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The Will to Win: American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953
The Will to Win: American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953
The Will to Win: American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953
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The Will to Win: American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953

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The Will to Win focuses on the substantial role of US military advisors to the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) from 1946 until 1953 in one of America’s early attempts at nation building.
 
Gibby describes ROKA’s structure, mission, challenges, and successes, thereby linking the South Korean army and their US advisors to the traditional narrative of this “forgotten war.” The work also demonstrates the difficulties inherent in national reconstruction, focusing on barriers in culture and society, and the effects of rapid decolonization combined with intense nationalism and the appeal of communism to East Asia following the destruction of the Japanese empire. Key conclusions include the importance of individual advisors, the significance of the prewar advisory effort, and the depth of the impact these men had on individual Korean units and in a few cases on the entire South Korean army.
 
The success or failure of South Korean government in the decade following the end of World War II hinged on the loyalty, strength, and fighting capability of its army, which in turn relied on its American advisors. Gibby argues that without a proficient ROKA, the 1953 armistice, still in effect today, would not have been possible. He reexamines the Korean conflict from its beginning in 1945—particularly Korean politics, military operations, and armed forces—and demonstrates the crucial role the American military advisory program and personnel played to develop a more competent and reliable Korean army.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 30, 2012
ISBN9780817386115
The Will to Win: American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953

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    The Will to Win - Bryan R. Gibby

    The Will to Win

    The Will to Win

    American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953

    Bryan R. Gibby

    THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

    Tuscaloosa

    Copyright © 2012

    The University of Alabama Press

    Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

    All rights reserved

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    Typeface: Adobe Caslon Pro

    The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Gibby, Bryan R.

     The will to win : American military advisors in Korea, 1946–1953 / Bryan R. Gibby.

        p. cm.

     Includes bibliographical references and index.

     ISBN 978-0-8173-1764-5 (trade cloth : alk. paper) —ISBN 978-0-8173-8611-5 (electronic) 1. Korean War, 1950–1953—Participation, American. 2. Military assistance, American—Korea (South) 3. United States. Military Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea. 4. Korea (South). Yukkun. I. Title.

     DS919.G53 2012

     951.904' 24—dc23

                                                                                  2011050368

    Cover photograph: A Model 1917 heavy machine gun in action during the Korean War.

    Photograph provided by the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

    Cover Design: Rebecca Todd Minder

    For Desrae

    Contents

    List of Illustrations

    Acknowledgments

    Abbreviations

    A Note on Transliteration

    Introduction: Forgotten Soldiers of a Misunderstood War

    1. The American Occupation, September 1945–December 1946

    2. The War of Subversion, 1947–1948

    3. The Limited War, 1949–1950

    4. The Evolving Structure and Functions of the Military Missions, 1948–1950

    5. Invasion and Survival: Yuk-Ee-Oh (6-2-5)

    6. The Chinese Offensives, 1950–1951

    7. Reformation: A New KMAG Trains an Army, Summer 1951–Summer 1952

    8. Redemption: A New Korean Army at War

    9. The Test of Battle: The Summer Offensives, May–July 1953

    10. Shrimp among Whales: Assessing the Advisory Missions, 1946–1953

    Appendix A: Korean War Chronology

    Appendix B: Lt. Gen. John Hodge’s Statement to the Korean People

    Appendix C: U.S. IX Corps Citation, ROK Capital Division, 1953

    Appendix D: Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, 1952

    Appendix E: Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, 1953

    Notes

    Bibliography

    Index

    Illustrations

    FIGURES

    2.1. South Cholla Province, October–November 1948

    3.1. Disposition of ROK Army Divisions and Regiments, January–June 1950

    6.1. Battles of Sachang-ri and Kapyong, April 22–24, 1951

    6.2. Battle of Hyon-ri, May 16–18, 1951

    7.1. A Schematic View of Officer Selection and Training

    9.1. Chinese Summer Offensive, Phase One, May 1953

    9.2. Chinese Summer Offensive, Phase Two, June 1953

    9.3. ROK 5th Division Defends the Pukhan River Valley, June 10–14, 1953

    9.4. Chinese Kumsong Offensive, July 1953

    9.5. Final Offensives and Armistice Disposition, June–July 1953

    10.1. ROK Army Growth from North Korean Invasion to the Armistice Agreement

    TABLES

    1.1. Recipients of UNRRA Aid, 1945–47

    1.2. Regimental Activation, Korean Constabulary

    3.1. Training Progress and Combat Readiness

    7.1. ROKA Officers at U.S. Army Schools

    7.2. Rifle Company Training Plan, 9th Division, March 1953

    10.1. Resolving Conflicts with Counterparts

    Acknowledgments

    I served in Korea as an army officer for two and a half years, from 1997 to 2000. I found Korea to be a dynamic and industrious country and the Korean people to be kind and respectful. The older generation especially went out of their way to welcome me; never did I feel out of place. For these and many other reasons, I feel indebted to the people of the Republic of Korea for their hospitality and friendliness toward American servicemen and women. My study of U.S.-ROK governmental and military relationships during the Korean War has increased my admiration for the land of the morning calm, and I sincerely wish that the current century is kinder than the last.

