Korean War, right or wrong?

[Beechy]

Was it right for North Korea and its allies to attack South Korea? Was it really necessary?

[Bill]

No it wasn't right.

Jesus.

[barrowaj]

No... give me an argument why it would be?

[lwarmonger]

Was it right for North Korea and its allies to attack South Korea? Was it really necessary?

It was going to happen eventually, given how the North Korean government was (and the South Korean government was fairly repressive and unsavory as well at the time), but asking whether it was right or wrong strikes me as a fairly pointless question.

[Beechy]

No... give me an argument why it would be?

to be honest i have no idea what went on in the korean war, but some guys in another forum reckon it was the best thing they could have done in pre-empting the strike??

[Confed999]

but asking whether it was right or wrong strikes me as a fairly pointless question.

For me, it's the only question that matters...

[ZFBoxcar]

Beechy, I don't know what guys you were talking to, but its possible they meant "right" in a strategic sense, like that if there was going to be a war, North Korea was smart to attack first. If they were talking in a moral sense, then there is absolutely no way in hell North Korea was justified in attacking South Korea.

[Franco Lolan]

excellent

[lwarmonger]

Beechy, I don't know what guys you were talking to, but its possible they meant "right" in a strategic sense, like that if there was going to be a war, North Korea was smart to attack first. If they were talking in a moral sense, then there is absolutely no way in hell North Korea was justified in attacking South Korea.

Well, given how poorly the South Korean army preformed, it was probably a good idea to attack at the time, before the South Koreans were fully organized. The longer North Korea waited, the harder it would get.

[Officer of Engineers]

World Affairs Board - Korea: Reluctant Dragons and Red Conspiracies

Starting in 1992, a third wave of Korean War histories and historians arrived. Most were American-educated Asians who could read, write, and speak Chinese, Korean, or both. In sharp contrast to the earlier works, the third wave's thesis was soundly based on previously unavailable documents--not mere interpretation--namely a flood of declassified U.S. government papers and official histories that began to become available in the 1980s. These historians also drew upon newly available memoirs and official papers from the archives of the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. These included approximately five hundred previously secret wartime diplomatic messages the Russian government gave South Korea in 1994. The Asian-American historians also conducted interviews with Chinese and Soviet participants. Not surprisingly, their work is far more convincing than that of earlier Korean War historians, who for the most part had only public U.S. and South Korean sources from which to work.

The third-wave historians tell us much about the underlying causes of the military confrontation that characterized most of the Cold War from 1950 until 1989. Specifically, we are now aware of the extent of collusion among Moscow, Pyongyang, and Beijing in creating and prosecuting the Korean War. We know what the Communist leaders thought about the possibility of American military resistance to the North Korean invasion. The date of China's decision to enter the war has been identified, and its aim in doing so is now known as well. We have enough information to comprehend what Chinese military leaders expected to result from their army's battlefield collision with American troops. And, we now know their reactions after that first clash occurred. The mystery of the "November Lull"--the pause in combat between the first Chinese-American encounter and the full-blown and violent struggle a month later--is finally solved. And, we have learned much about Communist strategy from October 1950 until the 1953 cease-fire. Combining this new information with what we already knew about U.S. decisions, we have a much clearer understanding of one of the most important conflicts of the twentieth century.