this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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What I said isn't propaganda, it's the reality. If you want to make the case that the war was brutal then I would agree. If you want to make the case that South Korea was ran by dictators until recently then I would also agree. These are also facts, but they're irrelevant to the point that I was trying to make. The idiot I was replying to really pretended that Korean war was started by the US and not the Soviet backed invasion of the North which is simply not true. Whether you think the war was justified or not is subjective. Just like the nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, everybody has their moral opinions on it. In my view, the US involvement in Korea to help the South was the right decision. Even if South Korea didn't democratize in the 1990s, they still would've been better off being sovereign then under the control of the North. The North after the war went through an economic collapse, a famine, and chronic food and supplies shortages that are still plaguing the country today. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, but the it was ultimately the right call.
there's a lot youre leaving out. I don't think it's on purpose, but one of the only ways that the korean war can be made to look like a soviet invasion is by conveniently leaving out everything that happened before the norths army crossed the 38th parallel.
korea was one nation and people before it was divided roughly along a line of latitude by two american officers with no input from those knowledgeable about korea or its history. one of those officers, dean rusk, has said that he would have done things differently if he knew that forty years before, the tsarist russians and japanese had discussed dividing korea along a very similar line.
They divided the peninsula because the idea among the allies was to reunify it five years or so after china's civil war ended and it was clear weather koreas only land border would be with the communists or the koumintang.
as the japanese retreated south, the korean people formed their own governing committees. the soviet forces integrated those committees into the provisional government, the american side integrated the collaborators from the japanese occupation into theirs. the north had a democratic election, the south became a military dictatorship.
both sides claim to have held elections, but while a majority of the north wanted to vote for kim il sung, the fighter who was an ally of the liberators that empowered koreans to kick out collaborators and do land reform, the souths election that would put syngman rhee in power were boycotted by the souths political parties and accompanied by what was reported on in even western papers as brutal repression. it's worth noting that one of the leaders of a prominent political party would be assassinated a little later.
there's plenty i'm glossing over, but the north didn't cross the 38th parallel out of the blue for no reason but to impose their evil communist brainwashing on the kindly people of the south. in the south, the repression of jeju island, the military uprising against the government in response to that repression and the bodo league massacre are the backdrop for the norths invasion.
now think about those circumstances and history for a second.
the americans divide your country along the same line the russians and occupiers wanted to use before. lets say youre in the north: maybe you don't trust these soviets, but they respect the peoples committees and theyre doing that land reform youve been wanting for decades. they're supportive of you expelling the japanese collaborators and things feel like they're getting better. how about if youre in the south? the americans put the collaborators back in charge, broke up the peoples committees and are putting the ever growing number of collaborators to work beating everyone into shape for the election.
when 30,000 koreans die on jeju island, there's a failed military uprising and a massacre of south korean communists, what would any right minded person do? of course the north crossed the made up line keeping them away from their countrymen in peril!
since i've written enough already i'll just address what you said about the state of the north being so bad: when and why was it so bad? why did it take a carpet bombing campaign and international blockade to make it so bad?