    I am most appreciative to my academic mentor, Dr. Allan R. Millett, formerly of the Ohio State University and now the Ambrose Professor of History and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. I owe him a great intellectual debt. It is a privilege to count myself as part of a generation of soldier-scholars that has matured under his guiding influence. Dr. Millett was the first to identify my interest in America’s Forgotten War, and he encouraged me to write a new history of the advisory effort in Korea. In addition to a decade’s worth of encouragement, he shared his personal collection of correspondence, recordings, official documents, and interviews—much of which are the foundation of KMAG’s history presented in this book. He has graciously granted permission to use these materials.

    The completion of this project could not have been realized without the generous assistance I received from several research institutions. At the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland, Beth Lipford, Will Mahoney, and Rich Boylan provided patient and unstinting assistance in finding documents related to the United States Military Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea and the United States Army Forces in Korea. Many of these records are not yet fully catalogued or organized, so their persistence and expertise was invaluable.

    Special thanks go to Susan K. Lemke, director of the National Defense University Special Collections, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C. Her guidance through various security protocols allowed me to be one of the first researchers to access the papers of Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, former commander, Eighth Army in Korea. General Taylor’s recollections, correspondence, and collection of operations reports greatly contributed to a better understanding of how the South Korean army fought in the last months of the war. Ms. Lemke generously allowed me to make copies of any unclassified documents that I wanted—a grand gift to any researcher.

    Cynthia Brougher and Joanne Hartog of the George C. Marshall Library and Archives provided valuable assistance with the voluminous collections of George C. Marshall, James A. Van Fleet, and Walton H. Walker.

    I was able to find rich nuggets at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, now part of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I relied on David Keough, whose professional expertise and knowledge of the Korean War are nearly without peer. With his assistance, I tracked down veteran interviews, senior officer oral histories, and obscure Eighth Army reports and studies. These were essential sources that gave texture and context to the narrative. In a similar vein, the U.S. Army Center for Military History gave me access to a vast collection of hard-to-find unit histories and general officer biographies.

    Professors Geoffrey Parker, John Guilmartin, and Alan Beyerchen of the Ohio State University have all contributed to this study in material and psychological ways. I benefited from their graduate seminars that helped me appreciate that in war, fighting is never the final story—training, organization, logistics, and culture also play roles, sometimes in subtle ways. Professor Beyerchen read and commented on an early draft of the manuscript, and helped me see issues of intercultural conflict and cooperation—aspects of any advisory mission that are often overlooked, but that are vitally important.

    As a rotating faculty member in the Department of History, United States Military Academy (2002–2005), I must acknowledge the tremendous support and encouragement I have received from Brig. Gen. Robert A. Doughty (USA, ret.), Col. Lance A. Betros (current department head), and Col. Matthew Moten (previous chief, Military History Division). Colonel Moten not only read and gave constructive criticism on five chapters, he was also a constant champion for my project. The Office of the Dean provided generous financial support for research trips to Washington, D.C., Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and Lexington, Virginia.

    My colleagues at West Point were valuable role models and friends: Professor Eugenia Kiesling kept my diverse interests alive even while sharpening my focus on Korea’s history and the problems involved in constructing military narratives; Lt. Col. Thomas Hanson and Thomas Rider have been longtime friends and critics. Other members of the faculty all contributed to an atmosphere of critical thinking and historical inquiry. Fortunately, the civilian faculty was a stalwart supporter for a young officer struggling with teaching, researching, and writing.

    This history of the American advisory missions would be nothing without the men who were there and who unselfishly shared their memories, documents, and journals. Harold S. Fischgrund read and commented on a draft of the first three chapters. F. Foster Cowey, Minor L. Kelso, Ralph Bliss, Robert G. Shackleton, Edward J. Stewart, and Leon Sembach were all generous with their time in countless interviews and correspondence. As a historian, I am indebted to their firsthand observations and honest critiques. As a fellow officer and veteran of Korean service, I regard their commitment to two armies as a model for duty and honor.

    Peer readers provided essential assistance to prevent factual errors or unsupportable interpretations. Col. Donald Boose (USA, ret.) of the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, read the entire manuscript and offered valuable suggestions, as did Col. Jiyul Kim (USA, ret.), who provided unique insight into the KATUSA program as well as Korean language and culture affecting the advisory mission in Korea. Professors Burton Kaufman and William Stueck, the official readers for The University of Alabama Press, both left their mark, particularly regarding the relationship between the Korean army and the armistice that ended the fighting in 1953.

    The editorial staff at The University of Alabama Press provided considerable support and encouragement. Daniel Ross championed this work early and did everything he could to bring it along to completion. Dan Waterman, Joanna Jacobs, and Debbie Upton have been patient and flexible partners with whom to finalize the manuscript and deal with all of the small details that separate an excellent publication from an average one.

