Things About The Korean War That Don't Make Sense

Nearly five years after the end of World War II, the United States and China found themselves tangled in another brutal conflict, this time on the Korean peninsula – and against one another. On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea, leading to a three-year-long clash between a divided population and their respective superpower allies. By the time fighting came to a halt on July 27, 1953, millions of lives were lost, the entire Korean peninsula was left in ruins, and its people would find itself locked in a tense, endless split.

For a multitude of reasons, the Korean War is often considered to be the "forgotten war," leading to some fascinating arenas getting overlooked. Being such an unsparing conflict, and one that is often glossed over, it's easy for many of the stranger aspects of the war to fall through the cracks. So, let's break down some elements of the conflict that, even now, still don't make sense.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the Korean War is how, technically speaking, it was never officially a war. Want another legal technicality to roll your eyes at? The conflict never — technically — had an official conclusion.

When North Korean troops attacked South Korea in the summer of 1950, President Harry Truman and the United Nations reacted swiftly. The United Nations' role in the Korean War — which was spearheaded by the United States — was rooted in Security Council Resolution 84, which recommended that U.N. members repel communist aggression on the peninsula and support the South Korean government. Meanwhile, President Truman never sought congressional approval for a declaration of war to enter the conflict. In fact, no declaration of war was ever made, as Truman viewed U.N. troop involvement (which mainly consisted of American soldiers) as a "police action."

The "police action" came to an end in July 1953 after an armistice was signed by Chinese, North Korean, and U.N. leadership. (South Korean officials never signed.) An armistice is not a peace treaty, meaning that the conflict never came to an official conclusion. So, decades later, we can actually say that the Korean War is still going on. Or can we? After all, it was never technically a war. 

American intelligence during the initial stages of the Korean War was, quite frankly, abysmal. Before June 1950, little was done to heed South Korean warnings regarding communist forces gearing up to cross the 38th parallel; even the newly formed CIA shrugged its shoulders at its own intelligence reports citing North Korean military buildup. When Kim Il Sung finally made his move and struck down south, only the hasty, disorganized, and unprepared intervention from American troops stationed in Japan was able to halt a total North Korean takeover of the peninsula.

One would think this ordeal made American intelligence wary and hawkish. However, as the months rolled by and U.N. forces began pushing the North Korean advance back, once again American leadership did little to heed the repeated signals that a Chinese intervention on the side of North Korea was imminent. General Douglas MacArthur himself expressed extreme confidence that China would not enter the conflict. His mindset was that even if Mao's forces did join the fighting, they'd be easily thrown back. Well, Mao's forces did intervene in late October, and they drew U.N. troops into a hellacious firefight for the remainder of the year, preventing a North Korean capitulation and prolonging the war for years. Over 70 years since the conflict's end, the American government and military's lax reaction to its own intelligence remains baffling, to say the least.

Donald Nichols was one of the biggest enigmas to come out of the Korean War. A remorseless operative able to watch mass killings and torture sessions with cold indifference, Nichols proved himself to be the ultimate spymaster during the conflict. 

According to military historian Robert Frank Futrell, this single Air Force officer and his team of spies supplied the majority of bombing targets for the U.S. military during the conflict. Meanwhile, author Blaine Harden, who penned "King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America's Spymaster in Korea," writes that Nichols actually predicted a Korean civil war and warned higher-ups about its inevitability months before June 1950. Shortly after the war did begin, Nichols would find himself at the center of arguably the conflict's greatest intelligence victory when he came across a North Korean defector who had stolen military codebooks in his possession; these codes would prove invaluable during a time in the conflict when the North Korean offensive appeared unstoppable.

How all of this can be primarily attributed to a single man is outrageously puzzling, especially when one considers that Nichols was a seventh-grade dropout who grew up in abject poverty, joined the military to basically survive, had no Ivy League or Pentagon connections, and showed up in Korea in 1946 with literally no support. What happens then? He randomly becomes buddies with South Korean leader Syngman Rhee, forming a friendship that would launch Nichols' intelligence career into a different stratosphere — a career that, quite frankly, leaves you with more questions than answers the longer you examine it.

