Was the Korean war the only justified war the US has fought in since WWII...

I read it in Hastings' book. It's probably just some legal curiosity in the way this situation differed from all the rest but I don't remember what it was exactly.

No.

Korea had an independent unified government after liberation from the Japanese: the Korean People's Republic, whose basis were People's Committee. Upon landing on the peninsula, General Hodge + the United States used Japanese collaborators to violently dismantle the KPR and the People's Committees (killing around 100,000 people). A unified Korean republic was destroyed by the U.S., Korea was divided by the U.S., and when the northern half crossed the 38th parallel, the U.S. intervened in a civil war and killed 3,000,000 people, including 20-25% of the northern Korean population.

We didn't liberate anybody. US intervention in that conflict between Korean factions fucking destroyed the country, leading to more devastation than in any war we've fought since. At least Vietnam had some infrastructure when we pulled out. In Korea, essentially everything was gone. We dropped more tonnage on that little peninsula than we did in the entire Pacific campaign of WW2.

When the war had gone cold, we left South Korea under indefinite military occupation in a quasi-colonial limbo. Much like Cuba after the Spanish-American War, South Korea was nominally independent but without self-determination. Washington had to approve most serious matters of their foreign and domestic politics. Since 1953, these restrictions have been only partially relaxed.

South Korea developed in spite of, not due to, the US occupation. In 1954, really nothing was left in the country. There was no democracy, no infrastructure, and no real economy. In 1960 over 20% of country's GDP was in prostitution, largely to service the huge population of American servicemen still stationed there. The per capita GDP of South Korea was $79, not only lower than the North at this point but also lower than many African countries. Unlike Europe or Japan after WW2, the US offered no substantial help to rebuilt the county. Because Korea was not industrialized like Germany and Japan has been, it was believed that there was nothing to rebuild.

Korea ended the war in an apocalyptic scenario. Everything was gone. The North was controlled by the warlord Kim il-Sung, who had pivoted toward China and the Soviet Union and promised to equalize Korean society. The South was under the domination of the US military, who saw Korea as nothing more than a useful outpost in mainland Asia.

Syngman Rhee's government was at least as brutal as what exists in North Korea today, massacring hundreds of thousands of dissident protesters from 1950 to 1960. On the island of Jeju, a full 10% of the population were slaughtered. Given the size of Korea, this was proportionally the worst democide of the 20th century. Syngman Rhee killed a higher percentage of his people than either Hitler or Stalin.

Korea only developed more than North Korea because economic planners like Park Cheung-Hee were smarter than their counterparts to the north and had access to far larger markets. His government subverted American prohibitions on state ownership through very clever social democratic policies that developed the industrial sector. Though it was hardly more democratic than that of the disgraced Rhee, Park brought some real and important improvements to the lives of Koreans. Unlike in most third-world countries, the Korean economy did not come to be dominated by foreign corporate interests. Unlike in similar mixed economies like India and Brazil, reliance on family ties prevented corruption.

At the same time, this industrialization led to a neglect of the agricultural sector. Farming was essentially the only industry that developed before Park came to power, but under his plans this part of the economy was considered out of date. Farmers suffered. Inequality skyrocketed in this period, and due to the peculiar nature of South Korean development, a normal middle class never really developed. Park was also no democrat, and brutally suppressed dissent and labor organization. Concentration camps were established to house and torture prisoners. Punitive rape was commonly used as a tactic against female dissidents. Sometimes, the children of political prisoners would also be punished. In 1979, Park would be assassinated by his own secret police. Nobody mourned him. He had served his purpose.

No, it wasn't justified.
>Let me invade your country right after you were invaded by another country

The North Koreans invaded the south completely unprovoked and then whined when the Americans kicked them back across the border. Again, fuck off Kim.

i think every war americas ever been in post wwii has been justified and the correct line of action

cant go south through spain
cant go east through france
it only leaves west and north of australia (antarctica is crown territory)
literally only left asia/siberia /w russia
with a key keystones into the mid east

classic

only other thing they could do is reformat domestically, which they are continually doing as well

pretty good epoch of civ desu senpai

South Korea seems to be more like a military state with the military or intelligence community seizing power when democratic institutions fail and restoring order.