    Lastly, I must acknowledge the patient support of my family: Desrae and our six children, Paul, Peter, Parker, Preston, Patricia, and Patterson. Desrae’s support was incalculable. She read and commented on nearly every chapter, ensuring that the prose resembled standard written English and not some unintelligible army-speak. It is to her I dedicate this book.

    Any errors of fact or interpretation remain my responsibility.

    Abbreviations

    A Note on Transliteration

    The romanization of Korean words has defied consistency. Contemporary documents tend to reflect the McCune-Reischauer system, developed in the 1930s, though they generally omit diacritical marks. Although diacritics are essential to differentiate Korean sounds that sound similar in English (such as o and eo or d and t), for most Anglophones, the distinction is inaudible. The Revised Romanization of Korean, now generally accepted in print journalism and official South Korean publications, was promoted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2000 to replace McCune-Reischauer. It differentiates between aspirated and unaspirated sounds by manipulating English consonants and adding vowels. It is probably the best compromise in written English, but those steeped on Pusan may have a hard time accepting Busan. For simplicity’s sake, therefore, I’ve adopted a convention that seeks to replicate the romanization as used and understood by the Americans in Korea, which generally lacks diacritical markings.

    Still, there is some flexibility for terms and names that have become more commonly known in subsequent writing. For example, Lee Bum Suck has become Yi Pom-sok and Paek Sun Yup is Paik Sun-yup. Other inconsistencies will be found, but the intent is to maintain a single usage throughout the book. Syngman Rhee has remained unchanged based on historical usage.

    Chinese proper names follow the modern pin-yin system over the traditional Wade-Giles: Mao Tse-tung is Mao Zedong. Most other Chinese names will not cause confusion, but Chiang Kai-shek is preferred over Jiang Jieshi.

    Introduction

    Forgotten Soldiers of a Misunderstood War

    When the conventional forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea attacked across the 38th North parallel on June 25, 1950, the war for Korea had been in progress already for nearly four years. In many respects, this conventional attack across the imaginary line of demarcation between the two Korean zones—along with the intervention of United Nations and Chinese military forces—was simply an extension of a basic fraternal conflict that extended back to 1945, when liberation from the Japanese empire at the close of World War Two resulted in division and political conflict. Almost immediately, separate regimes backed by the United States and the Soviet Union emerged, laying the foundation for a civil war. On both sides of the parallel regime building was not uncontested, but it was in the southern American zone that the war before the international war, pitting two irreconcilable visions of a future Korea in a mortal struggle, played out most decisively, culminating in the more familiar North Korean invasion. South Korean security and military forces, along with their American patrons, had been locked in combat from the beginning of the post-liberation period, with the first shots being fired as early as September 1945. This underappreciated fact is a crucial aspect of the Korean War. How the South Korean forces performed in battle during the prewar years directly influenced the North Korean decision for invasion. How these same forces survived the Communist assault to reform, retrain, and rearm contributed in a decisive manner to the negotiated termination of fighting in Korea.

    Although no longer forgotten in the historical sense, the causes, conduct, and issues surrounding the war’s termination remain misunderstood by most English-speaking audiences. This book—primarily a biography of the officers and soldiers who made up the United States Military Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea (known as KMAG and pronounced kay-mag)—is an attempt to restore perspective and balance to the standard English language narratives of the war. As a small organization, never counting more than 2,000 official personnel, American advisors played a critical, perhaps decisive, role in building, defending, and ensuring the livelihood of the southern Republic of Korea (ROK). These advisors carried great responsibilities to organize, train, mentor, and at times lead the military forces of South Korea prior to June 1950. Following the North Korean invasion, KMAG took on additional tasks to ensure that the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) would survive until it could be remade into a larger and formidable fighting force. Although most histories of the Korean War begin with the North Korean invasion of the southern Republic of Korea in June 1950, it was in the preceding four years of civil conflict that American advisors established the moral foundation and organizational framework for a Korean army. These years, with all their turbulence in the social and economic dislocations following liberation, need to be understood to make sense of the Korean army’s performance between 1950 and 1953.¹

    Most histories of the war either ignore or downplay the Koreans’ commitment to their own defense, tending to focus more on the U.S. struggle with Communist China and the frustrations of fighting a limited war in the nuclear age.² However, during the international conflict following the North Korean invasion, the military power of the United Nations Command (UNC), a coalition of seventeen nations, hinged upon the combat capabilities of its ground component, which consisted of the Eighth United States Army in Korea and its allied attachments. What has been generally neglected is the fact that for much of the war, the military fortunes of Eighth Army relied to a large degree on the capability of the Republic of Korea Army—its largest and longest-serving co-belligerent. On the day of the North Korean invasion, the ROKA numbered slightly fewer than 100,000 men, whereas the official American military presence in Korea amounted to 492. Within two weeks battle losses reduced the South Korean army to the point of collapse. Fewer than 50,000 soldiers remained under arms and under control. Yet, by the time of the armistice agreement on July 27, 1953, the U.S. Eighth Army and its coalition components boasted just over 300,000 men in the field, while the manpower contribution of the Republic of Korea had soared to nearly 600,000 men under arms or in various states of training.³ More important, the capability of the ROKA in 1953 was radically different from that of 1950 or even of 1951. The training and reorganization—it really was a reformation—of the ROKA had given the Koreans the resources and capabilities to fight. What is more, the KMAG partnership infused the ROKA with the motivation to fight and win. Without the trained, equipped, and well-led soldiers of the ROKA, which derived substantially from KMAG programs and initiatives, it is barely conceivable that a satisfactory armistice would have been obtained when it was.

