NN R IN KOREA—zo A Second Front at Seoul By
PETER FLEMING THE landings at Inchon, made by the U.S. X Corps comprising the 1st Marine and the 7th Infantry Division and preceded by small-scale diversionary raids in which a Royal Alarine unit is reported to have taken part, were carried out against light opposition but in the face of grave navigational hazards ; and the United Nations naval supremacy, here for the first time effec- tively asserted, has transformed the whole aspect of the Korean campaign. At the time of writing American troops are closing in, cautiously, on the outskirts of Seoul ; Kimpo airfield has been seized and counter-attacks on it repelled ; and despite difficulties imposed by the spring tides the supply situation within the new bridgehead seems to be satisfactory. The civilian population, despite heavy losses inflicted upon it during the bombardment of Inchon, is reported to be receiving its liberators at least with Oriental courtesy ; and the unusually large number of prisoners taken sug- gests that the resistance so far offered by the North Koreans has come mainly from constabulary and other more or less auxiliary units. No major enemy formation has yet been identified in the area.
The port of Inchon, giving ready access to the main road and railway communications which run through Seoul and are in effect —from a communications point of view—the jugular artery of the whole peninsula, was an obvious target for an amphibious operation. Only a very highly trained military casuist could, in fact, have selected any other objective south of the 38th Parallel which was likely to recommend itself to General MacArthur, who had given several indications that he was mounting a combined operation in terms so unmistakable that, taken in conjunction with the Royal Navy's activities round the islands masking Inchon, they were tentatively diagnosed in these articles as part of a deception plan. Add to this the fact that tidal conditions in the area narrowed down to a margin of two or three days the possible date of an assault landing, and it becomes all the more remarkable that a large measure of surprise was achieved.
It seems safe to assume that the North Koreans owe most of their knowledge of the art of war to the Japanese, and that this knowledge has latterly been supplemented by Russian training and possibly, at a high level, by Russian advice. This combination was perhaps not ideally calculated to qualify them to forestall the threat which has now developed with grave detriment to their whole strategical position. The Russians are not well versed in the appli- cation of sea power, which plays in their military doctrine a role understandably less important than it does in ours; and although we do not know (and I for one doubt) whether they have been advising the North Korean High Command, nor whether—if they have—the North Koreans have been paying any attention to what the Russians told them, it is quite clear that the repulse of an Imperialist landing at Inchon is not among the debts which North Korea owes to M. Stalin.
The failure to make adequate dispositions to defend a place which they must have guessed, and may have known, to be threatened, exhibits in the North Koreans an outlook which was very general among Japanese commanders in the last war. Their normal reactions, on apprehending imminent danger to a soft but vital spot, was not to divert main forces to defend it, but to warn the local garrison that it was about to be attacked by overwhelming forces, and to enjoin its commander to "redouble his vigilance with a view to annihilating the enemy," or words to that effect. This rather impractical attitude was, of course, materially influenced in the later stages of the war by administrative and operational difficulties which bogged the Japanese down, so that they lacked the flexibility to react to a threat even if they wanted to. But there was more to it than that. Besides being remarkably unimaginative, they had a certain arrogance of outlook which made it difficult for them to accept the necessity for diverting forces from
offensive to defensive tasks, and one aspect of which was reflected in their disarming habit, when in retreat, of issuing orders like " The unit will continue its advance towards the rear." Whether, in fact, the failure to defend Inchon was partly due to the North Korean commanders having been, so to speak, badly brought up by the Japanese nobody knows ; but certainly what happened at Inchon was very much what might have happened if General MacArthur's opposite number had been a Japanese army commander.
In the south-east of the peninsula the 8th Army are fighting their way out of the bridgehead agaikst opposition which is giving ground steadily. But the count of prisoners, which might have been expected to rise noticeably as a result of the sudden and obvious deterioration of the North Koreans' position, does not appear to have done so ; and neither the scale nor the spirit of the resistance which the Americans are meeting north of Taegu suggests —up to the time of writing—that the enemy is withdrawing his main forces under cover of rearguards But however brave the North Koreans are—and few if any armies have ever shown greater courage in modern warfare—it seems clear that they are done for. Organised resistance south of Seoul can hardly go on for very many more days. A tough, frugal, Asiatic army can do without a good deal, but it cannot do without ammunition ; and of this as of other supplies the North Koreans will, sooner rather than later, find themselves destitute because the Americans have cut their com- munications with their base.
Whether the North Koreans will make a determined attempt to hold Seoul itself remains to be seen. A strong garrison with adequate supplies could probably make—for what it is worth— a prolonged stand in the city ; for street fighting is a ticklish busi- ness and calls for dash of a kind which assaulting infantry seldom display when they know that it cannot be long before the cease- fire sounds. But although there are plenty of modern concrete buildings in Seoul the open country is really a healthier place to fight in when you face the kind of air supremacy that the North Koreans are up against, and even if they held Seoul for a month it couid hardly make any appreciable difference to the outcome of the campaign.
They can still fight north of Seoul—if they have forces there to fight with—because north of Seoul they still have a supply line, however battered and precarious. If a major part of their army could disengage itself in the south and move by devious routes to regroup north of the new bridgehead the North Koreans might still be able to offer coherent resistance ; but such a manoeuvre —even if, which seems doubtful, it were physically possible— would postulate a lack of vigour in the operations of both the 8th Army and X Corps which their opponents can hardly rely on. It looks as if the invaders of South Korea are—metaphorically at any rate—on their way out.
Mr. Syngman Rhee—than whom few leaders of stricken democracies can have cut a figure more uninspiring or less sympathetic—has announced that South Korean forces will not stop short at the 38th Parallel (which is still the declared objective of the United Nations) but will advance to the Yalu and the Tumen Rivers and unite the whole country. What political or other developments will follow the breakdown of the North Korean armies in the field is a matter for conjecture ; but one of those canvassed seems to me in the highest degree unlikely. In these articles I have always scouted the probability of intervention by an expeditionary force from Communist China ; and those who visualise the dispatch of one to rescue the North Koreans from their present predicament seem to me to overrate the altruism of the Chinese as much as they underrate their common sense and their devotion to their country's interests. They were shrewd enough not to jump on the bandwagon with a token force when things were going well for their fellow-ideologists ; and to expect them at this juncture to violate the old military axiom that it never pays to reinforce a failure seems to me, to put it mildly, unrealistic.
Postage on this issue: Inland and Overseas Ild.; Canada (Canadian Magazine Post) Id
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