In the early morning hours of June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the DMZ to invade South Korea, marking the start of the Korean War.
To read more about the start of the war, click here.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
“First!” — Kim Il Sung, 6/25/50
Was there a DMZ to cross on June 25, 1950?
There was the 38th parallel. The DMZ came after the armistice in 1953.
“Was there a DMZ to cross on June 25, 1950?”
That was pretty much South Korea as a whole. In order to not antagonize the Norks and new best buddies the Russians we didn’t arm South Korea well at all considering the ammount of hardware we had sitting around Asia.
No tanks, no anti-tank weapons, a hand full of observation aircraft, a load of outdated and mixed caliber artillery, limited mortars and mixed small arms primarily of obsolete Japanese varities.
The Norks had no such problems from Uncle Stalin: 400 brand new T-34 tanks, probably the best in the world at the time, attack aircraft, hundreds of modern artillery pieces and training from excellent instructors…of course Bruce Cummings will have you know the South invaded north….or at the very least “forced” the North to defend itself.
Hamilton, I’ve heard the number of T-34s put at 120 and 150 but never anywhere as high as 400. Where did you read that?
YBS: Mostly anecdotal. I know that the North Korean Army order of Battle had the 105th Armored Division (107, 109, 203rd Armored Bdes), along with the 16th and 17th Armored Brigades. On the Soviet model a company was 10 tanks (3plts,+CO), Bn was 31 tanks (3COs+BN) and a Bde was 94 or so.
With 5 Brigades of Armor that would push you nearly into 460+ tanks. I have seen many T-34 pictures both from NK and UNC sources but not from other sources. 120 or 150 sounds low, 400 might be too high depending on if they were at full strength or waiting for equipment to grow to full strength.
I wasn’t trying to be sensational with “400 tanks” but a “crap load” would have been accurate. Without good AT weapons anything more than 1 T-34 supported by artillery and infantry is a very bad day.
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/tanks-and-tankers-in-korea-1950-51.htm/2
According to this article they lost 230 by October so it must have been more. Perhaps 120 is how many crossed the line initially.
YBS,
400 might have been the end of war total, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
Regardless the T-34 was an excellent tank. With no anti-tank weapons at hand it had to be terrifying for the South Korean Soldiers.
I recently visited one of the tunnels under the DMZ. Pretty impressive effort by the Norks, who of course claim it is S. Korea that is digging the tunnel. One wonders how many undiscovered tunnels there are still out there.
@commander wouldn’t it be funny if defectors were to use those tunnels. Not that it will happen and it won’t seeing that it is going under the DMZ.
There was a proposal before the Russo-Japanese war to demarcate the sphere of influence with the 38th parallel between Russia and Japan. The guys that actually marked the occupation zone after WWII in Korea didn’t know this but they said had they known this fact they wouldn’t have used the 38th parallel as the border.
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