The Cold War in Asia: Crash Course US History #38

Hi, I’m John Green, this is CrashCourse US History, and today we’re going to talk

about the Cold War again. Really less about the “cold,” more about the “war.”

As usual, we’re not going to focus so much on the generals and the tactics, but instead

on why the wars were fought and what it all meant.

And today we get to visit a part of the world that we haven’t seen much on this series:

[spins] Asia. Not my best work. intro

So, we’re gonna start today with the place where the Cold War really heated up, at least

as far as America’s concerned. Mr Green, it’s Vietnam.

Close, Me from the Past, but like all your romantic endeavors, unsuccessful. The correct

answer is of course Korea. Like MFTP, many Americans have forgotten about the Korean

War, which lasted three years from 1950 to 1953 and is sometimes called the Forgotten

War. But it was real. The Korean War was the first

real like shooting war that Americans were involved in after World War II and it was

the only time that American troops directly engaged with an honest to goodness Communist

power. I’m referring not to North Korea, but to

China, which became communist in 1949 and qualifies as a major world power because it

was, and also is, huge. We love you China. Just kidding, you’re not watching. Because

of the Great Fire Wall. So the end of WWII left Korea split between

a Communist north led by Kim Il crazypants Sung and an anti-communist but hardly democratic

South led by Syngman Rhee. The two were supposed to reunite, but that

was impossible because they were constantly fighting that cost around 100,000 lives.

The civil war between the two Koreas turned into a full-fledged international conflict

in June of 1950 when Kim Il Sung invaded the South, and the US responded. Truman thought

that Kim’s invasion was being pushed by the Soviets and that it was a challenge to

the “Free World.” Truman went to the United Nations and he got

authorization, but he didn’t go to Congress and never called the Korean War a “war.”

Insisting instead that American troops were leading a UN “police action” but that

was kind of a misleading statement. General Douglas MacArthur was in command of

this tiny little police force at the start of the war because he was the highest ranking

general in the region. He was also really popular, at least with the press, although

not so much with other generals, or with the president.

Under MacArthur, UN forces – which basically meant American and South Korean forces -- pushed

the North Koreans back past the 38th parallel where the two countries had been divided,

and then Truman made a fateful decision: The United States would try to re-unify Korea

as a non-communist state. Which, if you’ve looked at a map recently,

you’ll notice went swimmingly. America’s allies and the UN all agreed to this idea,

so up north they went, all the way to the northern border with China at the Yalu river.

At that point, Chinese forces, feeling that American forces were a smidge too close to

China, counter-attacked on November 1, 1950 and by Christmas the two sides were stalemated