Abstract
In any future contingency operations in the Korean peninsula, Japan’s military experience during the Korean War will be a strategic asset not forgotten. Chief among the humanitarian and strategic needs for Japan’s seaborne involvement in a future contingency in Korea will be the constant US interest in preserving the security of its most highly valued prize in the region, Japan, and how Japan will be able to balance against a rising and more influential China. This chapter examines the important theme of ocean as a competitive arena between the USA, Korea, Japan, and China.
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- 1.
See Samuel Hawley, The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth-century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China (Seoul: The Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch, 2005), 563–586. See also Kenneth M. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 284–299.
- 2.
See Swope, 285. Swope cites Gari Ledyard: “[O]ne is forced to conclude that for all the heroics and turtle-boats, it was the Chinese alliance that was the most crucial military element in Korea’s survival.” Of course, with respect to South Korea’s survival in the wake of North Korea’s invasion in 1950, one may say with certainty that for all the Korean heroism, it was the “U.S. that was the most critical element in the Republic of Korea ’s survival.”
- 3.
See Han Myonggi, Byeongja Horan [The Manchu Invasion of Korea, 1636] (Seoul: Pureun Yeoksa, 2013).
- 4.
See Sung-Hwa Cheong, The Politics of Anti-Japanese Sentiment in Korea: Japanese-South Korean Relations Under American Occupation, 1945–1952 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 21–45.
- 5.
See Reinhard Drifte, “Japan’s Involvement in the Korean War,” in James Cotton and Ian Neary, eds., The Korean War in History (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1989), 120–134.
- 6.
Mark W. Clark, From the Danube to the Yalu (Tokyo, 1954), 148. Cited in Drifte, 130.
- 7.
Staff of the Mainichi Daily News (ed.), Fifty Years of Light and Dark: The Hirohito Era (Tokyo, 1976), 260 (cited in Reinhard Drifte, 122).
- 8.
Study group of the Japanese Association of International Law (ed.), Japan and the United Nations (New York, 1958), 55 (cited in Reinhard Drifte, 122).
- 9.
Drifte, 127.
- 10.
James Auer, The Postwar Rearmament of Japanese Maritime Forces, 1945–71 (New York, 1973), 62, cited in Drifte, 127.
- 11.
See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Post-War Warriors: Japanese Combatants in the Korean War,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 10, no. 31 (July 2012), http://apjjf.org/2012/10/31/Tessa-Morris-Suzuki/3803/article.html
- 12.
Richard Banks Mitchell, The Korean Minority in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 120. The New York Times, June 30, 1950 and August 26, 1950. Nippon Times, September 15, 1950. Cited in Drifte, 129. Tessa Morris-Suzuki asserts there were only “644 volunteers, of whom 135 were killed or went missing in action.” See Tessa Morris-Suzuki.
- 13.
Mark W. Clark, 148. Robert Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors (London, 1964), 424.
- 14.
Mark Clark, 148.
- 15.
Drifte, 129.
- 16.
Morris-Suzuki.
- 17.
Mark Clark, 148.
- 18.
Morris-Suzuki.
- 19.
Drifte, 130.
- 20.
Asahi Shimbun, June 6, 1977. Cited in Drifte, 130.
- 21.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki.
- 22.
Tim Kelly, “Japan could deploy minesweepers off S. Korea in war with North, U.S. admiral says,” Reuters, October 24, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-japan-minesweepers/japan-could-deploy-minesweepers-off-s-korea-in-war-with-north-u-s-admiral-says-idUSKCN0ID0U620141024
- 23.
John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 542.
- 24.
Dower, 541–542.
- 25.
See Sung-Yoon Lee, “The Seoul-Beijing-Tokyo Triangle: Terra-Centric Nordpolitik vs. Oceanic Realpolitik,” in Gilbert Rozman, ed., Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies, Vol. 25 (Washington, DC: Korea Economic Institute of America Press, 2014).
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Lee, SY. (2018). Forgotten Borders: Japan’s Maritime Operations in the Korean War and Implications for North Korea. In: Gresh, G.F. (eds) Eurasia’s Maritime Rise and Global Security. Palgrave Studies in Maritime Politics and Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71806-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71806-4_7
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