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Originally posted by Dr. Love
I don't see why we should be the only ones to do this? What is preventing other countries in the world from stepping in and dealing with it?
I don't see why we should be the only ones to do this? What is preventing other countries in the world from stepping in and dealing with it?
If things go bad for South Korea it could get very bad.
Canada retains a Korean War legacy: a pledge to defend South Korea
John Ward
Canadian Press
Thursday, October 12, 2006
OTTAWA (CP) - As a nuclear crisis brews on the Korean peninsula, few Canadians know that Canada retains a legacy from two generations ago: a pledge to defend South Korea.
It's a remnant of another Korean crisis five decades ago, which drew Canada into a bitter war, cost 10 times the casualties recorded so far in Afghanistan and produced a Canadian promise to return if necessary. "We still have a commitment to South Korea," says Jim Fergusson, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.
"When the war wound down and the Panmunjon agreement was signed, Canada along with the other UN countries that had participated committed to the defence of South Korea.
"There's an opt-out clause in it, but technically we committed that we would come to the defence of South Korea."
Canada has never opted out of that promise.
The three-year Korean War began in June 1950, when the Russian-trained and equipped North Korean army slashed across the 38th parallel, the arbitrary boundary drawn across the peninsula at end of the Second World War.
The North, led by Kim Il Sung, father of the present-day dictator Kim Jong Il, calculated he could overrun the south before anyone could do anything about it. He was wrong.
The U.S. responded by sending troops from occupation duty in Japan to Korea. Washington also won agreement from the fledgling United Nations to send a multinational force to Korea.
Canada promised a brigade of about 3,000 soldiers.
The initial North Korean drive pushed the Americans and the remnants of the South Korean army into an enclave around the southern port of Pusan. It looked like a rout.
By mid-autumn, though, the war was turned upside-down by an American amphibious landing at Inchon, half-way up the east coast. The North Koreans were cut off and fled back across the 38th parallel, with the Americans and a few UN contingents in pursuit.
The war looked to be over when China intervened in late fall, with thousands of soldiers who drove the Americans and their allies well south of the parallel.
The first Canadians arrived in December. More followed in the spring.
Two more years of fighting followed, before peace talks at the village of Panmunjon produced a truce and a return to the pre-war boundaries.
"Through that agreement, we have some responsibility for the independence of South Korea," said David Bercuson, a historian from the University of Calgary and author of a major history of Canada's role in the war.
He said Korean had major echoes in the politics of the Cold War.
"Around the western world, especially in the NATO countries, this was seen as a direct challenge to NATO and people began to think what would the consequences be of a Communist victory in Korea," he said.
"You begin to see in in Britain, the United States, Canada and elsewhere massive increases in defence budgets because they saw Korea as a direct challenge to NATO."
Historian Jack Granatstein, in his book "Canada's Army", says the Canadian cabinet tripled the defence budget overnight in December 1950, partly in response to Korea and partly to meet NATO responsibilities. By 1953, the defence budget took seven per cent of GDP.
Fergusson finds parallels to modern-day Afghanistan.
"We came to the defence of South Korea for the same reasons we are going to the aid of Afghanistan," he said.
"We never used the terms like development or building a new nation and things like that but that's basically what we were doing then."
"Korea became a success story," said Granatstein. "From being horribly impoverished, much like Afghanistan, it turned into a giant economic power.
"Had that war not been fought, I suppose South Korea would be pretty much the same as North Korea: a dictatorship where people are literally starving and where the state spends money on nuclear weapons instead of any effort to feed its people."
Korea, though, came at a much higher cost. Four years in Afghanistan have cost the lives of 40 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat. Two and half years in Korea left 516 Canadians dead and more than 1,000 wounded.
© The Canadian Press 2006
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