△ An armistice, but a war has never ended

The three-year Korean War that began in 1950 left a deep scar in the South, with more than 770,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action including 620,000 South Korean soldiers (including police) and 150,000 UN troops, 990,000 civilian casualties, and more than 10 million people displaced. However, the cease-fire meant just a pause in the bombardment, not the end of the war. While the high-intensity bombardment had ceased, low-intensity localized conflicts continued.

From the South Korean perspective, it was time when Kim Il Sung, the leader of a puppet regime that occupied an unclaimed territory, was carrying out various offensives to unify the country under the banner of communism. At the time, South Korea sent its army to the Vietnam War and its economy development just began.

From the North Korean perspective, it was being overtaken by South Korea's economic growth, and its military was being outgunned by the South in terms of conventional weapons. A desperate Kim Il Sung saw a last chance for red reunification if he could stop South Korea from sending more troops to Vietnam, gain a foothold in the South for a guerrilla warfare, and shake up South Korean society while a large South Korean troops were deployed in Vietnam.

Kim Il Sung also calculated that the Vietnam War would prevent the U.S. military from further expanding its presence on the Korean Peninsula, and disruption of South Korean society would create a rift between the U.S. and South Korea through the public's anti-Vietnam War sentiment.

△ The Second Korean War (1966 - 1969), DMZ War

According to page 31 of a highly classified report, "Kim Il Sung's New Military Adventurism," produced by a special team of researchers within the CIA on November 26th, 2008, Kim Il Sung had been preparing for a second Korean War since the Second Workers' Party Congress on October 5th, 1966.

On the day, Kim Il Sung said, "The complete national victory of the Korean Revolution depends largely on the strengthening of the revolutionary capacity in South Korea. In the South, we must develop the revolutionary movement by properly combining various forms and methods of struggles."

In fact, since Kim Il Sung's remarks on October 5, 1966, a simultaneous and widespread guerrilla infiltration of North Korea's special forces including the North Korea's 124th Military Unit had taken place across the DMZ and the East and West Sea that would last for the next three years.

During this period, there were continuous provocations, including the 1968 attack on the Blue House by the Kim Shin-joo's group, the hijacking of the USS Pueblo, the infiltration of the Uljin and Samcheok by 120 armed North Korean guerrillas, the shooting down of the US reconnaissance plane EC-121 in 1969 and countless other conflicts along the DMZ.

In particular, 31 North Korean armed guerrillas (124th Unit) infiltrated up to the Segeomjeong Pass in Jongno-gu, only 300 meters from the Blue House on January 21, 1968, and 120 North Korean armed guerrillas infiltrated the Uljin and Samcheok regions over three days from October 30 to November 1, 1968, shocking the entire nation.

Furthermore, Kim Shin-jo, who was captured in the January 21 incident, shocked the nation when he told a reporter at a press conference the next day, "I came here to pick Park Chung-hee's head!" In the Uljin-Samcheok guerrilla incident, it was revealed that the guerrillas brutally murdered 16 innocent civilians (including a child Lee Seung-bok) with bayonets, making the nation's anti-communist mood reach a fever pitch.

As for the U.S. Army, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea on January 23, 1968 off the coast of Wonsan. One of its 83 crew members was killed and the other 82 were held in North Korea for 11 months before being released. On April 15, 1969, an EC-121M Warning Star, a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft, was shot down by a North Korean Mig fighter jet in the East Sea, and all 31 crew members were killed.

In addition, there had been three years of constant fighting along the DMZ, including an incident where five North Korean guerrillas tried to infiltrate the reed beds of the Imjin River around Yeoncheon City, Gyeonggi-do and were repelled at dawn on September 19, 1968. During the three-year DMZ War, 75 U.S. and 299 South Korean soldiers were killed, and 397 North Korean armed guerrillas killed. In addition, 33 North Korean guerrillas defected to South Korea, and 12 North Korean regular soldiers and 2,462 militants were captured.

Eventually, the three-year DMZ War came to an end after the three crew members of a U.S. military helicopter that had crash-landed in North Korea near the inter-Korean border in October 1969 were released two months later on December 3, 1969, and the 1970s came with a rapprochement between the U.S. and China, including Kissinger's visit to China.

△ It is time for a new definition of the Second Korean War (DMZ War)

The United States does not hesitate to call this three-year DMZ Wart the Second Korean War. The U.S. Department of Defense's Joint Chiefs of Staff report, "The Vietnam War and the United States Armed Forces: 1960-1968," refers to the period of 1966-69 as 'The Second Korean War'.

Major Daniel Bolger (currently a professor in the Department of History at North Carolina State University), a former intelligence officer in the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division (U.S. 2nd Division) responsible for the defense of the western front of the DMZ, who also participated in the fighting, described it as the Second Korean War in his frequent reports to the United Nations and the Security Council.

He also published a paper on the situation at the Command and General Staff College in Pennsylvania on November 19, 1991, calling it the Second Korean War and emphasizing the desperation of the battle.

Currently, the Korean government and the Ministry of Defense are somewhat hesitant to use the word "war" in this context, because it involves veterans' issues, and there are other issues such as huge war compensation payments. However, if the academic expressions and legal language are separated out, it does not seem unreasonable to call it the Second Korean War or the DMZ War.

Dr Moon Kwan Hyun (Deputy Director of Yonhap's K-Culture Planning Group), author of 'Imjin Scout,' a book about the activities of the elite Korean Augmentation to the United States Army (KATUSA) unit of the same name, which fought against North Korea's armed guerrillas during the DMZ War, said, "There is a lack of recognition of those who dedicated and sacrificed themselves for the country at the time. We need more research from a historical perspective, not just from a national compensation perspective."

Lee Jung-hoon, a visiting professor at Myongji University (former journalist for the Dong-A Ilbo) who runs the YouTube channel 'Lee Jung-hoon TV', emphasized that "the Korean War was stopped by President Rhee Syngman, and the DMZ War, the second Korean War, was fought and won by President Park Chung-hee at the crossroads where the nation's existence was at stake. President Park laid the foundation for the current economic development and defense industry by stopping the fierce guerrilla war with North Korea in those three years."

[WikiLeaks Korea = Huh Chan Young]

hcy1113@wikileaks-kr.org

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