The Korean War was one of the bloodiest wars in the history. After World War II, in order to maintain political prestige among the uncommitted nations of world, neither side could allow any advantages or concession. The Soviets tried to blockade Berlin, but still could not prevent from the war, and which led to the creation of the Korean War.
The Korean War started on June 25, 1950. The war began between 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' and South Korea and it had strongly affected the Cold War betwen the US, USSR and China. It also harshly strengthened the intensions between them.
The war lasted for three years from June 25 1950. North Korea had a communist system and the south was capitalist. In World War Two, both USSR and USA helped defeat the Japanese in Korea, which eventually divided Korea into two parts. One with the communist system (North) from USSR, and capitalists (South) from the USA. The line that divided them was the 38th parallel. It began with North Korean soldiers crossing the 38th parallel after the Secretary of State (Dean Acheson) outlined a perimeter, which South Korea wasn't included, therefore the north Korean leader Kim Il Song decided to 'unite' Korea. When they almost accomplished the mission, UN army (mainly US army) backed south up from July. It resulted China to join the war when UN army (US army and MacArthur 'rolled back' to the border to China on River Yalu. Finally, this war lasted for 3 years, more than a million people were killed all together, and the armistice was signed in the 38th parallel again. Both North and South Korea had no geographical change, but money, industries, populations were gone, also effected on the Cold.
As a result of the Korean War, nearly 58000 UN troops and 1600000 communist troops were either killed, wounded or reported missing. The loss seemed in vain for many people because they thought the war was unnecessary. On June 25, 1950, the first war between South Korea and North Korea started, and the invasion of South Korea gave a rise to the military advantages for the communists. And the result of the first war gave UN to play a military role. This gave UN a excuse to hit with the communists, so they created a UN military force which was led by McArthur to defend South Korea. UN force didn't expect that China would attack, but to their surprise, China attacked and pushed back the UN force. Another fact which influenced in the Korean War was the death of Stalin in 1953, as Stalin said himself, if he's done, Russia's done. As the result of his death, the USSR realized that they could not continue this war, so they decided to be a pacifist, and settled the conflict by peace and negotiation. UN also thought that there wasn't any point to continue the war, so Armistice was signed between UN and North Korea, which ended the war in the summer of 1953.
From the standpoint of the Korean War, we can see that the result might be a good thing for the development of the Cold War, because it decreased the power of USSR, and could have some peace for a while. However, there wasn't really a peace agreement signed between South Korea and North Korea, and led to the division of the Korea until today.
From the US viewpoint, it was more worried about communism and wanting a stronger 'containment' policy. Before, the Cold War was all about European countries, but suddenly China, which is in Far East, fell into communism in 1949. It was a shock to Americans and it was willing to spread throughout like dominoes. Truman was under severe domestic pressure for being too soft on communism. Especially vocal were those who accused the Democrats of having 'Lost China'. The intervention was also an important implementation of the new Truman Doctrine, which advocated the opposition of communism everywhere it tried to expand. The lesson of Munich in 1938 also influenced the American decision, believing that appeasing communism would only encourage further expansion. 302,483 US 'military advisors', in fact soldiers, were sent to Korea to fight expansion of communism, North Korean, Chinese and Soviet Air Force. 33,685 US soldiers were killed in the war. In the end, the US wasn't very happy about the result, but at least, the least missions were achieved. Socially, it stopped from expanding of communism in Asia, otherwise, if Korea fell to communism, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and so on would have probably fell to communist as domino theory. Militarily, US soldiers stayed in Republic of Korea (South) to defend Korea, which stand a threat to China and other Asian countries from falling to communism. Economically, US saved Asian markets. If those countries fell, then US would have lost their markets. Politically, it has strengthened the power of the West. It was stopped expanding of Communism, it has shown to Soviets that West wouldn't appease no more. Finally, the relationship of USSR and China with US is worsened.
From the Soviets' and Chinese points of view, this war exacerbated the hostility between them and the US. First, China has been unable to recover Taiwan for supporting Korea, but then US claimed to protect Taiwan. Secondly, China has totally killed, wounded or lost about a million soldiers. Thirdly, MacArthur wanted to nuke China, it only grew the hostilities between them. Also, they saw from this war that the West and US are even more worrying about expansion of communism and they were preparing to spread it even faster. West European countries were worrying about Soviets would take over the West Germany during the wartime; therefore they had a bigger rivalry now.
As we can see, the Korean War has a great impact on Cold War and both sides were not willing to stop. After a decade, the Vietnamese war against the Americans had begun.
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