COLD WAR: KOREA, 1949-1953 {PART 5 OF 24} (TV)
Summary
The fifth in this twenty-four-part documentary series examining the events of the Cold War, from 1917 to the early 1990s. This series consists of interviews and archival footage, accompanied by historical narration by Kenneth Branagh. This episode chronicles the Korean War from 1949 to 1953. With the end of World War II came the end of Japanese occupation of Korea, and Korea was divided between the United States and the Soviet Union. After U.S. and Soviet troops withdrew, Syngman Rhee was established as president in the Western influenced South, Kim Il Sung was established as leader of the communist North, and both leaders began to think of a united Korea. As Colonel Peter Simchenkov of the Soviet High Command explains, Sung needed the support of the Soviet Union in order to unify Korea under communist leadership. Yan Von Sik of the North Korean army describes the war as started to liberate the South from the western world for the good of Korea. Joseph Stalin eventually authorized Sung's invasion of South Korea. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Lucius Battle recalls the alarmed reactions in the United States when North Korea invaded the South, and Han Pyo Wook of the South Korean Embassy in Washington remembers that President Rhee called him asking for U.S. support. Niles Bond of the U.S. State Department notes that because the North Korean aggression relied on Soviet aid, the invasion was seen in the direct context of the Cold War. After a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, General Douglas MacArthur led UN troops into what was expected to be an easily won war. However, as General Paik Sun Yup of the South Korean Army explains, the Communists had already captured the Southern capital of Seoul, and the Southerners were in retreat. In fact, as North Korean nurse Kim Ren Ok recalls, the Northerners expected to win the war any day. South Korean marine Chea Yong Chu describes the sea invasion of the North by American and South Korean marines, planned by MacArthur when the South was near defeat in the land war. Lee Jae Jeon of the South Korean army and Lieutenant Colonel Charles Bussey state that when the UN troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel, they anticipated victory, not expecting that China would become involved. Shi Zhe of the Beijing Foreign Ministry explains that China refused to tolerate a potentially aggressive U.S.-led force near the Chinese border. Stalin asked Mao Zedong to contribute troops to North Korea, and UN forces were soon overpowered. Although some officials talked of employing the atomic bomb, President Harry Truman knew that the U.S. could no longer use the bomb without fear of retaliation from the Soviet Union, which had by then tested its own bomb. Senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) and Soviet pilot Yevgeni Pepeliayev discuss the air war, and American prisoner of war "Doc" Frazier recalls the deplorable conditions in the prisons. As the war wore on with no end in sight, extensive bombing killed thousands of civilians and destroyed the countryside while prisoners of war suffered. Armistice talks began in July 1951, but solutions came slowly. Meanwhile, as army officer's wife Florence Galing explains, Americans took little interest in the Korean War and received minimal information about the conflict. Ten San Kin, a Soviet advisor to North Korea, states that a stalemate was finally reached, and the UN and North Korea called a halt to hostilities and began an exchange of prisoners in July 1953. Although Nikolai Fedorenko of the Soviet Foreign Ministry interprets the war as a defeat for communism, Chan Boliang of the Chinese People's Volunteers states that the war reflected a new and powerful People's Republic of China. Commercials deleted.
Cataloging of this program was possible by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, 1999.
This selection from the Alan Gerry Cable Collection has been made available by the Gerry Foundation, Inc.
Details
- NETWORK: CNN
- DATE: October 25, 1998 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:46:35
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:58758
- GENRE: Public Affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Cold War; Korea - History - 1948-1960; Korean War; She Made It Collection (Pat Mitchell)
- SERIES RUN: CNN - TV series, 1998-1999
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Pat Mitchell … Executive Producer
- Jeremy Isaacs … Executive Producer
- Vivian Schiller … Senior Producer
- Martin Smith … Series Producer
- Taylor Downing … Producer, Writer
- Isobel Hinshelwood … Series Associate Producer
- Alison McAllan … Series Associate Producer
- Gillian Widdicombe … Production Executive
- Ted Turner … Series Concept by
- Joe Zak … Editor
- Svetlana Palmer … Research
- Lee Deuk-Sung … Research
- Stephen Hallett … Research
- Steve Bergson … Film Research
- Carl Davis … Music by
- Kenneth Branagh … Narrator
- Lucius Battle
- Niles Bond
- Charles Bussey
- Chan Boliang
- Chea Yong Chu
- Nikolai Fedorenko
- Doc Frazier
- Florence Galing
- John Glenn
- Han Pyo Wook
- Kim Il Sung
- Kim Ren Oh
- Lee Jae Jeon
- Douglas MacArthur
- Mao Zedong
- Paik Sun Yup
- Yevgeni Pepeliayev
- Shi Zhe
- Peter Simchenkov
- Joseph Stalin
- Syngman Rhee
- Ten San Kin
- Harry S. Truman
- Yan Von Sik