Everybody knows that America is traumatized by the Vietnam war. Why aren't they traumatized about Korea? I think Korea was a more fierce war the vietnam. In 10 years in Vietnam 58,184 Americans were killed. In 3 Years in Korea 36,913 Americans were killed. Had the Korean war lasted 10 years then the Americans would have suffered twice as much casualties then they had in Vietnam. 120,000 men. But there are alot of vietnam movies. And only M.A.S.H is situated in Korea. What is so different from the Korean war?
my guess is that when korea occured we were just coming off wwII and korea was relativly small compared to wwII. Also i dont think that there was a draft for korea? corect me if im wrong. Plus a lot of the youth in the early 60s started to apprication communism and revolutions from Che and the cubans, so they would b more sympathtic to the north vietnamise then ppl ten years b4 were to korea
i'm sorry, but that's just a little bit arrogant. what about the casualties on the other side? if you had've bothered to think of THAT maybe, just maybe the country Laos may have come into mind... Laos was bombed horribly for their arrising communism, but since "we" didn't suffer many casualties there, nobody even hears about it. Laos was bombed the equivalent of a plane load of bombs every 8 minutes for nine years. In fact, it was bombed so badly that not only can the people not go out into feral land without the likely-hood of being blown up (think tribes), but they were bombed so much that the people commonly use dud shells just for troughs and housing material (also because they are so poor[partly because of how bombed they were]). But it seems that people were more concerned with "our" people dying. rather pathetic either way. Oh, and I believe it was the most bombed country in the history of the world...
Yes, you're right. It is by far the most bombed country in the world. Cambodia was also bombed because the Ho Chi Minh trail ran through it. Not only has this resulted in the same problems as Laos (unexploded ordanance), but the bombing campaign in East Cambodia (wether inadvertently or not....) actually helped Pol-Pot and the Khmer Rogue take control of the country, who then bought down terrible suffering in the form of mass starvation, genocide and torture, upon the population. Ironically, it was only until the Khmer Rogue started targetting ethnic Vietnamese in the South-East of the country (and even over the border into the Mekong Delta in Vietnam itself) did this end, when the new Vietnamese Communist regieme invaded and liberated Cambodians from the forced labour camps!!!
ah but you see america was traumatised its just that at that time no-one had "got in touch with their feelings" . america's way of getting over the low of getting out of korea was guess what?! getting into vietnam! hundreds of thousands of vets and their generals propelled america into the next war, its kind of a cycle of violence. eisenhower warned america about the dangers of getting hooked on war and its dealers who made money from war. people who didn't want to get involved with the next war like vietnam just got locked up, spyed upon or shot, from president kennedy downwards. theres not much difference with america's wars, they are usually overseas against a technologically inferior people. what matters most is the kill rate and the acquisition of raw materials from the foreign country. every war perpetuates another war there is no end nor reason. i guess by the seventies and sixties with heaps of people smoking pot and other stuff, people just sat back and wondered what the hell was going on. the germans had this problem, the first world war wasn't a freakish event, they had been going into wars for a longtime, ww1 just led into ww2 because the vets of ww1 knew nothing else but war, most of them had gone crazy under artillery bombardment for 4 years. germany eventually had its cycle of violence broken by decisive and utter defeat. history shows that civillisations precipitate their own demise. it will be interesting to see what america will undergo during the same process as the germany, rome, athens etc
we had less problems with korea because a lot more seasoned veterans went in, not so many young boys, most of the casualties were older as opposed to 18 year old conscripts, korea also wasn't america's longest war, it also could be classed as a victory on some twisted level (that many people die it's no victory) and as to laos and cambodia 25 percent of bombs didn't explode, that means that they sit as unexploded munitions, many villages are built of bombs and bomb components, people still die from these things god bless america?
cambodias a shit hole. its a holiday in cambodia, where you'll do what youre told *sings song* my grandpa was in the korean war. ive always wondered why no one really talks about it screw
we made cambodia that shit hole......... thank you very much america, destroying peoples lives since before 1776.......
Yes indeed there was a draft for Korea. Just to get that out of the way. It was, however, by no means as extensive or prolonged as the vietnam draft. Probably the chief reason, though not the only reason, that we were so much more "traumatized" by vietnam than Korea is the length of the thing. 18 year old kids got drafted and killed in Korea as well as in Vietnam, but in Korea it only happened for 3 years. Had Korea lasted 10 years we would have been just as traumatized by it as by Vietnam. And on the other hand if Vietnam had only lasted 3 years nobody would talk about it today.
Umm, Quest Techie. America as a nation didn't exist before 1776. How about this one "America, failing to teach kids our own history since before um . . . gee when was it now 1492? 1066? Jupiter? peanut butter sandwich? 2+2=17? gee I don't know"
Korea is often referred to as America's "forgotten war." The U.S. had just gotten out of a long and terrible war (WWII) and no one, civilian or the military wanted to think about another war, so everyone pretended it wasn't really happening. Denial is an incredibly powerful thing.
Also, viet nam happened in an age when news was mroe widley reported, and everyone enw what was happening there.
By the time the cease-fire was reached in 1953, public opinion in America was turning against support for the Korean war despite strong anti-communist sentiments. If the war had continued we would have started to see growing dissent such as seen in the 60s. One difference in the two wars is geography. Korea is not filled with jungles for guerilla troops to hide in like Vietnam. Also Korea is a peninsula, so while during the Vietnam war the Viet Cong could retreat into Laos and Cambodia, the North Korean soldiers could only retreat back into North Korea, robbing them of a strategic advantage.
Korea was also an essentially "traditional" war. We knew who were were fighting, we knew who the emey was. It was great big army vs. great big army. We were fighting just the kind of enemy that the military was trained to fight and that the public was used to hearing about in the news. Not so in Vietnam. The very nature of the enemy in Vietnam scared the shit out of both the military and the general public. Stalker in the woods ready to jump out, kill you in a very nasty way, and disappear into the woods again.
