Narrative by Jim Lea,
with contributions from Tammy Cournoyer,
Jeremy Kirk and Allison Perkins.
North Korea had lost some 60,000 troops in its drive through the South, according to U.S. Army records. The border between the two Koreas was re-established with the Inchon landing and the recapture of Seoul.
That should have been the end of the war, many thought, because the United Nations had achieved its goal as stated by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson early in the fighting: to restore South Korea "to its status before the invasion."
But even with most North Korean troops back north of the parallel, Pyongyang still had the capacity to make war. To prevent that, and because it appeared the U.N. Command had the upper hand, President Truman told Gen. Douglas MacArthur to destroy the North Korean army. Doing so would end the threat of war and give the United States and United Nations what they had hoped for since the end of World War II: a unified Korea.
Truman added that the move north could be made only if China and the Soviet Union neither entered nor announced their intention to enter North Korea. Both had issued warnings that they would. Truman also specified that only Korean forces were to be used for any action near the Yalu and Tumen rivers, which separated the peninsula from China and the Soviet Union.
MacArthur felt there was no way either country would actively enter the war.
On Oct. 9, the United Nations gave what field commanders in Korea considered tacit approval of a move into the North, voting to restore peace on the peninsula.
By then, MacArthur had already moved, sending the X Corps, the major unit in the Inchon landing, east of Seoul and across the 38th parallel. Eight days later, the U.S. 1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry divisions headed up the North’s west coast toward Pyongyang.
Paik Sun-yup was still near Taegu when the Inchon landing occurred. After the Pusan Breakout, his 1st ROK Division was assigned to move back toward Seoul, flushing out and killing North Korean stragglers.
"My men were very disappointed as they had to stand aside and watch the Americans speed north to Seoul," he said. "We thought we should be leading the drive."
In early October, Paik took heart when he was handed an envelope containing orders for an attack on Pyongyang. His elation quickly died.
"The problem was that the plan included no South Korean forces in the actual assault on Pyongyang," he said. "I found that totally unacceptable. The North Koreans had captured Seoul five months earlier, and we had earned the right to return the favor."
Paik asked to see Maj. Gen. Frank Milburn, the U.S. I Corps commander, to attempt to get the plan changed. By then a general officer himself, Paik argued so passionately that Milburn relented, putting the 1st ROK Division in the vanguard of the attack.
Paik moved his troops across the 38th parallel. He calls Oct. 19, 1950, a day "I’ll never forget." Having outrun his U.S. counterparts, he stood that morning on a hill overlooking a plain at the eastern edge of Pyongyang. He had left the city five years earlier as a refugee. Arrayed before him were two 1st ROK Division regiments supported by 50 tanks and four battalions of artillery.
"It was the grandest panorama I shall behold in my lifetime," he said. "No spectacle in a Hollywood war movie could run even a close second."
Shortly after 11 a.m., he and his troops entered the North Korean capital. They found few North Korean soldiers, but many residents waving South Korean flags.
MacArthur flew to Wake Island, about halfway between Hawaii and Japan, on Oct. 15 to meet with Truman. Truman was concerned about new threats by China to enter the war. Flushed with his success at Inchon and with Pyongyang on the verge of capture, MacArthur assured Truman the warnings were insignificant propaganda. Truman told him that if Mao Tse Tung’s forces did enter the war, he should continue to fight in the North only if he felt there was a likelihood of success.
Confident, MacArthur wanted to end the war before the bitter winter set in. He told his field commanders to continue north and reach the North Korea-China border as quickly as possible. U.S. and South Korean troops now were positioned throughout North Korea. As they neared the Yalu River and the Changjin-Chosin Reservoir, the opposition became stronger.
"After we crossed the Chongchon River, things changed. It suddenly became very cold and the road was empty," Paik recalled.
He moved his troops on through Unsan, about 50 miles south of the border, then "ran into a brick wall," he said. On Oct. 25, Paik — and the rest of the world — learned that China had entered the war.
Chinese "volunteers" had crossed the border and set up ambushes in the hills surrounding the Unsan valley. "We were suddenly surrounded and fighting but didn’t know who our enemy was," Paik said.
After falling back to Unsan and setting up a defense line, 1st ROK troops captured an enemy soldier and Paik — who speaks Chinese — interrogated him.
"The prisoner said he had been born in South China, was Chinese, not ethnic Korean, and was a member of the 39th Army," he said.
The Chinese entry into the war was another case of U.S. officials ignoring clear warnings.
On Oct. 1, Mao had made a statement that the "Chinese people will not tolerate foreign aggression and will not stand aside if the imperialists want only invade the territory of their neighbor."
Two days later, historian T.R. Fehrenback wrote in his book <CF22>This Kind of War</CF>, Chinese Foreign Minister Cho En Lai said China would send troops to Korea if U.S. or U.N. forces crossed the 38th parallel.
The ambassador notified his government, which notified Washington and U.N. headquarters in New York. The United States took no action but to notify MacArthur of the statement, Fehrenbach says, and MacArthur already had made up his mind the Chinese would not intervene.
