Essays

Twenty-five years ago this summer, the guns finally fell silent in Korea, ending a bitter 37-month "limited war" that cost 34,000 American lives and engendered fierce political controversy at home. America's Korea veterans are now well into middle age, their efforts against the Chinese and North Korean invaders sel- dom remembered. But they succeeded in repelling Communist aggression, and the shock of that aggression changed modern American attitudes toward national security. The war's...

KOREA
The Korean War had an important influence on American politics and culture-less as a force that produced radical de- partures than as a force that accelerated and heightened proc- esses already underway.
Both the New Deal and World War I1 unsettled traditional notions about the size and the character of American govern- ment. As a result, during the years following World War I1 American leaders were involved in negotiating a series of ar- rangements to reconcile competing claims to the...

KOREA
sent in Cold War America.*
Finally, and more generally, the war slowed-if it did not halt entirely-domestic reform on the part of the Truman ad- ministration, while further strengthening conservative forces. Truman was forced to abandon the remnants of the Fair Deal and to depend more and more on conservatives, both in Con- gress, where he was now forced to seek accommodation with the southern Democrats, and within his own administration. The emasculation of the Housing Act of 1949 and...

by Ralph N.Clough
When the artillery finally stopped firing on July 27, 1953, Korea was a devastated land. The mountains and rice paddies were scarred by trenches and shell holes. Entire villages were erased. Seoul and Pyongyang were partly in ruins. And among the people, the trauma had been profound. The South Koreans had sustained 313,000 battle casualties; more than a million civilians had lost their lives; 2.5 million refugees had fled south from North Korea; and the economy was at a standstill....