Talk:Korean War

Characteristics?

I may be being stupid here, but I don't get the meaning of the section heading "Characteristics"...... Is it meant to be "Statistics"? NickCT (talk) 14:30, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Another term might be "Distinguishing features", but Characteristics works well. --S. Rich (talk) 15:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Can you point to another war article with a "Characteristics" section heading? NickCT (talk) 16:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting question, and yes. See: Wars_involving_Israel#Characteristics_of_the_wars. Perhaps other war articles could be improved with a Characteristics section. Besides the Israel example, Comparison of World War I tanks looks at characteristics, as does Guerrilla warfare in the American Civil War. (Here is my search on WP: [1].) --S. Rich (talk) 16:49, 20 September 2011 (UTC) PS: Portal:War uses the term in the intro. 16:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, ok. So it doesn't seem as though "Characteristics" as a section heading is really used that frequently. It's a very awkward somewhat ambiguous word to be using as a heading. I'm guessing it was put there by someone who didn't have the greatest grasp of English.

Running my eye over the section, I think a lot of the subsections need to be reorganized..... Causalities should probably go under "Aftermath", no?

One way or another, some pretty significant section reorganization/renaming seems called for.... I'll give it a go if and when I get a chance. NickCT (talk) 17:43, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I can't think of another word which would fit the section as written. Perhaps reorganizing to a format similar to other wars would work. Here is the Project Military History guide: WP:WikiProject_Military_history/Content_guide. And here is where you can join the project: add your name Re Casualties, they occurred during the war, not in the aftermath. (Two examples of aftermath-casualties related topics would be how casualties were cared for post war or did the Korean casualties disrupt the male-female ratio?)--S. Rich (talk) 18:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the links to Military History. You know, it's interesting reviewing WWI and WWII. The formatting seems completely different. Gross causality stats in WWII come under section Impact, subsection Casualties and war crimes. In WWI causality stats seems to be under section Aftermath, subsection Health and Economic effects. It seems to me that Aftermath is the correct term. Aftermath literally refers to the math you do after the event (i.e. you look back on the event and tabulate the cost). It's basically synonymous with "consequence". You can say "The aftermath of the famine was 2 million dead" as you can say "The consequence of the famine was 2 million deaths". Saying the deaths were "aftermath" doesn't infer they occur "after" the event.

P.S. I love debates about semantics.

P.P.S. I'm not wed to the idea of putting Causalities under Aftermath. I just think that Characteristics is definitely not the right place for it to be. NickCT (talk) 18:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

For the world wars, the casualty rates were so high they had definite impacts on entire societies involved in Europe. Duh -- the US did not suffer nearly the same consequences. In Korea, the impact on Korea was utter destruction in many areas; but the US casualty rate (as a percentage of the civilian population) was much, much less. For US centric comparisons, see United_States_military_casualties_of_war#Wars_ranked_by_total_deaths. --S. Rich (talk) 19:32, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure. Agree with all that. But I think it's fair to say that all three wars in question could be called "major conflicts". It would be nice if "major conflicts" all had some kind of semi-standard article format. Perhaps I'll read through Wikiproject Military History, for guidance. NickCT (talk) 21:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Proxy war?

I wonder if it was really a proxy war as the article states? From the standpoint of material aid from the Soviet Union yes but otherwise the forces of "Red" China and the U.S. were engaged in direct combat most of the time (once China entered the war); to me a proxy war would have been if the (North and South) Koreans had done all the fighting, but been supported by their respective allies. (I don't know what the correct term would be, but it doesn't seem entirely accurate the way it is w now.) Historian932 (talk) 14:00, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed - it's more of a war of limited objectives largely limited to the confines of the Korean peninsula than a full scale war between primary actors China and US. I think it stopped being a proxy war when US/China intervened on behalf of their proxy states.

UN in infobox

I think including the United Nations as a belligerent in this case is somewhat misleading. Perhaps a note should be added regarding the protest/absense of the veto-wielding USSR when the resolution was passed. 129.100.192.122 (talk) 03:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Stalemate

The result section should be like stalemate, since there are people who keep on saying "oh, America won the war, because it kept SK alive and NK lost because it failed to unite the peninsula under Communism..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.7.2.108 (talk) 15:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Nationalist Chinese involvement?

There's a list of "offers of military assistance to the United Nations" reproduced in JSTOR 2704072; interestingly, it includes a number of "acceptance deferred" entries. Most of these were presumably declined as they thought to be not worth the cost of support (El Salvador, for example, offered volunteers if they were trained and equipped by the US), but one stands out - the Republic of China apparently offered three divisions and a number of C-47 transports!

The reference given is S/1562, presumably some form of Security Council report; New Zealand's naval contribution, which was ordered to sail on 29 June, is referenced as S/1563, suggesting that ROC made the offer within the first few days of the war. After the involvement of the PRC later in the year, and with US forces in the Taiwan Strait, the prospect of a Chinese-Chinese war must have proven something of a political minefield - do any of the sources discuss this? It's an interesting facet to the history, and one I've not encountered before.

On a more general note, while we have various flags etc in the infobox, there doesn't seem to be a section in the actual text discussing the "multinational" forces in Korea. There's a main article at United Nations Command (Korea), but it's not very clearly linked from here. One for the future worklist... Shimgray | talk | 20:51, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Very Little on Non US UN forces.

Adding up by eye it looks as though almost a third of UN forces in Korea were not American and towards the top implies the Common wealth had a simillar number of soldiers near by at the out break yet the article doesn't really do much to describe the make up of forces on the ground or mention much about these other UN forces. 106,791 Common wealth soldiers are listed in the info box (about 10 times the, they must of done something. Also did UN forces fight as National groups or were they fighting in integrated units and if the latter at what level?(Morcus (talk) 22:44, 26 October 2011 (UTC))