The United States ended WWII by dropping two nuclear weapons upon the Japanese homeland in 1945. The surrender of the Japanese came soon after, catching The Kremlin and The Pentagon off guard. The invasion of Japan was a certainty to War Plans folks in July and August of ’45 so no plans had been made to “split up the world.” Upon the Japanese surrender, Moe, Larry, Curly, Moeski, Larrychenko, and Curlyscovich began dividing the globe with a pencil.
The Korean Peninsula was divided by an arbitrary, penciled in, International Boundary along the 38th parallel between Communist North Korea and “Democratic” South Korea. (They also split the French Indo-Chinese peninsula along the 17th parallel separating North Vietnam from South Vietnam. This went well, too.) By June of 1950 Kim il Sung, the great Maoist in N. Korea, had decided that it was morally wrong to keep all those poor families separated any longer (NOT) so the North Korean Peoples Army (nKPA) invaded S. Korea on the 25th under the guise of uniting the Korean people. This was to be under Communist rule of course.
As the nKPA streamed down the peninsula, the United States, which had been blissfully sucking-in the sweet victory of WWII and de-militarizing itself, reacted. President Truman called on first Gen. Douglas Macarthur and then the fledgling United Nations to stop the invasion with military might in what was to be called a “Police Action.” That’s important in its ramifications for the next 60 years (Clear and Present Danger Policy) and into perpetuity. The US Army was occupying Japan and loving the spoils while conducting no training with little ammo and used up equipment. After all the US was a strong nuclear power and the vaunted winners of the 2nd War to end all Wars. Therefore, when the nKPA invaded the US reaction was to send one battalion of infantry (TF Smith) to the war in order to show the North Koreans that the WWII winners were now on the battlefield arrayed against them. We just knew they would quit. OOPS!
The nKPA pushed the S.Korean and UN forces as they arrived all the way to the “Pusan Perimeter” forcing Gen MacArthur to conduct an amphibious assault of the peninsula at Inchon thereby cutting off the nKPA. This action allowed the UN allies to successfully counterattack North routing the nKPA and forcing them all the way to the Yalu River, the International Boundary with China. It was now October 1950 and the Chinese attacked in strength pushing UN forces again South of the 38th parallel. The United States had had enough so we began a long road to the current Armistice agreement which was signed in 1953 and has been breached, ignored, violated, spurned as non-existent, et al ad nauseated by North Korea.
And so what have we done in the past, when they axe murdered 2 army officers in Pan mun jom, when they murdered South Korean civilians, fired on us, thumbed their noses at the Armistice agreement, kidnapped the USS Pueblo and MADE US apologize in writing, an apology they read frequently in Armistice meetings????
The exact same thing we will do in the future. Absolutely nothing!! Kelvin= absolute zero. Oh, yeah, we’ll posture and proclaim and say “you better not do that again” and when they bust a nuke on Seoul (because they have no idea what the killing radius of a 20MT warhead is) we’ll whine and cry about the casualties, we’ll be Carteresque and want to buy the bastards a coke, or Obamaesque and have a beer with them.
There has never been a downside for the North Koreans. Never! They do whatever they please and Big Bro’ up North looms over them in protection. Now, Big Bro owns our debt…..uh oh…now we’ll really show them. Perhaps we can loan Kim Jong wrong, or Kim Ding Dong the Lincoln bedroom.