Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 40, part Two of 'The Soldier Who Cam Home Alive'.

  The Soldier Who Came Home Alive. Part Two. by Dave Jaffe


    The Korean War changed Lenny Soames' life. It started in 1950 when the North Korean dictator
Kim Il Sung launched an invasion of South Korea. South Korea was then ruled by a right wing dictator Syngman Rhee. For 50 years the Japanese had ruled the whole of Korea with an iron hand. Then in 1945 the Japanese invaders were defeated in the Second World  War. The Japanese then vanished and the Great Powers took control of Korea. The Soviets backed Kim Il Sung who ruled the north. The U.S.-backed Syngman Rhee ran the south.
    Both Rhee and Sung were tough dictators. Neither man gave a fig about human rights. Both threw their political opponents in prison and/or had them killed. Yet there was a key difference between these two strong men. Rhee had collaborated with the Japanese rulers of Korea. Sung had fought the Japanese. He also tilted some of his programs towards the workers and the poor.
    In the late 1940's, Sung went to see Josef Stalin, the unchallenged communist ruler of the Soviet Union and most of Eastern Europe. Sung told he wanted to invade South Korea and unify the peninsula under his rule. "If you get kicked in the teeth," Stalin told Kim Il Sung, "I shall not lift a finger." If Sung ran into trouble, Stalin told him, China would help him and not the Soviet Union. Yet Stalin didn't disapprove of Sung's plans.
    So on June 25, 1950 Sung launched an invasion of South Korea. The invasion took South Korea by surprise and North Korean forces soon gobbled up large parts of South Korea including the nation's capitol of Seoul. Yet then the Americans counter-attacked. Led by their famous general, Douglas MacArthur they entered the war . They landed troops at the waist of the peninsula near the 38th parallel.
    The mostly American forces and their allies including Canadian soldiers pushed back the North Koreans and started to march north towards China. China led by Mao Tse Tung had just completed its communist revolution.. Mao did not want to get involved in she Korean War. He and his generals were planning to soon invade Taiwan and reunite all of China. The Chinese government warned the Americans to stop advancing on China. The U.S. ignored the warnings and allowed MacArthur to keep marching north. MacArthur said that he would help liberate China from communism.
     In the just completed civil was in China the U.S. government had heavily backed the right wing Guomindang. When the Communist defeated the Guomindang it fled to Taiwan. Kim Il Sung pleaded for help from China and the Chinese government came through. "We will get the troops home by Christmas," MacArthur said in effect. The Chinese troops played havoc with that prediction.
     In November 1950 Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River which was the border between North Korea and China. They inflicted a massive defeat on the Allied forces who then fled south. The war ended up at the 38th parallel. Below the 38th parallel, Syngman Rhee ruled the roost. Above the 38th parallel, Kim Il Sung held the power. Hostilities went on until 1953 when the war ended.
     Korea was now a devastated land. "When the elephants clash only the grasshoppers get hurt," the Vietnamese used to say. Like Korea to its north, Vietnam was a small country sandwiched in between great powers. Vietnam was a grasshopper. China and the U.S. were the elephants. 1 million Koreans died in the war. So did 50,000 Americans, 300 Canadians and over 130,000 Chinese.