vietnam War and wrote a book about his experiences, Dateline: Vietnam…