Korea and Asia

Abstract

T tHE struggle now going on in Korea may be regarded as a compound of four distinct wars, each of which has different international implications. There is first of all a civil war between Communist and anti-Communist Koreans; though this would naturally arouse strong sympathies abroad on either side according to the prevailing political ideology of each country, it would be by itself an internal affair of Korea, not a war between States, and would not provide or justification for any external intervention. But the Korean civil war is also a war between North Korea and South Korea, two organized States which were divided by a clearly defined frontier, and one of which had been brought into being under the auspices of the United Nations. This second aspect of the war gave the conflict an international character; it rendered possible an appeal to the United Nations and thus led to an extension of the war in which the United Nations as an institution, and in particular the members who voted for or accepted the Security Council's resolution condemning North Korea, were ranged against the defiant North Korean aggressor. Finally, as a part of this general United Nations action against North Korea, but to be distinguished from it in its moral and political effect, was the actual military campaign of non-Korean United Nations forces in Korea-at first exclusively, and later, mainly American, with the recent addition of British and Australian contingents, and, since the middle of October, of Turkish, Philippine, and Canadian units. The decision of the United Nations gave the action to protect South Korea the character of a universal enterprise transcending all divisions between the continents or between East and West; except for the Communist States which had aided and abetted North Korea's aggression, the whole world as represented in the United Nations was united in condemning it, and India's vote at the crucial meeting of the Security Council was particularly significant in this respect. On the other hand, the fact that United Nations intervention in Korea has so far been carried out in the military sphere almost entirely by American and European troops has inevitably had the effect of making it appear to Asian minds as an external interference in Asia by non-Asians, and has even given colour to the allegation that the United Nations is merely being used as cover for a revival of Western imperialism in a new form. Communist propaganda has thus been provided with a very favourable opportunity for exploiting against the West those widespread sentiments and emotions summed up in the slogan 'Asia for the Asians'. The Soviet Union has in any case an advantage over the nations of Europe and the Americas in relation to feelings of pani8