A good website/book 4 my thesis statement about the Korean War?

Question

most ppl that studied the Korean War in the U.S. .. mostly don't know... but if ur Korean .. ull know that.. most Koreans think the Korean War as a proxy war.... and arent there any primary sources or facts, infos to support this fact??

any websites/ books for this??

ppl who just give me wikipedia and just any websites... im not looking 4 what the Korean War is and all....

anyways . my thesis = The Korean War was a proxy war where both North and South Korea were controlled ideologically by expanding Communist and Democratic countries who finally settled on a stalement

...

lol there the U.S. and UN not north korea and south korea lol they didnt get to vote for anything including calling it a civil war and the stalemate.. lol

Answer 1

I have never heard any one claim that the US fought the Korean war for any other reason and the public statements of government leaders at the time constantly referred to stopping the spread of communism.
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/korean-conflict/
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/korea/large/week1/kw_27_1.htm
Here is source material on why Russia/China backed the north,
http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Korean_War.html
and evidence they did,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_War_weapons

Answer 2

You might want to adjust your thesis a bit. At first it was the North Korean leader, Kim Il-Sung, who wanted war, and took some time before he could persuade Stalin to give him material support. It wasn't the USSR, nor certainly America and her allies, that wanted war in Korea at first, it was the North Korean leadership. At the time, Stalin was focused on expanding Communism in Europe largely via the ballot, with large Communist parties in France and Italy and Greece seemingly on the verge of gaining power. When the United States and others pressed for a UN resolution against the invasion, the North objected on the grounds that it was a civil war, not the concern of outside powers at all.

I understand that it's tempting for Koreans to minimize their own contribution to the outbreak or continuance of the war, but I think that claiming it was entirely, or even mostly, the will of outsiders that war break out in Korea is just not accurate. It might be the case that the Koreans, absent foreign allies, might have been willing to make peace earlier, I don't know.

For a time, after the Americans intervened to save their understrength South Korean allies from disaster, the Korean War was a proxy war for the USSR, but it was a direct war for the Americans, who were after all being shot at. Later, after the Americans and allied forces (Canadians, Australians, etc) and the now-well-equipped South Korean army succeeded in pushing back the North's forces, and the Chinese entered the war, threatened by the prospect of American soldiers who might keep moving past the Korean border right into China itself, the war was once again not a proxy war, but a direct hot war between principals, the Chinese (and Russian air power) and the Americans. It was simply a war between major powers contained in a small theater.

In this respect it was more like the war between Germany and the US and UK in 1942 in North Africa or in 1943 in Italy, or indeed in France in 1944 - a war between major powers, with a majority of each power's available armies fighting in that theater, but not on each other's territories. When you had Chinese and Americans shooting at each other, with most of each nation's armies engaged there, that's no longer a proxy war. You wouldn't call the fighting in France in 1944 a proxy war, even though most of the soldiers fighting there were not French.

Here's the definition of a proxy war, from wikipedia: A proxy war is the war that results when two powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly.

By this definition, Korea was a proxy war for the Soviets only, and that only if you're willing to ignore the Soviet air contribution. It would have been a proxy war for the Americans and Chinese if neither had sent significant forces, but that's not the case. For a true proxy war, see Angola or Greece.

I think the problem is that I don't know if there's a word for a war in which major powers voluntarily confine themselves to a limited arena. In this sense, the Korean War was quite different from other wars between major powers. It's a new beast under the sun, undoubtedly because neither side was quite ready to risk escalation to total war, knowing that nuclear weapons waited in the wings.

I suppose, by stretching the definition of 'proxy' to the breaking point, you could define the Korean War as a 'proxy' war for a nuclear war between major powers, but that's about it.

Answer 3

I saw a great history link today. It gives overall timeline and gives books on periods like you mention here.

Go to the "Leap over Web Clutter" section of this website.