The Korean War featured quite a few wild stories when it came to UFO sightings. Of course, the battlefield is a hellacious arena, so it's understandable that a distressed and overfatigued soldier might struggle to make sense of some shadowy airborne movement or funny pair of lights in the sky. However, some of the cases described during the Korean War are really eerie ... and don't make sense.

On January 29, 1952, the crew of an American B-29 bomber reported seeing a floating disk-shaped object while flying a late-night mission over Wonsan. The crew noted that the object looked orange and also sported "blueish flames" around its odd shape, according to a report from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Okay, the bomber was more than 20,000 feet in the air and going nearly 200 miles per hour. A strange blurry shape spotted under these circumstances can be easily discounted, except for one problem: A completely separate B-29 bomber flying over Sunchon, a city nearly 100 miles away, also reported seeing a strange flying object, except this crew claimed it to be more globular.

As if this wasn't strange enough, the year before, in May, a group of American troops claimed to have encountered a jack-o'-lantern-shaped object while readying to launch artillery on a village. The strange aircraft was allegedly unscathed in the midst of artillery strikes and rifle fire; it reportedly moved side to side and emitted flashing lights, along with a ray that seriously affected the soldiers and forced them into underground bunkers. Days after the incident, they were diagnosed with an unusually high white-blood-cell count and dysentery.

Move over, Steven Spielberg's "Catch Me If You Can." If you want to learn about a notorious liar who actually lied his way into multiple positions, don't look at the supposed exploits of Frank Abagnale. Look at Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr., the Michael Jordan of stealing identities.

One of the most prolific con artists in history, Demara made his way through life wading through numerous careers and impersonating countless people. His most notorious and egregious con came during the Korean War, when he pretended to be a doctor after making copies of a Canadian friend's immigration paperwork. The Massachusetts-born Demara was able to enlist in the Canadian navy under his friend's name — Dr. Joseph Cyr — and served aboard a destroyer in Korea as a commissioned officer. Demara's stint as a "doctor" would culminate in him treating three Korean refugees, one of whom needed to have a leg amputated. Shockingly, Demara successfully performed the procedure. However, the good press Demara received for his efforts earned the attention of the real Cyr's mother. After she saw a photo of Demara posing as her son, the lie came to light, and he was forced to return to the U.S., where he would begin stealing identities once more by 1955.

What makes Demara's stint in the Korean War so puzzling is not just how long he was able to get away with it. It's that it was his third time fooling military officials. Prior to joining Canadian naval ranks, Demara enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1941, went AWOL, and stole a friend's identity to join the Navy, where he received basic medical training. After higher-ups discovered some of Demara's phony paperwork, he faked his death. His two desertions wouldn't catch up to him until 1945, when he was caught and forced to do 18 months in prison. Taking his illegal escapades during the '40s into account, it's hilariously absurd that Demara would successfully con his way into the military less than a decade later.

One of the most bewildering moments of the Korean War was when General Douglas MacArthur thought it was a good idea to become embroiled in a rather public rivalry with President Harry Truman over how the United States should proceed with the conflict. The last thing a country needs when locked in a conflict is its elected leader and top commander butting heads out in the open. But that's exactly what happened.

Early in the war, Truman wasn't all too pleased with MacArthur, as the latter gave him personal assurances that China would never enter the fray on behalf of North Korea. By the spring of 1951, after Chinese forces turned back U.N. momentum and a stalemate began forming along the 38th parallel, MacArthur wished to employ more aggressive strategies, such as bombing China and allowing Nationalist Chinese troops from Taiwan into the war. Such moves, Truman feared, would escalate the conflict into something far more global. 