Bolstering MacArthur’s opinion were the facts that the Chinese had no trucks for transport, no airplanes to cover ground operations, and used ineffective tactics.
But China had proven 16 years earlier it didn’t need trucks to move military forces quickly.
Chinese communist forces had escaped Chang Kai Shek’s Nationalists in 1934 by walking 6,000 miles across China in a year — averaging 24 miles a day. Led by Gen. Lin Piao, they emerged from their mountain hideouts to chase Chang to Taiwan.
In 1950, Lin had moved 300,000 troops across the Yalu, Fehrenbach wrote, and had another 300,000 waiting at the border even as MacArthur was telling Truman that Chinese threats to intervene in Korea were only "diplomatic blackmail."
Carrying their equipment, the Chinese walked from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. daily, making an average 18 miles a day. They spent the time from 3 a.m. to 9 p.m. so concealed that U.S. surveillance aircraft flying crisscross patterns overhead could not see them, Fehrenbach wrote.
When the Chinese chose to fight, their tactic was to ambush, mount strong but brief attacks, then disappear. To the Americans and South Koreans they battled with, they were a phantom force.
In November 1950, while U.S. and South Korean commanders were coming to grips with the fact that the Chinese were in the war, a South Korean column was halted by Chinese troops near the Changjin-Chosin Reservoir in the north-central part of North Korea. U.S. Marines relieved the South Koreans and, by Nov. 6, had pushed to within a few miles of the reservoir when the Chinese suddenly disappeared.
The 5th and 7th Marines moved south and west of the reservoir and were in position 50 miles south of the Yalu where, U.S. commanders felt, they could set up an unbreakable defense line.
U.S. troops all along the front had a traditional dinner on Thanksgiving and received an encouraging message from MacArthur the next day: The war was nearly over and they should be home by Christmas.
The message was welcomed and believed. One of the coldest winters on record already had set in — U.S. units were beginning to suffer more casualties from frostbite than combat — and the Chinese had not been seen in three weeks.
Ronald Todd, who served with the 31st Infantry Regiment, remembers seeing dozens of frozen bodies near the Chosin Reservoir. Vehicles drove over them to cross ditches, he said.
"You get to the point where it doesn’t bother you anymore," he said. "It’s not that you don’t have feelings for (the dead), but you can’t afford to let it bother you. If you do, you go crazy."
In messages to the Pentagon and the United Nations, MacArthur indicated his belief that victory was at hand. U.S. air power, he said, would be the deciding factor and could keep Chinese reinforcements north of the Yalu.
The U.S. X Corps, 2nd, 3rd and 7th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions, the 1st Marine Division, South Korean I and II Corps, a British and a Turkish brigade all were on or near the line. MacArthur ordered an advance, and ground forces commander Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker began moving the troops forward Nov. 24.
The Chinese reappeared in great force the following day. There were now an additional 300,000 Chinese in Korea, and they were ready to fight.
Walker ordered his units to retreat and, in doing so, they suffered tremendous casualties. One of the worst losses came at a place called "The Gauntlet," a pass on the road that led from the front to Pyongyang. Chinese troops inflicted nearly 5,000 casualties, most of them dead, historian Clay Blair wrote in his book, <CF22>The Forgotten War</CF>.
The situation was no less treacherous at the Changjin-Chosin Reservoir, where U.S. soldiers and Marines had suffered from Chinese attacks and the cold. They began withdrawing down a narrow, frozen road with Chinese fire raining down on them from the mountain slopes. It took the Americans nearly two weeks to reach the sea.
Army records say Walker, 8th Army commander, pulled his troops out of Pyongyang on Dec. 5 after setting 8,000 to 10,000 tons of supplies on fire. The next day, he died in a jeep accident.
Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgeway took command in Korea on Dec. 26, 1950.
He intended to hold at the 38th parallel, Army records state, and began reinforcing that line. He estimated correctly that the Chinese would launch an attack during the New Year holidays.
On Dec. 31, the Chinese moved across the line and, by Jan. 4, had retaken Seoul. Ridgeway determined his opponent could fight for no more than two weeks before pausing to resupply and receive replacements. He thought, Army records state, he could handle the advance by "slashing at the enemy when he withdraws and fighting delaying actions when he attacks."
MacArthur, Army records state, did not support that opinion and notified the Pentagon that if he did not receive immediate reinforcements, the Chinese could drive the U.N. forces into the sea. He was told that there were no reinforcements available and that he must hold with what troops he had. If it became necessary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would order a withdrawal.
The Pentagon wanted MacArthur to submit a timetable for withdrawal. Instead, he recommended a naval blockade of China, destroying China’s war industry with air and naval bombardment, reinforcing the U.N. troops with elements of the Nationalist Chinese army and allowing Chang Kai Shek to conduct operations against mainland China.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. J. Lawton Collins flew to Korea. He found the 8th Army becoming stronger under Ridgeway, and announced there would be no withdrawal.
While the situation was becoming brighter for U.N. forces, it was turning decidedly murky for MacArthur.