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A war broke out in Korea on June 25 1950. Then who ignited the war and why?

Outcome of ambition for world domination

After the Second World War, the US imperialists, who had long dreamed of world domination, tried to start the “crusade” for realizing it in the Asian continent, especially the Korean peninsula.

The peninsula was the gateway to the Asian continent, directly linked with China and the former Soviet Union.

At that time, MacArthur, commander of the US forces in the Far East, regarded the DPRK as a “military outpost with an infinite value” and planned to make it a “crossing bridge” for the aggression of the continent. His assertion was supported by Truman, the then president of the United States, and it was enforced as a policy.

The US imperialists paid special attention to the war planning and directed all efforts to it. The ABC plan, which envisaged the occupation of the DPRK, Manchuria and Siberia, was worked out and a military action programme was drawn up for plan A. The plan was to form two operational zones by concentrating the US forces and 10 divisions of the ROK army along the 38th parallel, to advance the units on the western front towards Pyongyang and the units on the eastern front towards Yangdok and Wonsan and conduct landing operations in the northern parts of Pyongyang and Wonsan, and thus occupy the DPRK.

The plan was decided unanimously by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in January 1950 and was finally completed as the official plan for provoking the Korean war “AL-3” after adding such contents that the US forces would be committed to battle as soon as the war was launched. It was discussed and ratified at the US National Security Council in April that year.

When he visited the ROK as a special envoy of the US president on the eve of the war, Dulles said that the DPRK is like a “dagger” for cutting off the “meat” called Asia. This openly revealed that the US imperialists had to occupy the DPRK in order to invade and dominate Asia.

Way out of politico-economic crisis

The Korean war was urgently needed by the US to tide over the political and economic crisis that was sweeping through the country at that time.

In the latter half of 1949, two events took place to jolt the US: the Soviet Union’s breaking of the US’ monopoly of nuclear weapons and the declaration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

These events extremely perturbed the US imperialists who were trying to dominate the whole world under the signboard of American-style “democracy”.

The economic crisis sweeping through the US and the huge army of unemployed people also posed serious threats to the Truman administration. The US economy which had been highly militarized during the Second World War was driven into a serious crisis with the end of the war. The fattened munitions monopolies were panic-stricken at their failure to find the market for the overproduced military hardware.

In 1949, the industrial output value was reduced by 15 percent and the profits from monopolistic capital by 16 percent as compared with the previous year.

This was truly a fatal blow to Truman who was seeking re-election in the 1952 presidential election.

The US ruling class sought a way out in the Korean war.

Recalling that time, Van Fleet confessed that Korea was a blessing and Korea had to be there, whether on this land or anywhere else in the world.

As regards the fact that US President Truman provoked the Korean war in 1950, an American book said that the difficulties of the Truman administration were solved by the Korean war which started on June 25 1950 and, taking advantage of the war, Truman was able to increase the US defense spending from US$13 billion in the 1950 fiscal year to US$50.4 billion in the 1953 fiscal year and to put pressure on NATO member states to increase their military spending on a large scale. It stressed that, in a nutshell, the Korean war enabled the rearmament of the US.