China brags about US casualties in Korean War
Joel Gehrke
Video Embed
China touted American casualties in the Korean War as a warning against “stand[ing] on the wrong side of history” in response to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s trip to the United States.
“According to China’s records, the enemy forces lost 36,000 troops to the Battle of Lake Changjin, including 24,000 U.S. troops that contained an entire U.S. regimen[t],” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Friday. “Walton H. Walker, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army, lost his life after his truck rolled over in an accident. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson called the result of the battle ‘the longest retreat in U.S. military history.’”
CHINA CLAIMS US NUCLEAR SUBMARINE IN SOUTH KOREA ‘SOURCE OF TENSION IN REGION
Mao’s comments reflect Beijing’s irritation with the U.S.-South Korean cooperation on display during Yoon’s state visit with President Joe Biden. Yoon has sought to fortify defense ties with the U.S. in response to threats from North Korea, while offering South Korea as an emerging contributor to the Indo-Pacific balance of power.
“Our alliance was forged 70 years ago to defend Korea’s freedom,” Yoon said Thursday. “The alliance has now become a global alliance that safeguards freedom and peace around the world. Korea will fulfill its responsibilities. It will play its part that matches its economic capacity.”
Yoon anchored his comments in a commemoration of the American defense of South Korea in 1950, when North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung attacked the Republic of Korea in a bid to subjugate the entire peninsula.
“Korea’s freedom and democracy were on the brink,” Yoon recalled. “At that decisive moment, the U.S. did not look the other way. Korean and American soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder and fought bravely. Tales of our heroes were written.”
U.S. forces, leading a United Nations coalition, intervened from Japan and proceeded to drive the North Korean troops back from South Korean territory to the brink of total destruction in the far north of the peninsula.
“But just as U.N. forces launched what was hoped to be the final offensive, hundreds of thousands of Communist Chinese soldiers poured into Korea, overwhelming the U.N. troops and completely changing the nature of the war,” as U.S. Army chief historian Matthew Seelinger has written. “Fighting in extreme cold and over rugged terrain, the Americans and their allies were forced to retreat south down the Korean peninsula, suffering heavy casualties along the way.”
That struggle is known in the U.S. as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. The unexpected and massive Chinese intervention began “a two-week-long bloodbath pitting 30,000 U.S., ROK, and British troops against 120,000 Chinese soldiers,” as a U.S. Marine Corps account recalls. With outnumbered U.S. forces at risk of being surrounded and destroyed, a doomed U.S. Army task force “blocked the Chinese drive along the eastern side of Chosin for five days and allowed the Marines along the west side to withdraw,” according to Seelinger.
Yoon lauded both the successes of the intervention and the grueling withdrawal.
“General MacArthur caught the enemy off guard with the landing of Incheon and turned the tide of the war,” he said. “The U.S. 1st Marine Division miraculously broke through a wave of 120,000 Chinese troops at the Battle of Lake Changjin … In the Battle of Lake Changjin alone, 4,500 American service members lost their lives. Over the course of the war, almost 37,000 U.S. soldiers fell.”
Mao did not mention the North Korean invasion of South Korea but referred to China’s role in the conflict as a “war to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea” against the U.N. coalition.
“With solid facts, the war has shown the world that if any country or military chooses to stand on the wrong side of history, bully the weak, act against the will of the people, and engage in territorial expansion or invasion, it will pay dearly for its egregious acts,” she said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
After three years of fighting, the war settled into an armistice that allowed the Republic of Korea to remain independent of their communist northern neighbor and develop into a key U.S. ally in the region.
“False propaganda and disinformation corrupt intellectualism. They threaten democracy and the rule of law,” Yoon said Friday. “Such totalitarian forces may conceal and disguise themselves as defenders of democracy or human rights … We must not be fooled by such deception and disguises. We have for so long protected democracy and the rule of law with our blood and sweat. We must work together and fight the forces of falsehood and deception that seek to destroy democracy and the rule of law.”