Korea for Koreans. Not Korea for foreigners. Morally they were in the right.

It wasn't unprovoked. They were attempting to oust foreign occupation. Compare this to the Spanish Reconquista, which happened after immeasurably longer period of foreign rule.

Good post, you have any recommendations for sources about this period?

Either books or podcasts preferably

Korea's Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings has a couple chapters on the post-liberation, pre-war period, and there's some more stuff in Asia's Unknown Uprisings, Volume 1 by George Katsiaficas, although that one is pretty openly pushing an angle, which is fine, I guess, if you're okay with that. Supposedly Bruce Cumings' 2 volumes on the 1945-1950 period in Korea are very good, but they're out of print and used copies go for $50 each, so I dunno.

>implying Vietnam wasn't justified

youtube.com/watch?v=7hqYGHZCJwk

Rhee would have done the same thing if the US gave him the support the North was receiving from the USSR. In fact, he fought very actively to keep US troops on the peninsula and get heavy weapons.

No, Kosovo was also justified. We stopped genocide.

Every war the US has fought since WW2 has been morally justifiable from at least some point of view, although some are more morally gray than others.

Arguably the most justified was the Gulf War. Personally, I'm a fan of Iraq 2: Electric Boogaloo as well, although the botched post-game kind of fucked everything up.

>In 1960 over 20% of country's GDP was in prostitution, largely to service the huge population of American servicemen still stationed there.

Fuuuuuuuck, that sounds incredible.

Do not ever post my waifus again.

>The Korean work year

Work culture however is very different even if the official numbers say X hours is the standard working week.

It is well known that the social hierarchical structure in businesses is deferential to the older members and seniority. As such workers will keep on slaving away if seniors are still present well past their 'official' clocking off time.

Good old alternative facts!

Use them to justify anything!

>We essentially liberated the south and allowed it to become the capitalist powerhouse it is today.
It wasn't that straightforward. After the Korean War it was a military junta similar to Latin American countries.
>RHEEEEE Syngman.

This was pre-plastic surgery era mind you and most of the woman would have been stumpy and malnourished from their poor diets.

Besides, average koreans (male and female) even today are pretty damn ugly and this is after having better nutrition, healthcare, and education about fitness.

Don't let their Hallyu wave propaganda deceive you.

I wonder how many Japs are in this thread

These were poor Korean women before Western makeup, clothing, and plastic surgery, raised on rice diets without much time or money to make themselves pretty.

It was but it was the US who was most invested, seeing that they were the ones who were adviceing the South korean goverment and military. The UN forces didn't come into play until after the North Korean advance.

>I'll let another power take over the rest of the world because it doesn't affect my borders
>piss superpower off
>they shut down all trade
>they've conquered you without firing a single shot

>what is a defensive pact

If korea is justifiable then vietnam is justifiable for the exact same reason

>Rhee would have done the same thing if the US gave him the support the North was receiving from the USSR

Which they didn't, unlike the USSR and China, who both supported the invasion and explicitly told Kim to do it (Mao had veto power on the whole thing). This is why the Americans were the justified party: the Communists were objectively hostile aggressors.

South korean basically a slave. North korean actually a slave...really makes you think

You mean Asians work more than south americans who woulda thunk

Anything can be justified from the right perspective.
Justification means dick.

as if you should need any justification for killing commies

>liberated the south
>remained a military dictatorship for the next 30 years

Why do people think it would ever be bad to kill communists?

Because communists want to make the world a better place, and have a less brutal track record than capitalists

Are you actually stupid enough to think that a communist regime would just send resources to groups of people that won't benefit them?

This is the weakest argument I've ever heard from you filthy leftists. The purpose of an economic system isn't to lessen global suffering, it's to ensure the survival and satisfaction of its own nation and the people within.