    The general absence of the ROKA story ignores the dramatic impact American advisors of KMAG (and its prewar predecessors PMAG—for Provisional Military Advisory Group—and before that the Department of Internal Security) had on the conduct and eventual termination of the war. These military missions were responsible for building the initial security forces and institutions that would eventually evolve into a national army, and they accomplished these tasks in the politically charged and physically austere environment characterizing the American occupation in Korea. Therefore, the perspective of this book is to reexamine the Korean conflict in light of the American advisors and trainers, and how they saw the Koreans—their politics, military operations, and armed forces. While this book will not attempt a comprehensive analysis of the Korean War from the Korean perspective, battle is the most honest examination. Therefore, the analysis of KMAG’s contributions must refocus attention on the crucial role that Korean troops played in the conflict, through the lens of the American military advisory missions, which were present at the very beginnings of the Korean conflict. For above all, the Korean War was a civil and revolutionary war long before it was a conventional and international one.⁴ Success or failure, life or death, for the southern regime, led after August 1948 by President Syngman Rhee, hinged ultimately on the loyalty, strength, and fighting capability of its army, which in turn, relied on its American advisors and trainers.⁵

    KMAG’s history can be looked at in three phases: liberation from Japanese domination through the civil conflict to the North Korean invasion (1945–1950); the beginnings of the international war that immediately followed, through the Chinese intervention, and then to the initiation of truce talks in mid-1951; and finally, the period generally known as the stalemated war, which also saw the most significant reforms in both KMAG and the ROKA, until the signing of the armistice in July 1953. In the first phase (comprising chapters 1–4), the advisory mission began early, as American occupation authorities in Korea began searching for a way out of the political, economic, and social strife that followed the sudden surrender of Imperial Japan and the political chaos that ensued in Japan’s former colony. The U.S. Army’s occupation commander, Lt. Gen. John R. Hodge, decided to create an indigenous military force, armed with light infantry weapons and trained in rudimentary tactics, to provide stability and a hedge against leftist subversion. A small advisory group of American officers was created as the Department of Internal Security to organize, train, and equip this force, known as the Korean Constabulary. Two years later, this ad hoc advisory organization was dignified with the title of the Provisional Military Advisory Group. Not until 1949 did the U.S. Army establish a formal advisory mission, the United States Military Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea.

    Unfortunately, the prewar advisory efforts never received much support, nor were they ever considered a prime assignment for U.S. officers overseas. KMAG and its predecessor organizations suffered from a lack of manpower, resources, command and administrative support, and strategic direction from the beginning. KMAG was a small organization of fewer than five hundred men in 1949 (PMAG had ninety), and together with the Korean army it advised, it struggled to survive the tumultuous prewar years combating sedition, rebellion, and outright guerrilla war. Between the summer of 1946 and summer of 1949, Korea looked very much like a losing bet. However, reorganization in 1949 of both the advisory mission and the Korean army produced salutary results, such that the new ROKA was able to crush substantially a persistent guerrilla threat while holding its own in a brief but sharp border war with the North.

    Virtually unknown is the story of American involvement behind the military challenges to the Republic of Korea before the war began: the suppression of the Cheju-do rebellion (April 1948–August 1949), the Yosu-Sunchon mutiny (October–November 1948), the border war in the summer and fall of 1949, and the guerrilla campaigns in the fall and winter of 1949–1950. In fact, this was the first inflection point in the Korean conflict. It was in 1949 that Republic of Korea government forces, advised by American officers, defeated Communist efforts first to subvert and then to overthrow the Rhee regime by force. In every respect, KMAG advisors played critical roles as organizers, trainers, and mentors to their Korean counterparts.⁶ Ironically, KMAG’s success in maintaining the South Korean army in the face of subversion and insurrection led directly to the catastrophe that followed in the summer of 1950. Although successful in the short term, the seeds for later disaster were sown as the South Korean army continued to grapple with an underdeveloped military culture that was unprepared to fight a conventional war against a strong conventional enemy.

