The 1950 North Korean invasion of South Korea

The North Korean invasion of South Korea in June of 1950 caught the United States and the South Koreans themselves wholly by surprise. The retreat by the allied forces (which became United Nations forces when the Soviets walked out of the UN Security Council and were thus unable to veto intervention) quickly became a rout. The South Korean capital of Seoul fell within days, and within a few weeks, the UN forces had been driven into a small salient around Pusan, at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. The Korean War, so recently begun, appeared nearly lost.

Instead, the momentum of the war was to be turned around at a stroke. On September 15, 1950, U.N. troops (mostly Americans) under General Douglas MacArthur staged a massive amphibious landing at Inchon, the port of Seoul. Effective North Korean resistance collapsed in a day, and the main North Korean army fighting around Pusan suddenly found itself cut off from the rear. It quickly disintegrated. The war so nearly lost was, instead, very nearly won.

More wild swings of fortune were to come in Korea, but the Inchon landing stands as a classic instance of strategic annihilation. It has regularly been compared to the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, in which the Carthagenian Hannabal wiped out the armies of Rome, a defeat for Roman arms that would go unmatched for the next six hundred years. The remainder of this discussion will consist of a strategic evaluation of the Inchon landing and the causes of its success.

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