• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

MacArthur stops North of Pyongyang

J

Jackson Lennock

Well-known member
What if MacArthur during the Korean War had stopped just North of Pyongyang? North enough to neuter North Korea, but not so far North that China feels a need to move into the peninsula.

How does the lack of a War against the Americans play into Chinese fears of encirclement and domestic Chinese politics?

What does Korea being a short successful conflict do for US politics?
 
Jackson Lennock said:
What if MacArthur during the Korean War had stopped just North of Pyongyang? North enough to neuter North Korea, but not so far North that China feels a need to move into the peninsula.

How does the lack of a War against the Americans play into Chinese fears of encirclement and domestic Chinese politics?

What does Korea being a short successful conflict do for US politics?
Click to expand...
The problem with this popular scenario is that Mao had already decided to intervene by that point. With that said, even in our timeline, many people in the CCP leadership opposed intervention and maybe Mao would reverse his decision. Note that Korea north of Pyongyang is mostly forest.
 
Last edited:
Even if the Chinese do intervene if the Americans have stopped and started digging in then their logistical situation will be better and its highly unlikely they'll be routed, imagine the OTL stalemate comes about sooner rather than later though small chance of the Chinese faltering with early setbacks.

The butterflies are probably significant for Korea and minor for the rest of the world.
 
Ricardolindo said:
The problem with this popular scenario is that Mao had already decided to intervene by that point. With that said, even in our timeline, many people in the CCP leadership opposed intervention and maybe Mao would reverse his decision. Note that Korea north of Pyongyang is mostly forest.
Click to expand...
No. Mao had decided that intervention was becoming essential because UN forces were approaching the Chinese border. It was made inevitable since, well, MacArthur did move to the border. There is a difference. A UN stop line, even one where ROK troops continued on would have opened the possibility of no intervention or at least vastly different interventions then happened IOTL.
 
Ricardolindo said:
Korea north of Pyongyang is mostly forest. The area would only have about 5 million people. Would such a state have been viable in the long term?
Click to expand...

With Juche, no state seems to be viable in the long term...

Generally, sounds like a good idea. It's the question of MacArthur's psychology. Would he do that? If that guy was crazy enough to start WW3 about this... would he have to drop dead, so the US can play it safe?
 
Poor Kim il-Sung and the other Korean revolutionary guerrillas. Their country - the D.P.R.K. - would be only two years old, and it's been overrun by the Americans and the U.N. Coalition. They only wanted independence and peace.

If I may, I do wish to those poor citizens of the country who died in Seoul Crush rest in peace.
 
Omund the Wooden-Leg said:
Poor Kim il-Sung and the other Korean revolutionary guerrillas. Their country - the D.P.R.K. - would be only two years old, and it's been overrun by the Americans and the U.N. Coalition. They only wanted independence and peace.

If I may, I do wish to those poor citizens of the country who died in Seoul Crush rest in peace.
Click to expand...
Bold words, considering that Kim-il-Sung started the war by invading the South.
 
The Soviets left the People's Republic of Korea after three years, in 1948. The Americans did not leave, despite the two superpowers had agreed to do so. The U.S.-backed "state" was sabre-rattling and provoked il-Sung in to trying to Liberate his homeland.
 
SenatorChickpea said:
No one ever thinks about the poor North Korean government.
Click to expand...
Exactly. The Koreans just wanted freedom from Imperialist occupation and the chance of a life to fully develop themselves and each other.

With the near-total U.S. occupation, I do see the old guerillas hiding in the forests and under the mountains again with the younger guerillas disrupting and sabotaging the Americans' supply lines. They could make the peninsula as unstable for the Americans as they did for the Japanese occupiers.
 
Omund the Wooden-Leg said:
They could make the peninsula as unstable for the Americans as they did for the Japanese occupiers.
Click to expand...

Which was really hardly at all, until the Japanese were totally defeated by others.

Armed Korean fighters, commandos and and terrorists really only had the tiniest effects on Korean or Japanese soil from 1910-1945. Most successful ops they had were in China. There were some mass protests in Korea 1919-1920, thoroughly suppressed and unrevived for the rest of the occupation.
 
Omund the Wooden-Leg said:
Exactly. The Koreans just wanted freedom from Imperialist occupation and the chance of a life to fully develop themselves and each other.
Click to expand...

I'd be very hard-pressed to frame the North Korean government as a gang of courageous freedom fighters. They knew quite precisely what they wanted from the start, and that was to establish a Stalinist dictatorship in Korea. Which in OTL they successfully did up in the North.
 
Max Sinister said:
Yeah, what was up with MacArthur anyway? Why was he willing to start WW3? Just because he was too full of himself?
Click to expand...

I don't think its possible to explain what was up with MacArthur, there was a lot going on there.

nj6fb9su6pz21.jpg
 
Probably how President Dewey would have handled it. Public declaration - this is it. Intervene and we fight but not otherwise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top