    In the second phase, which lasted just over twelve months (chapters 5 and 6), KMAG (and the ROKA) were caught unawares and nearly destroyed by the opening moves of the North Korean invasion, fully supported with tanks, aircraft, and artillery—all of Soviet manufacture. KMAG as an organization had to face a reality for which it was unprepared and under-resourced. However, KMAG did succeed at keeping the Korean army in the field, despite horrendous casualties and loss of much valuable equipment. KMAG’s administration of replacement training centers provided the manpower margin Gen. Douglas MacArthur needed to gain surprise and success at Inchon—typically seen as the first turning point of the war. However, many will be surprised to learn that at the battles of Pohang and Tabu-dong, Korean units likely saved Lt. Gen. Walton Walker’s Eighth Army during the desperate days of the Pusan Perimeter (August–September 1950), and made Inchon relevant at all. KMAG advisors, embedded with ROK formations, were among the first Americans to cross the 38th parallel in October. One division, the ROK Third, made phenomenal progress on the east coast—preempting an amphibious landing by the U.S. X Corps—veterans of Inchon—at the northern port of Wonson, while the ROK First Division beat the U.S. First Cavalry Division to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

    Exuberance was short lived, however, as the Chinese intervention in late 1950 revealed the ROKA’s still deep organizational problems. Being continuously pummeled by North Korean and then the Communist Chinese armies, the South Koreans were on the verge of collapse by May 1951, and many wondered if the KMAG investment was worth anything. Even Matthew B. Ridgway (among the most dynamic and optimistic of American commanders) despaired that it would take nothing short of a military miracle to transform the ROKA into a net asset for the UNC.⁷ It was Ridgway’s successor as Eighth Army commander, Lt. Gen. James A. Van Fleet, a veteran of army building in Greece’s civil war, who recognized that the tool to reform the ROKA already existed in his command. Van Fleet fathered a new KMAG, which in the summer of 1951 became Van Fleet’s executive agent responsible to reform, reorganize, reequip, and retrain the military forces of the ROK.

    Reform and renaissance form the underlying narrative of KMAG’s third phase (chapters 7–9). Stalemate may have been the bane of diplomats and generals, but it was a godsend to KMAG and the ROKA. The former, infused with new personnel and focused on training a first-class army, developed a series of Training Commands with military efficiency that in a short time produced Korean army units ready to fight as a more equal partner in the UNC coalition. Indeed, by 1952 the ROKA was already a different army. Korean units fought bitter antiguerrilla campaigns in the cold and unforgiving mountains of southwest and central Korea. These campaigns, of which Operation RATKILLER (December 1951–March 1952) was the most celebrated, were harbingers of things to come regarding the ROKA’s generally improved capabilities in leadership, training, combined arms tactics, and staff work. At the battle of White Horse Mountain (October 5–15, 1952), the ROKA turned a corner in its relative competence and inspired the confidence of its American patrons. For ten days the ROK Ninth Division fought three Chinese divisions to a standstill in an exceptional demonstration of the ROKA’s new fighting spirit. The Ninth Division fought like a contemporary American division, employing infantry, armor, artillery, and combat engineers to support a single coherent tactical plan. Korean officers valiantly led their troops by example, defending, advancing, and counterattacking on order. The division staff not only fought the day’s fight, it also planned the action for the following day. Korean personnel staff officers kept the division’s regiments and battalions at a combat-effective level, and Korean logisticians kept these units supplied with ammunition, weapons, food, and medical supplies. When the meat grinding was done, the Ninth Division was king of the mountain, earning approbation from the American corps and army commanders. Success at White Horse Mountain encouraged a limited offensive, Operation SHOWDOWN, involving one Korean and one American division. The results from SHOWDOWN were tactically disappointing, but more battles throughout the fall and winter of 1952–1953 confirmed the impression that this indeed was a better army.

    Although ROKA expansion made political sense—and nothing short of a large army was going to satisfy Syngman Rhee or get the United States out of Korea—poor combat performance had killed all previous proposals.⁸ Demonstrated improvement in these latter battles now convinced the United States to fund an expansion of the ROKA that would add combat-ready divisions to the ROK’s order of battle just as the finale of a negotiated settlement at Panmunjom was reaching its climax. It was in the last six months of the war that both the Americans and the Chinese received assurances that the ROKA could hold with American support. Amid the necessary political and diplomatic breakthroughs in early 1953, it was this military certitude that made an armistice agreement credible that summer.

    Despite KMAG’s critical historical importance to the Korean War, there have been few objective historical observers of the American advisory efforts.⁹ Unfortunately, KMAG (and its accomplishments) has been largely measured and assessed only by misunderstood public statements about the ROKA’s capabilities either from or attributed to Brig. Gen. William L. (Lynn) Roberts, chief of KMAG from August 1948–June 1950. Historians have typically reported these statements out of context and used them to prove KMAG’s failure to predict or prepare for the North Korean invasion.¹⁰ Even contemporaries (with a touch of defensiveness and a heavy dose of hindsight), such as the army chief of staff Gen. J. Lawton Collins, emphasized their post facto surprise at KMAG’s misplaced enthusiasm for the ROKA. In his memoirs of the Korean War, Collins disingenuously accuses Lynn Roberts of stretching the truth regarding the South’s actual military capabilities, glossing over the fact that his view stemmed from correspondence in the summer of 1949—precisely when South Korean troops were acquitting themselves well against limited North Korean border raids. The devastating invasion the following year was in a category that was completely unforeseen in either Seoul or Washington in 1949.¹¹ As will be shown, Roberts was quite forthright and in step with the American ambassador, John Muccio, when it came to assessing the ROK’s ability to defend itself from a large-scale conventional invasion. For many reasons derived from political calculations and economic constraints, this advice was not acted upon.

