Learn about key events in history and their connections to today.
On June 27, 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced that he had ordered United States air and naval forces to fight with South Korea’s Army, two days after Communist North Korea invaded South Korea.
The invasion had prompted the Security Council of the United Nations to call for a ceasefire and for all combatants to return to their former positions on either side of the 38th parallel, which divides the two Koreas.
President Truman emphasized the action by the United States was taken as a member of the United Nations. He released a text statement that said, in part, the “attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that Communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.”
Mr. Truman also took steps beyond Korea to stem the march of Communism. He asked the Chinese Government on Formosa (now Taiwan) to cease all attacks against mainland China, and directed the Seventh Fleet to protect Formosa. He also ordered additional assistance to French forces fighting to keep Communist China out of Indochina.
The New York Times article from June 27, 1950 reported that, “the complexion of the Korean situation was changed overnight. Yesterday officials were inclined to see South Korea, with her small, poorly equipped forces, as good as lost.”
On July 8, 1950, President Truman appointed the 70-year old Gen. Douglas MacArthur to command the U.N. forces in Korea. On July 13, the New York Times reporter Richard J. H. Johnston filed a grim report from the battlefield on “the sober realization there that at best the United States troops face a long and costly campaign to drive the invaders from South Korea and that at worst we are facing a military disaster in which the American troops … can either be driven to the sea or bottled into rugged mountain passes and soggy rice fields for annihilation.”
However, in September 1950, U.N. forces successfully landed in the Western port city of Inchon, and recaptured the capital city of Seoul about two weeks later. But Chinese forces came to the North’s aid, and the U.N. was pushed back into the South. Though the two sides pushed and pushed back, they ended up settling on a truce where the war began: at the 38th parallel. The Korean War finally ended on July 27, 1953.
There have been many smaller skirmishes between the two nations in the ensuing six decades. The most recent serious episode occurred in November 2010, when North Korea launched an artillery attack on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, killing four and provoking a retaliatory South Korea artillery attack. The island lies in disputed territory in the Yellow Sea, which had been the scene for conflicts in 1999, 2002 and March 2010, when a North Korean attack sank the South Korean warship Cheonan, killing 46.
Connect to Today:
North Korea is the last Stalinist state on earth, and in October 2006 it became the latest country to join the nuclear club. Over the past two decades, it has swung between confrontation and inch-by-inch conciliation with its neighbors and the United States, in an oscillation that seems to be driven both by its hard-to-fathom internal political strains and by an apparent belief in brinksmanship as the most effective form of diplomacy.
So begins the Times Topics page overview on North Korea. Read a brief, Times-written history of North Korea there, or visit an interactive timeline that traces “the North Korean Challenge” to the present.
To see glimpses into what life is like inside this isolated nation today, read the 2010 article “Visitors See North Korea Still Stunted by Its Isolation,” or watch the related video.
Now that you know a bit about North Korea, would you be interested in a new program allows American college students to study there for a summer? Why or why not?
Learn more about what happened on June 27 by visiting our related On This Day page.
Find more resources on the Korean War at the Learning Network’s special page “The Korean War on Its 60th Anniversary.”
Learn more about Historic Headlines and our collaboration with findingDulcinea, the “Librarian of the Internet,” by reading our introductory post.