Saying capitalists are responsible for some brown people starving to death is like saying I'm responsible for a homeless guy dying because I didn't let him into my house and feed him.

Thanks for the rec. heading to a library now and will check out on the way.

I more or less heard that it was bad but never read anything focused on the topic

>Because communists want to make the world a better place
And other political ideologies don't? There's plenty of naively utopian ideologies out there like libertarianism/ancap, but they're not nearly as toxic as communism is.

Commies push for a retardedly unrealistic end goal requiring a totalitarian regime to take over and then willingly dismantle itself. And unlike the utopian ideologies on the right (ancaps and whatnot), which at their worst just give us failed states, Commies time and again give us brutal totalitarian regimes. And before you whine "muh not real communism," actually look into the ideologies of those states. Every "communist" state we've had is supposedly a state in transition to "true" communism that uses that as a foundation to brutally suppress any dissent.

You're blaming every preventable death in a world of varying economic systems on capitalism as if it's somehow in any way similar to the kinds of brutality experienced under communism, when in reality it's the result of general incompetence and inefficiency, which isn't something exclusive to any single economic system. Meanwhile, the deaths attributed to communism have openly malicious motivations:
>murdering a quarter of your country's population to revert it to a primitive state and allow communism to take hold
>forcefully collectivize private properties and murder/purge anyone who doesn't want to give up their livelihood
>destruction of cultural identities to try to remove "counter-revolutionary" influences
>mudering people just because they happened to belong to a certain class

So yeah, you may want the world to be a better place, but that doesn't mean that communism has any merit to it. The Nazis wanted the world to be a better place too, but you don't see people whining about how great of an idea that is do you?

Vietnam war was also justified for the same exact reasons, only it ended badly so "people" try to morally distance themselves from it.

first gulf war?

>vietnam
wew

Bruce Cummings is a worthless shill for Kim. The ROK is a great place and a first world country like it or not, commie apologist scum. Sorry you can't fap about the Great Leader enslaving all of Korea instead of just his half, but for 50 million people thankfully it turned out that way.

>Implying Kim Il Sung wasn't merely a product of Soviet foreign intervention, he was a Major in the Soviet Army and had to be coached in public speaking in Korean.

All that had to happen was for North Vietnam to cease its aggression against its sovereign neighbor and the war would have ended. Instead they invaded repeatedly and basically committed genocide after they won.

Guess that's where Han comes from

nobody cares about your retarded shekels, you divided a nation
if they wish to live in mudhuts then they should have the freedom to do that
disgusting americancer

>Let's impose a catholic ruler on a buddhist country.
>This can't possibly go wrong.

You're making it sound like it was 100% Korea's efforts that they got where they are now while ignoring

1. The Koreans were 100% literate compared to other Asian countries (this is from the Japanese occupation (faculty.washington.edu/sangok/education.PDF)

2. America forced Korea for land distributions

3. Their population got smaller due to a rapidly declining population

Wew

Much like Japan, it's a toss-up of dumbasses who drank too much of the Neo-Confucian Kool Aid and normalfags who just dick around and plan where they're going to drink with the manager.

t. former gook wageslave

If you want to partake in a prostitution with women who do not have access to health care then go ahead. There's still plenty of these types of women you find in your local Detroit area where poverty is the norm.

I'd even say Detroit would be a dream for the Koreans as they were and are much richer than the Korean state of the time.

If we are going to judge wars on the basis that Korean intervention was justified, then Vietnam is just as justified as Korea and in the aim of containment, I'd agree with both of them.

Lol both sides of Korea in the 40's-50's were absolute dogshit

Unironically, Mr. Kim il-Sung was more rational than Mr. Rheeeeeee protestors.

Peace with honor until Watergate fambam.

God damn you are dumb.

Economic systems are global, not national. Capitalism isn't driven by concerns of "out nation" but instead the collective self-interest of property owners.