Korean war timeline day by day
Korean War Key Events
The Korean War (1950-1953) was a short but brutal conflict between North Korea, backed by China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea, backed by a United Nations (UN) coalition.
Viewed by Western allies as a fight against the forces of international communism, the Korean War was among the first actions of the Cold War and set the stage for decades of hostility.
How did the Korean War begin?
The Korean War began on 25 June 1950, when communist North Korea invaded South Korea. But its origins lie in the Partition of Korea, which took place at the end of World War Two.
The Partition of Korea, 1945
Korea had been a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, when it was liberated by Allied forces at the end of World War Two. Due to concerns over ‘spheres of influence’, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Korea into two occupation zones: the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the US-backed Republic of Korea (South Korea).
Due to Cold War tensions, the zones became two sovereign states, divided at the 38 Parallel, in 1948. Although the US and the Soviet Union withdrew their troops in 1949, tension between the two nations continued to mount.
Invasion of South Korea, June 1950
On 25 June 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38 Parallel into South Korea. Their aim was clear: to reunify the Korean Peninsula as a communist state.
The newly-formed UN called on its members to protect South Korea, with US troops swiftly deployed. They were joined by the troops of many nations, including Britain, Canada, Australia, India, Ethiopia, France and the Philippines.
Landings at Inchon, September 1950
By August, North Korean forces had overrun vast swathes of South Korea, with UN forces retaining a small defensive perimeter in the country’s south east, near Busan. In September, UN Commander General MacArthur launched a daring amphibious landing at Inchon (now called Incheon), a port on So
Korean War
War between North and South Korea, 1950–1953
For other conflicts and wars involving Korea, see List of Korean battles. For the conflict from 1945 to the present, see Korean conflict.
| Korean War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Cold War and the Korean conflict | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| South Korea | North Korea | ||||||||
| United Nations | |||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
Peak strength
Total strength
| Peak strength Total:(combat troops): Together: 1,742,000 2,970,000 72,000 Together: 3,042,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
The Korean War (25 June 1950
Korean War
Stalemate
The fighting at the Imjin marked the end of the mobile phase of the war. Stalemate ensued alongside the strategic bombing of North Korea and the implementation of a naval blockade on the country. In June the Soviets indicated they were willing to seek a settlement through arbitration.
Armistice negotiations began at Kaesong in July 1951. But a deal could not be reached, partly due to disagreements over the issue of prisoner-of-war exchanges.
Two years of static fighting followed, often in conditions of extreme cold and heat. Commonwealth troops were deployed on a rotational basis, defending hill positions and carrying out patrols.
Although the war fronts were now static, set-piece operations did occur from time to time, as both sides sought to control key areas of terrain and win a success that might improve their negotiating position. From July 1951 British forces formed part of the 1st Commonwealth Division under Major-General James Cassels.
However, more recently there has been greater interest and public remembrance of the Korean War in Britain: in 2014 a new memorial opened on Victoria Embankment in London – outside the Ministry of Defence – to commemorate over 1000 British service personnel who died in the conflict. Television and drama reference the conflict more too. The continued international concern over North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability but also the wider interest in Korean culture that accompanied the Korean Wave (hallyu) have begun to raise British awareness of its own past involvement in the peninsula. Its small remaining number of veterans have played an active part in maintaining links too, through ‘revisit’ programmes and other links with South Korea. And the conflict’s popular memory will no doubt continue to evolve.
Dr. Grace Huxford is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the Department of History at the University of Bristol in the UK. She is a member of the Allied Museum’s international scholarly advisory board and the author of the book The Korean War in Britain (Manchester University Press, 2018).
Further Reading
Grace Huxford, The Korean War in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018)
S.P. Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Robert Barnes, The US, the UN and the Korean War: Communism in the Far East and the American Struggle for World Hegemony (London: IB Tauris, 2014).
Monica Kim, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: the Untold History (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Hajimu Masuda, Cold War Crucible: the Korean Conflict and the Postwar World (Harvard University Press, 2015).
Andrew Salmon, Scorched Earth, Black Snow: Britain and Australia in the Korean War, 1950 (Aurum Press, London, 2011).