South Korea’s damage was seemingly less. China sustained one million military casualties. South Korea had 300,000 military casualties, and 200,000 civilian casualties. North Korea sustained a total of two million military and civilian casualties.32 The United States had over 142,000 military casualties, while the UN. had only 17,000 casualties. Over two million Koreans were left homeless, and the allied bombings left many parts of Korea a wasteland.33 The Korean War was a failure both for the military and political leaders in the U.S.. The United States never calculated the costs involved. If the conflict had ended at the 38th parallel in 1950, it could have been considered a stunning victory. But MacArthur and the UN. dreadfully underestimated the result of their actions. The UN. failed to understand that communist China would not tolerate UN. forces on its borders. The anti-communist hysteria in the United States during and after the war, made the U.S. leaders stockpile nuclear weapons. The Soviets responded by stockpiling their own nuclear weapons, thus creating a “Balance of Terror”.34 The world became much more dangerous after the Korean War because of the volume of nuclear weapons produced. High taxes were imposed upon the American people to keep up the nuclear race with the Soviets. Within a year or so, America had turned its back on the Korean War. No one wanted to remember a war which cost so much to accomplish so little. The dead were just simply forgotten in the fast modern world. The lessons of the war were also forgotten. As the last troops left Korea, another conflict started in a nearby Asian land, Vietnam. If we had learned from W.W.II, we would not have fought the Korean War. If we had learned from the Korean War, we would have not fought Vietnam. ...
