our o'clock in the morning in faraway Korea. The summer monsoons had just begun, and heavy rains were falling, when the North Korean army of seventy thousand men, forty miles of big guns, and Russian T34 tanks crossed the thirty-eighth parallel. Sheet after sheet of flames erupted, and North Korean planes filled the air toward Seoul, less than fifty miles away. As General MacArthur would later state, "North Korea struck like a cobra" that wet morning of June 25, 1950. The Korean Peoples' Army(KPA) and the North Korean Army captured Seoul on Wednesday, June 29th, 1950. Russian diplomats had been boycotting the United Nations Security Council meetings, because the United Nations had not admitted Red China. Because of that boycott, President Harry Truman was successful in his appeal to the United Nations for "police action". For the first time in history, on Sunday, July 3, l950, an international organization voted to intervene against aggression.("The Glory and the Dream" William Manchester, pages 532, 533, 535) American ground forces successfully landed on Inchon September 15, 1950, and the United Nations forces began to gain the offensive. They retook Seoul, crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and broke through the Pusan perimeter by September 30th. KPA forces began retreating in the second phase of the war. Southern forces were approxi- mately twenty-five miles north of the parallel and had captured Wonson, on the eastern side of North Korea. After the regain of land, the South Korean forces, without much resistance from the North Korean units, marched toward the Yalu River. The tide of the war was turned once more, by the unexpected decision of China's entry into the war. United Nations forces were sent retreating again by the North Korean units which included Sino-Korean troops. Pyongyang was retaken by the Communist forces on December 6, who then re-crossed the parallel, and retook Seoul by the end of December. By the end of January,...
