Word came to Washington late on 24 June 1950 that North Korean forces were moving across the 38th parallel into South Korea. President Harry Truman authorized Secretary of State Dean Acheson to secure a United Nations Security Council resolution, passed the next day, urging North Korea to withdraw from South Korea.
The President was determined to intervene. He long held that Korea was the "ideological battleground" of Asia, and during 1947-1950 his administration had provided more aid to South Korea than to Greece under the Truman Doctrine—despite the military consensus that Korea lay outside the U.S. defense perimeter. The President blamed Soviet-inspired aggression for the start of the war, although it arose chiefly from bitter conflict between two rival regimes.1
Truman immediately likened "communist" action in Korea to that of fascist leaders in the 1930s. On 26 June, he told White House aide George Elsey that "Korea is the Greece of the Far East" and that "if we let Korea down, the Soviets will keep right on going and swallow up one piece of Asia after another."2
The President quickly put his stamp of firmness on U.S. policy. He immediately allowed General Douglas MacArthur to send military supplies and a survey team to Korea, warned North Korea that its lawless action would not be tolerated, and on 26 June authorized full air, naval, and other support for South Korean forces. The President also approved moving the Seventh Fleet directly into the Taiwan Strait to preclude an attack by the People's Republic of China (PRC). His advisors, however, dissuaded him from using Jiang Jieshi's [Chiang Kai-Shek's] Guomindang troops on Taiwan to fight in Korea.
On 27 June, the Truman administration secured a resolution from the Security Council—with the Soviets absent—urging U.N. members to assist South Korea to repel North Korea's attack and establish regional peace and security. Two days later, Truman charged that a "bunch of bandits" had attacked South Korea and stated that the United States was engaged in a U.N.-sanctioned "police action"—imagery that matched his view of the United States as a world "sheriff" and his contention that "we are not at war."3
On 30 June, the President authorized MacArthur to deploy two U.S. divisions (as part of a larger buildup) and ordered the Navy to blockade North Korea. The language Truman used to inform Congress and the public, however, obscured the size and scope of the U.S. action. Further, Truman's refusal to seek Congress's sanction for use of U.S. troops abroad opened him up to later charges of creating "Truman's War."
Truman publicly escalated a police action in Korea into a major issue of U.S. security and world peace. He decided in early September, even before South Korea was restored, to send MacArthur's troops north of the 38th parallel to unify Korea by military means. This decision, which rested in part on Truman's biblical belief that "punishment always followed transgression," changed the original objective of the war and transformed "containment" into "liberation." The President also ignored advice that the PRC and Soviet Union would view the creation of an anti-communist regime on their borders as a threat, and he disregarded PRC war warnings in October as "blackmail."4
Full-scale PRC intervention in Korea in November forced a bitter retreat southward of U.N. forces and prompted Truman's hasty remark that use of the atomic bomb always was under consideration. By early 1951 he was determined to end the war, but he precluded an early settlement by refusing to negotiate with the PRC prior to a cease-fire and by insisting that the United Nations brand the PRC an "aggressor." MacArthur's provocative demand that the PRC surrender to him or face destruction, and his statement that "there is no substitute for victory," forced the President to fire his larger-than-life general in April. This was a courageous—but politically costly—action, and the Truman administration was partly to blame for not having exercised more control over MacArthur earlier.
Further, Truman's diplomacy obstructed a formal armistice during 1951-1952, first by refusing the standard military practice and the 1949 Geneva Convention of compulsory exchange of all POWs, and then by insisting on voluntary POW repatriation only. To Truman's surprise, the fighting in Korea continued until his successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, gained a compromise in July 1953 whereby a neutral nations' commission took custody of POWs reluctant to be repatriated and the pre-war boundary between North and South Korea was restored.
Truman's decision to intervene in the Korean War preserved South Korea's independence and enhanced the United Nations' collective security prestige. At the same time, however, he overreached by going north of the 38th parallel and set the stage for costly, long-term commitments to South Korea and Taiwan, while U.S.-PRC relations were embittered for a generation to come.
1. Edwin W. Pauley to Harry S. Truman, 22 June 1946, and Truman to Pauley, 16 July 1946, U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1971), VIII, pp. 706-709, 713-714.
2. Elsey Notes for 26 and 27 June 1950, Box 71, George M. Elsey Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO.
3. "Bunch of bandits" in entry for 29 June 1950, Eben A. Ayers Diary, Box 26, Eben A. Ayers Papers, Harry S. Truman Library; "Police action" in Truman News Conference, 29 June 1950, The Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman (Washington, DC: GPO, 1965), VI, pp. 502-506.
4. "Punishment always followed transgression" in The Autobiography of Harry S. Truman, Robert H. Ferrell, editor (Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press, 1980), p. 33; "Blackmail" in The Memoirs of Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), pp. 462-463.