Posted on 03/24/2008 4:48:21 PM PDT by indcons
One should not forget. . . that the earth is round and that "every road leads to Rome."
WALDEMAR ERFURTH, Surprise
Every now and then in the history of mankind, events of surpassing importance take place in little-known areas of the earth. And men and women in countries distant from those events whose lives turn into unexpected and unwanted channels because of them can but wonder how it all happened to come about. So it was with Korea in 1950. In this ancient land of high mountains and sparkling streams the United Nations fought its first war.
For decades it has been axiomatic in Far Eastern politics that Russia, China, and Japan could not be indifferent to what happened in Korea, and, to the extent that they were able, each consistently has tried to shape the destinies of that peninsula. For Korea lies at the point where the Russian, Chinese, and Japanese spheres meet-the apex of the three great power triangles in Asia. Korea, the ancient invasion route of Japan into the Asian continent, in turn has always been the dagger thrust at Japan from Asia.
Korea is a mountainous peninsula of the Asiatic land mass and has natural water boundaries for almost the entire distance on all sides. The Yalu and Tumen Rivers are on the north, the Sea of Japan on the east, the Korea Strait on the south, and the Yellow Sea on the west. The only countries of the Asiatic mainland having boundaries with Korea are China across the Yalu and Tumen Rivers for 500 miles and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for a distance of approximately eleven miles along the lower reaches of the Tumen River.
(Excerpt) Read more at history.army.mil ...
Cool! Thanks for the post.
btw... I would have been there but I had a birth defect that earned me a 4F classification...
Also on the COMH’s online bookshelf is Billy Mossman’s excellent book, “Ebb and Flow,” which begins where Appleman stops—about when the Chicom “volunteers” intervened.
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