the North Koreans, by armed attack upon the Republic of Korea, have denied the reality of any such line.1

The two sides had been clashing across the Parallel for several years. What happened on that fateful day in June could thus be regarded as no more than the escalation of an ongoing civil war. The North Korean Government has claimed that in 1949 alone, the South Korean army or police perpetrated 2,617 armed incursions into the North to carry out murder, kidnapping, pillage and arson for the purpose of causing social disorder and unrest, as well as to increase the combat capabilities of the invaders. At times, stated the Pyongyang government, thousands of soldiers were involved in a single battle with many casualties resulting.2

A State Department official, Ambassador-at-large Philip C. Jessup, speaking in April 1950, put it this way:

There is constant fighting between the South Korean Army and bands that infiltrate the country from the North. There are very real battles, involving perhaps one or two thousand men. When you go to this boundary, as I did ... you see troop movements, fortifications, and prisoners of war.3

Seen in this context, the question of who fired the first shot on 25 June 1950 takes on a much reduced air of significance. As it is, the North Korean version of events is that their invasion was provoked by two days of bombardment by the South Koreans, on the 23rd and 24th, followed by a surprise South Korean attack across the border on the 25th against the western town of Haeju and other places. Announcement of the Southern attack was broadcast over the Norths radio later in the morning of the 25th.

Contrary to general belief at the time, no United Nations group-neither the UN Military Observer Group in the field nor the UN Commission on Korea in Seoul- witnessed, or claimed to have witnessed, the outbreak of hostilities. The Observer Groups field trip along the Parallel ended on 23 June. Its statements about what took place afterward are either speculation or based on information received from the South Korean government or the US military.

Moreover, early in the morning of the 26th, the South Korean Office of Public Information announced that Southern forces had indeed captured the North Korean town of Haeju. The announcement stated that the attack had occurred that same morning, but an American military status report as of nightfall on the 25th notes that all Southern territory west of the Imjin River had been lost to a depth of at least three miles inside the border except in the area of the Haeju counter attack .

In either case, such a military victory on the part of the Southern forces is extremely difficult to reconcile with the official Western account, maintained to this day, that has the North Korean army sweeping south in a devastating surprise attack, taking control of everything that lay before it, and forcing South Korean troops to evacuate further south.

Subsequently, the South Korean government denied that its capture of Haeju had actually taken place, blaming the original announcement, apparently, on an exaggerating mili-taty officer. One historian has ascribed the allegedly incorrect announcement to an error due to poor communications, plus an attempt to stiffen South Korean resistance by claiming a victory . Whatever actually lay behind the announcement, it is evident that very little reliance, if any, can be placed upon statements made by the South Korean government concerning the start of the war.4

There were, in fact, reports in the Western press of the attack on Haeju which made no mention of the South Korean governments announcement, and which appear to be independent confirmations of the event. The London Daily Herald, in its issue of

26 June, stated that American military observers said the Southern forces had made a successful relieving counter-attack near the west coast, penetrated five miles into Northern territory and seized the town of Haeju. This was echoed in The Guardian of London the same day: American officials confirmed that the Southern troops had captured Haeju.

Similarly, the New York Herald Tribune reported, also on the 26th, that South Korean troops drove across the 38th Parallel, which forms the frontier, to capture the manufacturing town of Haeju, just north of the line. The Republican troops captured quantities of equipment. None of the accounts specified just when the attack took place.

On the 25th, American writer John Gunther was in Japan preparing his biography of General Douglas MacArthur. As he recounts in the book, he was playing tourist in the town of Nikko with two important members of the American occupation, when one of these was called unexpectedly to the telephone. He came back and whispered, A big story has just broken. The South Koreans have attacked North Korea! That evening, Gunther and his party returned to Tokyo where Several officers met us at the station to tell us correctly and with much amplification what had happened ... there was no doubt whatever that North Korea was the aggressor.

And the telephone call? Gunther explains: The message may have been garbled in transmission. Nobody knew anything much at headquarters the first few hours, and probably people were taken in by the blatant, corrosive lies of the North Korean radio. 5 There is something a little incongruous about the picture of American military and diplomatic personnel, practicing anti-communists each one, being taken in on so important a matter by communist lies-blatant ones no less.

