War Breaks Out

Operation Pokpung

At 4:00am on Sunday 25th June, the NKPA launched Operation Pokpung (’Storm’), the invasion of South Korea. 

The Plan, with the input of Soviet advisers, had been in preparation for months.  Since the South had been heavily infiltrated by communist spies, the NKPA knew the location of every South Korean defence unit and sent superior forces against it. 

The ROK units were taken completely by surprise.  Many officers and men were absent on pass for the weekend; so were most of their American KMAG advisors, and indeed many senior KMAG officers had recentlyleft for America, having completed their posting.  Only one ROK unit was fully in proper position. 

Fehrenbach comments: "the armoured fist of the NKPA struck, not only against an utterly surprised ROK army, but a ROK army not deployed for battle". 

The Ongjin Peninsula in the west fell almost immediately, and what was left of the ROK 17th Regiment there was evacuated by sea.  At Kaesong the NKPA advance was so decisive that only two companies of the ROK 12th Regiment were able to escape; the NKPA had relaid the railway overnight, and entered Kaesong almost unopposed by train.  At nearby Korangp’ori, the ROK troops were ordered to withdraw behind the Imjin River and blow the bridges, but the NKPA were upon them before anything could be done. 

It was not that the ROK troops were cowards.  Where the odds were evenly-matched, they held their ground successfully.  But, faced by heavily armoured Russian T-34 tanks, they found that their rocket-launchers and light artillery were unable to penetrate the tanks’ armour.  Seeing this, ROK men from Colonel Paik’s 1st Division jumped on the tanks to try to pry open the turret, or grabbed explosives and threw themselves under the tank treads – a hundred men died this way, until it was realised that nothing the ROK Army possessed or did could stop the NKPA tanks. 

KMAG HQ in Seoul first heard about the attack at 6am on the Sunday morning when they received an urgent request for advice.  US Ambassador Muccio's initial feeling was that KMAG should stand aside since this was a war of Korean against Korean.  Neither, at first, did he think that it was worth evacuating; only at midnight was he persuaded to order an evacuation of women and children.  (Since NKPA MiG planes were strafing the airport, they were placed on a Norwegian cargo ship, the Reinholt, with a full cargo of fertiliser and no space for passengers; the three-day journey would make them all extremely ill, but they lived to tell the tale.)

Meanwhile, the main NKPA attack had been rolling down the Ch’orwon Valley towards Seoul, pushing back the ROK 7th Division as it advanced.  Here the strategically vital place was Uijongbu … if that fell, the path was open all the way to Seoul. 

In the ROK HQ In Seoul, Army Chief of Staff General ‘Fatty’ Chae was alarmed, but not panicking.  Realising the importance of the Uijongbu corridor, he called up his reserves – the 2nd Division, 90 miles south of Seoul.  As long columns of trucks, jeeps, bicycles and – ominously – oxcarts marched north through Seoul, the people cheered, thinking it would be only a matter of time before the invader was repulsed. 

Chae gave orders to execute a pincer movement on the advancing NKPA column.  At dawn, General Yu’s 7th Division was to attack the NKPA’s western flank, whilst General Lee’s arriving 2nd Division would attack its east flank.  General Lee objected; his men would not even have arrived, never mind be in a position to attack.  General Chae, however, insisted. 

Thus night fell, with Uijongbu still under ROK control. 

Going Deeper

This account is heavily based on the wonderfully-written narrative account in Chapters 4-5 of TR Fehrenbach, This Kind of War (1963).  You can read it for yourself on WebArchive or, better still, listen on Audible.

As Monday 26 June dawned, General Yu and the 7th attacked and for a while halted the NKPA advance. 

General Lee, however, did not attack.  With many of his men still not with him, had let those who had arrived sleep, and then told them to dig in.  At 8am, an NKPA column of 40 tanks and an infantry battalion overran their positions; unable to stop the tanks, General Lee’s men fled. 

To the east, therefore, about to be isolated, General Yu had no option but to retreat ..  which also quickly turned into a rout. 

Thus, by the end of the second day of fighting, the NKPA were in Uijongbu, and there was no ROK Army between them and Seoul. 

On the morning of Tuesday 27th, Ambassador Muccio received orders to evacuate.  There was mild panic.  In the end, all 2,000 US embassy staff left safety, under US air cover, from the airport.  But they abandoned to the NKPA 1,500 vehicles, 20,000 gallons of gasoline, $100,000 of food … and, unforgivably, the records of 5,000 civilian Korean employees at the embassy, few of whom would survive the communist occupation. 

There was also panic amongst the population of Seoul, tens of thousands of whom – together with thousands of fleeing ROK soldiers – began flocking south across the Han River. 

There was growing panic at KMAG HQ also.  Colonel Wright, the senior officer, had told his exhausted men to get some sleep; when his officers tried to get in touch to tell him that everyone was leaving, his adjutant refused to wake him. 

There certainly was panic at ROK HQ.  By 7:30pm the leading NKPA units were reaching Seoul.  At 11pm a single tank had entered the city (and had, amazingly, been stopped by the Seoul Police).  Sleeper guerrilla units, who had been living for months amongst the general population, came out and started shooting.  General Chae and the ROK brass shut up shop and fled south without telling anyone, leaving without communications those troops still fighting.  In the chaos, the Korean Vice-Minister of Defence gave orders to blow the bridge. 

There were three full ROK Army Divisions between Seoul and the River, including General Lee’s 2nd Division, now fully assembled.  When he heard that the bridge was to be blown, Lee desperately sent men to try to stop it, but they were unable to make headway through the fleeing refugees. 

At 2:15am on Wednesday 28th, therefore, without any warning to the people crossing, the bridge was blown.  A thousand people on the bridge at the time were killed.  44,000 ROK soldiers trapped north of the River would die or disappear.  General Yu got 1,200 of his men, with four machine guns, to the south bank.  Colonel Paik escaped with 5,000 men of his 1st Division.  KMAG Chief Colonel Wright, finally wakened at 1am when one of his officers drove over and hammered on his door, managed to commandeer a ferry at gunpoint and get all his 500 men, a jeep and a radio safely across the river. 

But what KMAG had labelled the "best damn army outside the United States" had lost 80% of its men dead or deserted, and 70% of its equipment abandoned, in three days. 

"It had not been defeated," concludes Fehrenbach, "it had been destroyed". 

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