Onder de kop 'Kan ik mijn kinderen straks beschermen' schrijft de Joods Nederlandse propagandiste Natascha van Weezel in haar Parool-column van afgelopen maandag het haar 'als moeder frustreert me dat ik niet weet óf en hóe ik mijn kinderen kan beschermen tegen de dingen die nog komen gaan. Wat als de militaire dienstplicht weer wordt ingevoerd en mijn jongens over een jaar of achttien naar het front in Moskou, Teheran of Pyongyang worden gestuurd. Wat als hun kameraden sneuvelen, Wat ALS...
In December 1950, a BBC cameraman captured the fall of Pyongyang, a defining moment in the Korean War. In History examines how the conflict ravaged the land and its people, defined the future of the peninsula, and pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.
"All roads leading out of the city were crowded with refugees. Few knew where they were going," reported the BBC as it broadcast images of desperate North Koreans trying to flee the burning city of Pyongyang on 5 December 1950.
The footage had been captured by BBC cameraman Cyril Page during his last hours in the North Korean capital. Upon hearing that occupying UN troops were pulling out, Page had taken to the streets to document the chaos and fear as the news spread that the Chinese troops were coming. In the harsh winter conditions, he filmed the frightened refugees carrying whatever they could as smoke bellowed out from the burning buildings behind them.
The panicked evacuation was emblematic of the dramatic reversal of fortunes experienced by the UN forces led by General Douglas MacArthur. Just weeks before, the general had promised US President Harry S Truman that he was poised to unify Korea. The fall of the city of Pyongyang and complete collapse of his military offensive into North Korea would trigger MacArthur to threaten an all-out nuclear war.
The havoc and bloodshed caused by the Korean War had begun six months earlier. In the years leading up to the end of World War Two, Korea had suffered under a brutal Japanese occupation. The US proposed to its wartime ally, the Soviet Union, that following Japan's surrender, they should temporarily divide control of Korea between them. The thought was that it would help them manage the removal of the Japanese forces. In 1945, the superpowers split the country in two along an arbitrary demarcation line, the 38th parallel. The Soviets supported Kim Il-sung in the north's Democratic People's Republic of Korea while the US backed Syngman Rhee in the Republic of Korea in the south.
From the outset, neither of the newly-created Korean governments accepted the other's legitimacy or the demarcation line. "It was never considered in any sense by Koreans to be legitimate or meaningful. It was completely meaningless to them," Dr Owen Miller of the Centre of Korean Studies at SOAS, University of London, told the BBC History Magazine podcast in 2024. Both leaders wanted to reunify the country by force. By 1949, the two superpowers had withdrawn most of their occupying troops from Korea, but it did little to ease the simmering tensions. Increasingly bloody clashes regularly broke out along the de facto border.
On 25 June 1950, North Korea's communist leader Kim Il-sung made his move. In the early hours of morning, he launched a surprise attack with a well-trained fighting force across the 38th parallel. The North Korean troops, equipped with Soviet weapons, quickly overwhelmed the Republic of Korea's army. Within days they had captured the south's capital Seoul, forcing many of its residents to swear allegiance to the Communist Party or face imprisonment or execution.
In the US, President Truman was caught off guard by the speed and success of North Korea's assault. A believer in the "Domino theory" – that if one country fell to communism others would follow – he appealed to the newly-formed UN to defend South Korea. The Soviet Union could have vetoed this vote. But at the time, it was boycotting the UN Security Council because of its refusal to admit the People's Republic of China. And so, on 28 June 1950, a resolution was passed calling on all UN member states to help repel the invasion. MacArthur, the US general who had accepted Japan's surrender at the end of World War Two, was named commander of the combined UN force.
Turning the tide
The US was the first to respond, hurriedly sending its soldiers stationed in Japan. But these troops were ill-prepared to contend with the superior North Korean forces that swept rapidly down the country, pushing them back. As the battles raged, thousands of ordinary Korean civilians caught up in the conflict were killed. By September, the South Korean and UN forces were pinned down, defending a small enclave around the port of Busan on the southern tip. North Korea looked to be on the brink of reuniting the entire Korean peninsula.
In an ambitious gamble, MacArthur decided to attempt a risky, sea-borne assault on Inchon, a port deep behind the North Korean lines. Under a heavy bombardment, UN forces landed on 15 September 1950, capturing the port and then quickly moving on to recapture Seoul. After they retook the capital, tens of thousands of its residents who had sworn allegiance to the city's previous occupiers were shot as collaborators by the South Korean forces. It was just one of a series of indiscriminate horrific mass killings of civilians that would take place over the course of the war. "There were a lot of massacres during the war, not at the frontline, away from the frontline, where people were rounded up because they were thought to be disloyal," said Dr Miller.
The Inchon operation managed to sever the North Korean army's supply lines and communication, and UN forces were able to break out of Busan and mount a fierce counteroffensive. This turned the tide of the conflict, forcing the North Koreans soldiers to retreat northwards and back across the 38th parallel.
But having achieved the UN resolution, MacArthur was determined to destroy the communist forces completely, and he ordered his troops to pursue the North Koreans across the border. By 19 October 1950, UN forces had captured Pyongyang and were advancing towards the Yalu River on the Chinese border. The situation that had been so dire for South Korea just a few months earlier now appeared to be reversed.
Truman was hesitant to expand a conflict that could pull not just China and also Russia, which by this time had developed its own atomic bomb, into another world war. But MacArthur was convinced he was on the verge of a swift, decisive victory that would reunify the country under pro-Western South Korean leadership. He assured the president that the war would be over by Christmas.
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