The head of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, had often expressed his desire and readiness to compel the unification of Korea by force. On 26 June the New York Times reminded its readers that on a number of occasions, Dr. Rhee has indicated that his army would have taken the offensive if Washington had given the consent. The newspaper noted also that before the war began: The warlike talk strangely [had] almost all come from South Korean leaders.

Rhee may have had good reason for provoking a full-scale war apart from the issue of unification. On 30 May, elections for the National Assembly were held in the South in which Rhees party suffered a heavy setback and lost control of the assembly. Like countless statesmen before and after him, Rhee may have decided to play the war card to rally support for his shaky rule. A labor adviser attached to the American aid mission in South Korea, Stanley Earl, resigned in July, expressing the opinion that the South Korean government was an oppressive regime which did very little to help the people and that an internal South Korean rebellion against the Rhee Government would have occurred if the forces of North Korea had not invaded .6

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, in his reminiscences, makes it plain that the North Koreans had contemplated an invasion of the South for some time and he reports their actual invasion without any mention of provocation on that day. This would seem to put that particular question to rest. However, Khrushchevs chapter on Korea is a wholly superficial account. It is not a serious work of history, nor was it intended to be. As he himself states:

My memories of the Korean War are unavoidably sketchy. (He did not become Soviet leader until after the war was over.) His chapter contains no discussion of any of the previous fighting across the border, nothing of Rhees belligerent statements, nothing at all even of the Soviet Unions crucial absence from the UN which, as we shall see, allowed the so-called United Nations Army to be formed and

intervene in the conflict. Moreover, his reminiscences, as published, are an edited and condensed version of the tapes he made. A study based on a comparison between the Russian-language transcription of the tapes and the published English-language book reveals that some of Khrushchevs memories about Korea were indeed sketchy, but that the book fails to bring this out. For example, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung met with Stalin to discuss Kims desire to prod South Korea with the point of a bayonet . The book then states unambiguously: Kim went home and then returned to Moscow when he had worked everything out. In the transcript, however, Khrushchev says: In my opinion, either the date of his return was set, or he was to inform us as soon as he finished preparing all of his ideas. Then, I dont remember in which month or year, Kim Il-sung came and related his plan to Stalin (emphasis added).7

On 26 June, the United States presented a resolution before the UN Security Council condemning North Korea for its unprovoked aggression . The resolution was approved, although there were arguments that this was a fight between Koreans and should be treated as a civil war, and a suggestion from the Egyptian delegate that the word unprovoked should be dropped in view of the longstanding hostilities between the two Koreas.8

Yugoslavia insisted as well that there seemed to be lack of precise information that could enable the Council to pin responsibility , and proposed that North Korea be invited to present its side of the story.9 This was not done. (Three months later, the Soviet foreign minister put forward a motion that the UN hear representatives from both sides. This, too, was voted down, by a margin of 46 to 6, because of North Koreas aggression , and it was decided to extend an invitation to South Korea alone.)10

On the 27th, the Security Council recommended that members of the United Nations furnish assistance to South Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack . President Truman had already ordered the US Navy and Air Force into combat by this time, thus presenting the Council with a fait accompli,11 a tactic the US was to repeat several times before the war came to an end. The Council made its historic decision with the barest of information available to it, and all of it derived from and selected by only one side of the conflict. This was, as journalist I.F. Stone put it, neither honorable nor wise .

It should be kept in mind that in 1950 the United Nations was in no way a neutral or balanced organization. The great majority of members were nations very dependent upon the United States for economic recovery or development. There was no Third World bloc which years later pursued a UN policy much more independent of the United States. And only four countries of the Soviet bloc were members at the time, none on the Security Council.12

Neither could UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie, of Norway, be regarded as neutral in the midst of cold war controversy. In his memoirs, he makes it remarkably clear that he was no objective outsider. His chapters on the Korean War are pure knee-reflex anti-communism and reveal his maneuvering on the issue.13 In 1949, it was later disclosed, Lie had entered into a secret agreement with the US State Department to dismiss from UN employment individuals whom Washington regarded as having questionable political leanings.14

The adoption of these resolutions by the Security Council was possible only because the Soviet Union was absent from the proceedings due to its boycott of the United Nations over the refusal to seat Communist China in place of Taiwan. If the Russians had been present, they undoubtedly would have vetoed the resolutions. Their absence has always posed an awkward problem for those who insist that the Russians were behind the North Korean invasion. One of the most common explanations offered