    Alternatively, KMAG’s accomplishment is minimized by persistent generalizations about the Korean army such as the utter collapse of the ROKs, ROK divisions continued to crumble, the ROKs, however, continued to disappoint, and [our] fears were confirmed as panic-stricken ROKs came stampeding down the valley.¹² The mistreatment of KMAG and the ROKA critically overlooks the key structural components of the Korean War, which were rooted in the prewar, liberation period. American policy did little to prepare for a shooting war on the Korean peninsula, nor did it account for Korean nationalism and the intense social conflicts and civil war that followed the failure to grant independence to Korea. The confused state of the advisory groups simply mirrored confused policy in Tokyo and Washington. Military occupation authorities had little guidance or preparation to help them navigate the tumult unleashed during the months following liberation from Japanese rule. How American and Korean military forces reacted to these challenges goes far to explain why South Korea was nearly crushed in the summer of 1950 and why its army fared so relatively poorly against both the North Koreans and the Chinese interventions.¹³

    The failure to recognize the decisive contribution of KMAG to the ROKA’s formation and later increased capability misplaces emphasis for the war’s termination, which was on terms generally favorable to the United States (if not to the ROK itself ).¹⁴ For example, just as the English literature of the Korean War tends to skip over the important formative years of 1945 to 1950, histories of the war typically accept the proposition that stalemate on the battlefield in 1951 led to protracted negotiations, which did not make meaningful progress until the spring of 1953—when the death of the Soviet premier, Josef Stalin, permitted Mao Zedong to bow out of a war he no longer wanted.¹⁵ The satisfaction of all other necessary conditions—Chinese flexibility on prisoner-of-war repatriation and the American mini-negotiations to ensure the cooperation of, or at least noninterference from, ROK president Syngman Rhee—simply followed as a matter of course leading inevitably to an armistice. Again, good representative examples are T. R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War and Clay Blair’s The Forgotten War. Both neglect to explain or even consider the significance of military activity in the months between the fall of 1951 and the armistice, conveying the mistaken impression that the fighting war really ended by October 1951. All that followed was simply politics (talking) as a substitution for fighting, with some unexceptional irruptions. Even a scholar as well steeped in Korean War history as Bruce Cumings fails to ascribe much significance to the conditions of stalemate. When military power is addressed, as in Rosemary Foot’s A Substitute for Victory, the emphasis is on American airpower, not the substantial expansion of Korean manpower.¹⁶ Additionally, it is difficult to find a good word about the ROKA generally; Blair’s unseemly haste (36 pages out of 976 to cover the last twenty-four months of the war) also confuses the relationship between the ROKA and Eighth Army, implying that as late as June 1953 the ROKA was still a handicap for the Americans.¹⁷ Other histories of the war tend to follow the same assumption: after talks began at Panmunjom, what happened on the ground was no longer strategically important. Certainly how the Koreans fought did not matter and the armistice was an inevitable anticlimax.¹⁸

    This view is misleading; there was plenty of fighting and contrary to even some recent histories, KMAG and the ROKA were at the center of battle.¹⁹ Whether acknowledged or not, everyone had their eyes on the Koreans. For the ROKA to be strategically relevant, it had to learn to survive tactically. Until then, no armistice would be worth the paper it was printed on. Therefore, KMAG’s comprehensive reform of the Korean army starting in the summer of 1951 was a strategic revolution. A year later the results were dramatic, as ROK Army units fought a number of violent and extensive battles in the fall and winter of 1952–1953. The Koreans were losing their fear of the enemy, and they had fought with confidence and élan, a telling judgment on the ROKA’s improved capabilities as an institution and KMAG’s effectiveness as a training and advisory organization. Both the Americans and the Chinese would have to take the Koreans seriously.

    A final point is that the Korean army’s record, especially in 1952–1953, belies the almost axiomatic condemnation meted out to the ROKA and KMAG (if KMAG figures at all in the narrative). Of the many obituaries written about the ROKA in the early days, perhaps the most damning came from the American Far East commander based in Japan, Douglas MacArthur: the Koreans simply lacked the will to fight. Many more voices would be added to MacArthur’s over the next twelve long months before the tempo of battle let up enough for a comprehensive regimen of retraining and complete restructuring of Korean combat units to fight modern war with appropriate tactics, weapons, organization, and leadership. Such judgments are historically unjustified, yet persistent: From the start of the war and throughout the summer and fall of 1950, Korean units ceased to exist, lacked equipment to fight the North Koreans, or proved unable to hold the lines in their sectors.²⁰ Based on the Koreans’ performance from June 1950 to May 1951, the prevailing view seems to be, If they aren’t Red, they’re yellow. The repetitive collapse of ROK units from June 1950 to May 1951 certainly established an alarming trend, which American and Korean senior officers moved to correct. However, little has been done to investigate and explain the root causes for the ROKA’s erratic performance or the consequences of that performance that led to the ROKA’s redemptive makeover. It is regrettable that few have examined critically how or why the ROKA—particularly its increasing combat effectiveness and professionalism—influenced the armistice, if they even considered that such a linkage existed at all.²¹ In short, they ignore the influence KMAG exerted through the ROKA against the Communists, an influence that conditioned every significant aspect of the conflict, from the progress of the civil war that began in 1948 to the Communist decision to seek unification by force in 1950 to the political negotiations begun in 1951 and to the culmination of stalemate from October 1952 through July 1953.

