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Date Posted: 18:04:44 05/31/03 Sat
Author: Mr John D Clare
Subject: Keep your eye on the GCSE ball
In reply to: 's message, "What was the single most important cause of the Korean War" on 15:29:32 05/31/03 Sat

This is quite a fun question – thank you for asking it.
My gut answer would be ‘Neither’! and I’d set off on one about the Cold War and historical determinism BUT…

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
If you get this or a similar question in your exam, how should you answer it? You know, because I have told you already. This is how the examiners get you – they ask you a question, and you get all excited, and you stop thinking, and suddenly you’re just telling them what you think, instead of thinking what you should tell them.
How do you answer an ‘Opinion’ question?
– BY ARGUING BOTH WAYS, THEN COMING TO A CONCLUSION.

So…
Para 1. In some ways it could be argued that it was Syngman Rhee. After all, he did boast that he was going to attack North Korea – which was the actual cause of the war.

Para 2. However, it could also be argued that it was Kim Il Sing. He was planning war as early as 1949, going to both Stalin and China to get their support and permission. His forces were clearly well-trained for a war when it came. And he was just waiting for any excuse, however tiny.

Para 3. But I would finish with a conclusion which said that NEITHER Sung NOR Rhee were very important in causing the war!

And I would suggest that this would be my order of importance:

First, and most important of all: THE COLD WAR
How’s about this for a statement to think about: ‘Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee were not masters of their own destiny, but driven to war by forces beyond their control. They were bit players, acting out their parts in the wider clash between capitalism and communism’. What do you think? Historians have argued for ever about whether individuals have any say in history – whether we can shape our own destiny, or whether we are at the mercy of the ‘great movements’ (ie there are no causERS of events, only causes).
[[Spooky idea, eh? especially when you apply it to yourself – the idea that YOU don’t choose to follow any road or do anything of yourself, but that you are just following a road set for you by wider, more powerful forces – that the economy, the underlying ideology of the state you live in, your education and upbringing etc. choose your path for you and (even though you THINK you are making choices for yourself) you are just unravelling a path already set for you by the destiny of where and when you were born. If he had been born in Wisconsin, Kim Il Sung would probably have been an factory owner, donated large sums to the Republican Party, and have supported McCarthy’s anti-communism witch-hunt]]
But even if you DO allow a role for personal initiative in the events of history, there is an argument which says that Stalin (in his encouraging of Sung to expand Communism in the east) and Truman (in his aggressive ‘containment’ policy and massive military support for South Korea) were far more the causers of the Korean War than Sung and Rhee ever were – that the Korean War was much more Cold War (gone hot) than Korean War.
I don’t think it was EVER just about North Korea v. South Korea, but it is certainly true that, even if Sung and Rhee started it, it soon became about MUCH MORE than North Korea v. South Korea – the whole shape of the events of the fighting were determined, not by the armies of North and South Korea, but by the intervention of America and China.

Next, how’s about a role for: THE SECOND WORLD WAR as a cause of the Korean War?
Before 1939, Korea was a united country, owned by the Japanese. It only got divided between communists and capitalists in the last moments of World War II, when the Japanese empire was crumbling. If Korea had never been divided, there might have been a war, but there would never have been either a Sung or a Rhee to fight it. It would have been in a different form, perhaps in a different place.
The Second World War had the effect of cleaning out the old power structures – the old empires of Germany, Italy and Japan collapsed altogether, and the empires of Britain and France lost their glory and influence – and ‘cleared the stage’ for the new global conflict for supremacy between the superpowers.

And then, I suppose, I’d have to say that KIM IL SING was probably more proactive in setting the actual fighting going than

Least important: SYNGMAN RHEE – who was just happy to start fighting when it came to it.

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