hankyoreh

By Han Sung-dong, senior reporter

Growing up, you heard it called the "Yugio" (the "six two five," for June 25, the day the war broke out), the "Yugio Sabyeon" (the "June 25 upheaval), and the "Hanguk Dongnan" (the "Korean disturbance"). These days, it's often called the "Hanguk Jeonjaeng" (the "Korean War"). In Japan they still call it the "Joseon Jeonjaeng" (the "Korean War"), using the name Japan often uses for Korea, and in the West it seems they call it the "Korean War" or the "Korean Conflict." One of the parties on the other side, North Korea, calls it the "Joseon Haebang Jeonjaeng (the "war to liberate Korea"), while in China they call it the "Hangmi Wonjo Jeonjaeng", the "war against America and in support of (North) Korea."

The reason everyone has a different name for it is because the war still is not over, making it hard for objective assessment, and because all the parties that fought in the war insist on using names that are advantageous to them. It truly was a war with a lot of interested parties.

Zhu Jianrong (Japanese name "Syukenei"), author of a book in Japanese by the title Mao Zedong's Korean War, was born in 1957 in Shanghai and educated at East China Normal University and the Shanghai Institute for International Studies before going to Japan in 1986, where he is now a professor at Toyo Gakuen University. According to Zhu, the war that took place on the Korean peninsula should be called the "Sino-American War."

By mid October of 1950, a month after the Incheon Landing by UN forces turned the war around, the North Korean military had been pushed back to the point it had only four divisions left. It was not the North Korean military that pushed back 130,000 UN forces advancing northward, it was the close to 300,000 members of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army. The West estimated that during the three years China fought in the war some five million Chinese troops were involved.

After the 1990s, China revealed that 25 infantry corps (79 divisions) and 16 artillery divisions for a total of between well over two million and up to three. Some 600,000 Chinese civilians assisted from behind the lines on the peninsula. That made it the largest overseas deployment by any nation after World War II. The West estimates that between 600,000 and 900,000 Chinese died or were injured. China says the number was 366,000, with 133,000 dead.

Douglas MacArthur wanted to use atomic bombs on Manchuria and parts of the Korean peninsula and send 500,000 Kuomintang forces into China and turn the war around, but he failed to get his way. Mao saw U.S. involvement in the Korean War as something that was ultimately about an invasion of China, and jumped for joy when MacArthur was dismissed.

His removal meant the U.S. had no immediate intention of invading China. Korea called the atrocities committed on the Korean peninsula about 400 years ago the "Imjin Waeran" and "Jeongyu Jaeran," but Japan called it the "Bunroku no Eki" or "Keichyo no Eki." Japan made off with between 50,000 and 60,000 Koreans as well as plenty of books and ceramic and printing technology, making for a richer modernization, while Korea was left in ruins. Ming China sent a large army to fight then, too, and called it the "war against Japan and in support of Korea."

Twice China has stopped large enemy forces that crossed the sea, and on the Korean peninsula, not even its own territory. History after the Sino-Japanese war of 1894 proves that China faces a crisis when it fails to do so.

The biggest victims of these wars were, of course, the people living on the Korean peninsula. Millions died and the land was thoroughly in ruins. The Jeongyu Jaeran began after Toyotomi Hideyoshi asked Ming for part of the southern peninsula and was rejected, but 400 years later the peninsula was divided into North and South by foreign powers. The army of one of those countries that plotted the division still occupies a spot in the middle of Seoul, perhaps as if mock those who were unable to maintain hold onto their own land?