Should we have fought harder in the Korean War?

[CapnAwesome]

This is an idea that I've been thinking about more and more and it's a hard one for me to come to grips with since I generally have considered myself a pacifistic/non-interventionist.

Most people are aware of the totally messed up state of North Korea, where people live in a starvation/slave state, everyone worships the Kims as though they were living Gods, and there are literally concentration camps where generations of people are born and die. Comparatively South Korea is a well off democracy that enjoys the relative freedoms of the first world. My question is: should we have fought harder and longer in the Korean war and made all of Korea more like South Korea? A lot of times wars like Vietnam and Korea are portrayed as a complete waste of American lives, but when you consider that generations of people in North Korea are living in a brainwashed slave state and we helped save generations of South Koreans from living under the same slave state, it's hard to say that the lives weren't spent in a greater moral good and wouldn't it be an even greater moral good if we had stayed longer and liberated all of Korea for the future?

Keep in mind these are not rhetorical questions, I'm really not sure.

[vorlon13]

Still a wonderment to me LeMay didn't go off the reservation and nuke'em.

[Minimalist]

No one gave enough of a shit about NK on either side to pay the price to continue fighting.

[CapnAwesome]

No one gave enough of a shit about NK on either side to pay the price to continue fighting.

Yeah, but should we have? I mean look at what happened. Also was the Korean war worth fighting? I'm having a hard time saying that it wasn't right now.

[Minimalist]

I don't buy the notion that people living 60 years ago had to consult a crystal ball to see what would happen in the future.  The world had just come off WWII and the stomach for war must have been at a low ebb.

The battle lines had swung back and forth and it just wasn't worth the effort.

I wish today's politicians had that kind of sense.

[CapnAwesome]

I don't buy the notion that people living 60 years ago had to consult a crystal ball to see what would happen in the future.  The world had just come off WWII and the stomach for war must have been at a low ebb.

The battle lines had swung back and forth and it just wasn't worth the effort.

I wish today's politicians had that kind of sense.

It wasn't worth the effort at the time, but my question is with the benefit of hindsight was it worth the effort? I mean millions of people, generations of people were saved from a slave state and yet millions were also abandoned to it. Also it could have well become a quagmire or something much worse had we stayed and not even had made a difference.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

My mother was a combat nurse during the Korean War, and - based on her stories - I'm not sure the war could have been fought any harder.

Additionally, with the Chinese backing the North, I doubt very much that a longer war would have been worth the effort or the human cost.

Boru

[popeyespappy]

Fought harder? Dad was 17 when he landed at Inchon with the 3rd battalion 7th Marines. He didn't leave Korea until after the cease fire. You suggest to him we should have fought harder in Korea, and you'll probably end up punched in the face by an 82 year old.

[CapnAwesome]

Fought harder? Dad was 17 when he landed at Inchon with the 3rd battalion 7th Marines. He didn't leave Korea until after the cease fire. You suggest to him we should have fought harder in Korea, and you'll probably end up punched in the face by an 82 year old.

Maybe harder is the wrong word, fought longer? Not left? You know what I mean.

[abaris]

Yeah, but should we have? I mean look at what happened. Also was the Korean war worth fighting? I'm having a hard time saying that it wasn't right now.

The South Korean regime wasn't that much better than the North Korean one at the time in question. As usual, it was mainly the civilians suffering, with millions of casualties and cities razed to the ground.

What if isn't a valid question in history, as you well know. Kim the older could have overstretched himself by swallowing the whole peninsula and his regime could have fallen sooner. On the other hand, China would have backed him, no matter what. The questions to be asked has two aspects. What would have been better for the Korean people at large? And what would have been better for the West?