    Indeed, in the war’s last two months ROK troops, supported by strong American forces on either flank and with plentiful artillery, blunted a substantial Chinese offensive along the Kumsong River.²² This effort was a culmination of marked Korean army improvement since the fall of 1952. The Republic of Korea Army stood up to the greatest Communist offensive in two years, making it clear that military action was no longer profitable. It was a dramatic achievement and testament to the effectiveness not only of KMAG’s own internal reforms, but of the training, education, and expansion programs that influenced the Korean army’s capabilities from corps level down to battalions, companies, and platoons.

    To understand this fundamental sea-change in the military balance, this book will assess the contribution of the American advisory missions to Korea by addressing several questions that have generally remained unanswered in the nearly seventy-year historiography of the war. Who were the advisors and what did they do? How did their influence before June 1950 condition the South Koreans for the military challenges unleashed by the Communist invasion of 1950? What explains the dramatic contrast in the ROKA’s combat performance between the periods 1950–1951 and 1952–1953? How, after so much trial and error, did the ROKA evolve into a competent military force? Who, or what, was responsible for the ROKA’s reformation? A more complete understanding of the answers to these questions not only would help place the Koreans in a critical point in their thirteen centuries of history as a people with a distinct culture, language, and heritage, but it would also reveal a great deal about the origins, conduct, and consequences of military operations in the Korean conflict itself.²³

    When ably led, the Korean soldier fought admirably in spite of his equipment or training. Unfortunately, strong and imaginative leadership was too often lacking, and there were too few opportunities to educate Korean officers with modern leadership and combat practices. As a result of these handicaps, few senior Korean commanders by 1950 had adequate leadership experience or training to cope against a full-fledged conventional invasion. KMAG’s greatest challenge would be to build an experienced and competent officer corps.²⁴

    Therefore, the reformation—or as the prominent Korean War historian Allan Millett has called it, the redemption—of the ROKA, sponsored by KMAG, ought to be considered as one of the central, even defining, features of the war. It ranks with the North Korean invasion, Inchon, the Chinese intervention, and the cease-fire negotiations in importance and influence on the conduct and consequences of the first conflict of the Cold War. It is impossible to appreciate fully the military situation at the Naktong River, the Chongchon River, the Imjin River, or the future demarcation line without understanding the ROKA’s history. Because military capability is a relative quality, the challenge for American commanders was to figure out how best to build up a confident and competent Korean army, given the constraints of economics, politics, and—of course—fighting a tenacious and skillful enemy. Only when the ROKA’s martial capabilities exceeded some invisible baseline would the Eighth Army, and by extension the UNC, be able to stand confidently against the military and political power of its Communist adversaries.

    Eventually KMAG transformed from the pick-up team that General Roberts, KMAG’s first chief, inherited to a two-thousand-man-strong permanent command firmly linked to the Eighth Army commander (after December 1950 successively Matthew Ridgway, James Van Fleet, and Maxwell Taylor), enjoying his full confidence and support. The partnership between KMAG and ROKA produced (among other benefits) additional artillery and expanded fire support on par with an American division; individual and replacement training centers that ensured recruits and officers received at least eight weeks of dedicated military training; a Field Training Command that oversaw the retraining of every ROK division assigned as a combat force; and an army expansion plan that by May 1953 was adding one new and trained infantry division a month (the ROKA would have twenty divisions at the armistice) to the United Nations Command’s ground order of battle.

    By 1953, the burden of the war was already shifting to the ROK Army. During the month of January, the ROKA amassed an impressive array of combat statistics with twelve infantry divisions holding 59 percent of the front line. They dispatched 61 percent of combat patrols and made 80 percent of the contacts against the enemy. At the same time, Chinese and North Korean forces gave the ROKA more attention relative to American and allied troops. Eighty-six percent of enemy probes and attacks, and 69 percent of all enemy artillery directed against the Eighth Army landed on Korean lines. The disproportionate share of enemy attention given to ROK units shows that the Chinese considered them more lucrative targets. The casualty statistics, however, demonstrate that ROK units were not as vulnerable as expected. Korean troops suffered three-fifths of the UNC’s ground casualties, but they were killing, wounding, or capturing more than half of all enemy casualties evaluated by Eighth Army intelligence.²⁵ This trend continued to the end of the war. At last the Koreans were holding their own against the enemy, and they were dishing out severe punishment to Chinese and North Korean troops.