MacArthur, never one to shy away from letting his opinions known, ended up writing a letter in March 1951 to the Republican Speaker of the House, in which he essentially tossed Truman's wartime strategy under the bus. By April 11, the general was officially relieved of his duties. Even a general with a colossal ego like MacArthur should have known better; why did he think it was okay to get into such a public exchange with the president? It doesn't make sense.

To learn more about the conflict between these two towering American figures, read our feature about Harry Truman's contentious relationship with General Douglas MacArthur.

For a long, long while, the official recorded number of Americans killed during the Korean War was listed as 54,246. This figure was shown everywhere from history books to monuments. It was even etched into the granite of the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.

Nowadays, the official number of Americans who died during the war is stated to be much lower at around 36,516. That's a difference of nearly 18,000. So, what caused this discrepancy? Apparently, it all came down to a simple clerical error that added all worldwide noncombat fatalities to the number of Korean War deaths, meaning that during this time period, a serviceman dying in Europe of noncombat causes was counted among the number of Americans killed in Korea.

By 1989, Pentagon officials had begun revising the numbers accordingly. However, the 54,246 figure wasn't truly put in the public spotlight until the 50^th anniversary of the Korean War. All in all, it's odd to think how the death toll for one of the most important conflicts of the Cold War was misreported for decades ... all due to a mere clerical error?

It's not supposed to be a common occurrence for military commanders to be taken prisoner by the very prisoners they are charged with overseeing. But that's exactly what happened to U.S. Army Brigadier General Francis Dodd, who commanded the prisoner of war camp on Koje-do (now Geojedo) Island. On May 7, 1952, Dodd, always one to speak with prisoners to ease agitation, was surrounded by a throng of North Korean prisoners and taken hostage; he was released three days later only after their demands for more humane and tolerable treatment were seemingly guaranteed by the acting replacement general.

Overall, from a purely pragmatic perspective, the whole situation is a head-scratcher. The prison compounds on Koje-do Island had a volatile reputation; riots were not entirely uncommon. The prison population was known to be — naturally — agitated and displeased. And before the incident with Dodd, a subordinate by the name of Colonel Raven had once been seized and taken hostage. North Korean POWs actually had made it something of a successful habit to ambush and seize guards in an effort to get their complaints heard. On top of all this, camp security was compromised; compound gates were always left without locks as endless work details passed through. (This is specifically how the POWs were able to seize Dodd.)

So, taking all this into account, it seems careless that Dodd, along with Raven, arrived on May 7 to meet and talk with a group of prisoners, unarmed, by an unlocked sally port — especially during wartime, and especially in an unpredictable environment like Koje-do. While Dodd was not harmed and he was released in good faith, his military career was effectively ruined as higher-ups felt thoroughly embarrassed by the whole ordeal.

Having taken place between World War II and the Vietnam War, the Korean War is often overshadowed by those conflicts. It is commonly referred to as the "forgotten war," which, when considering the sheer destruction, casualty rates, and global ramifications that emerged from the Korean War, is downright baffling. Historians have estimated that between 2 and 3 million North and South Korean civilians were killed during the conflict. According to noted scholars such as Bruce Cumings and Guenter Lewy, this means that the percentage of civilian casualties in the Korean War likely eclipses that of World War II and the Vietnam War. 

During the war, American air campaigns likely saw around 635,000 tons of bombs dropped on the Korean peninsula. These bombings, which were primarily concentrated in the North and included over 32,000 tons of napalm, are comparable to the number of bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. To this day, these airstrikes continue to serve as a significant cornerstone for Pyongyang propaganda, helping shape the North Korean national identity and fueling justification for the country's anti-American, anti-Western policies.

With the Korean War being such a brutal and bloody struggle, and with its aftermath still playing a crucial part in geopolitics today, why does it continued to be the "forgotten war"? It simply makes no sense.

For more fascinating details about the Korean War, read the story behind Operation Thunderbolt, one of the conflict's deadliest battles.