    The officers and men who constituted America’s commitment to a Korean army beginning in 1946 had invented the ROK’s military organization from scratch. The ROKA (and its predecessor, the Korean Constabulary) was their creation. With much effort the Americans gave it identity and nurtured it during a truly forgotten civil war that flared up in April 1948 and was not extinguished until March 1950. They trained it, supported it, and watched it nearly die in the summer of 1950 and again a year later. Over the following twelve months, under new leadership and with a new emphasis to train and mentor, KMAG reformed itself and its protégé. The results were impressive—a holistic administrative strategy from new-soldier recruitment to individual and unit training that made ROK units tougher; a revamped leadership committed to professionalism and learning how to wage modern war; a sixfold expansion carefully managed that resulted in increasing ROK manpower just when the Communists had peaked out; the formation of combat-ready divisions capable of entering the line and slugging it out with veteran Communist units. When the ROKA-KMAG partnership produced a state of military equilibrium capable of withstanding the hammer blows of the Chinese armies, the Communists had to acknowledge the full implications of military deadlock.²⁶

    After nearly two years of frustrated negotiations, UNC and Communist negotiators on June 8, 1953, finally agreed to specific Terms of Reference as a basis for a cease-fire.²⁷ Because Gen. Mark W. Clark, who replaced Ridgway as the UNC commander in chief, considered an agreement practically signed, the magnitude of China’s deliberate offensives against the Koreans defending the Kumsong salient assumed significance beyond the capture or defense of mountainous territory. More hung in the balance than a few tactically important hilltops. The strategic and political consequences of a ROKA failure would have been both militarily and politically catastrophic. This battle, more than any previous, had to demonstrate that the ROKA could play a key role in satisfying the military conditions necessary to bring the Korean War to a close. Its perceived weakness threatened any settlement because it invited further Communist military action in the hope of leveraging further concessions at the negotiating table. The ROKA’s renewed strength in the fall of 1952 suggested that continued military action might be unprofitable, and perhaps even dangerous, for the Communists. The failure of the Communist offensives to break the Republic of Korea Army in the summer of 1953 demonstrated that fact convincingly. There can be no question that the ROKA’s resurgence under the guidance of KMAG changed the context of the military struggle, ensured the survival of Syngman Rhee’s government, and contributed substantially to the conclusion of the armistice that was favorable to the UNC coalition.

    The UNC achieved its political objectives—maintenance of ROK territory (to include modest but psychologically significant gains north of the 38th parallel), voluntary repatriation for war prisoners, and a demarcation line that reflected the military reality on the ground. Clearly, the ROKA’s fighting capability was critical to the UNC’s success in 1953, and KMAG was largely responsible for the implementation of reform of the ROKA that improved its combat capabilities significantly. Therefore, in many respects, KMAG held the key for success or failure of the UNC in Korea. Other factors, events, and institutions certainly played roles influencing the outcome of the war. But, the correlation between KMAG’s reform and the ROKA’s institutional overhaul that resulted in a substantial increase in military capability cannot be overlooked. The two organizations, from the beginning, were linked together, each influenced by and influencing the behavior of the other. This sense of mutual interaction is the key to understanding the ebb and flow of Korean combat performance throughout the period of civil conflict and war. When this interaction worked, both organizations flourished and expanded, innovative techniques for training and leadership were developed, and the results on the battlefield more than justified the expense in talented manpower and valuable equipment the Americans invested in the advisory effort.

    Therefore, success is not too strong a word, despite Mark Clark’s public misgivings about being the first commander in the history of the United States to sign an armistice without accepting the surrender of the enemy.²⁸ In retrospect, it is clear that the Koreans carried a heavy burden for an army and nation so young. The legacy of Japanese colonization, the turmoil of decolonization, factionalism in the army, the unforgiving environment, a competent and tenacious enemy, and political intrigue should have brought the ROKA down. The South Koreans and their American advisors fought guerrillas in the hills and jealous government functionaries, particularly the National Police, in their rear areas; they created from nothing a military structure to raise, equip, train, and deploy units that would be in continuous combat from April 1948 until the armistice five years later. They weathered a conventional invasion followed by the shock of the Chinese intervention. ROK infantry reached the Yalu River. By July 1953 the ROKA was responsible for about two-thirds of the front line in contact with the enemy.

    Gen. James A. Van Fleet, who perhaps has a strong claim to be the father of the modern Korean army and who was the longest-serving commander of the United States Eighth Army, spoke often about the power of the will to win.²⁹ At his direction and with his support KMAG was the midwife to a new Korean army that by 1953 demonstrated its maturity, resiliency, and fighting power—its will to win. These were not insignificant achievements. In fact, they were crucial to enable the UNC to attain all of its principal objectives. The ROKA was by far the most improved army in the war. It proved itself in the most unforgiving test of battle and emerged stronger and more capable. It preserved the territorial integrity of the ROK, repelled Communist aggression, and ensured that no Communist prisoner would be forcibly repatriated to China or North Korea. In this kind of war, then,

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