The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam

action soon. At that point the varying American intelligence agencies placed the entire Communist world under intense scrutiny and came away convinced that it was not the Russians nor any of their Eastern European satellites. Perhaps, Kennan thought, it might be Korea. Back from the military came the word that a Communist attack there “was practically out of the question: the South Korean forces were so well armed and trained that they were clearly superior to those of the North.”
     
     
    SO WHEN THE reports of Singlaub’s agents were finally integrated into the larger intelligence yield, they came back from Willoughby’s shop with an “F-6” label—agents not considered trustworthy, and reports unlikely to be true—the lowest possible rating. And thus when the In Min Gun advanced the morning of June 25, they caught the South Korean troops and their American advisers completely unaware. It was not close to a fair fight. The North Korean troops were very good and very well equipped. In many instances their weapons had been newly manufactured in Russia and shipped to them specifically for use in this offensive. The soldiers were well trained, and they outnumbered the South Korean troops almost two to one. Close to half of them were combat tested, some forty-five thousand Korean nationals who had fought in China having been gradually transferred from the Chinese Communist army to In Min Gun units with Mao’s approval. These were men who in many cases had been fighting for more than a decade and had survived a war where the other side always had superior weaponry. The In Min Gun was an exceptionally accurate reflection of the authoritarian society just then taking root in the North: a controlled, disciplined, extremely hierarchical, highly indoctrinated army, fighting for a highly controlled, disciplined, hierarchical government. The soldiers were mainly of peasant background and their grievances were very real: they were embittered against their poverty, against the Japanese who had ruled them so cruelly, against the upper-class Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese; and now they were indoctrinated against the Americans, who in their minds had replaced the Japanese in the South. They were nothing if not hardened: the dogmas they believed had been repeatedly validated by the cruelty of their own and their families’ lives.
     
     
    IN SEOUL THE Americans who were part of the small political and military advisory presence were somewhat slow to react, slow to understand that it was the real thing and that as many as one hundred thousand North Korean soldiers were in play. The North Korean assault had begun at 4 A.M. on Sunday in Korea, or 3 P.M. Saturday in Washington. John Muccio, the American ambassador to South Korea, considered an unusually able State Department official,heard of it four hours after it started, when he got a call from one of his top aides. “Brace yourself for a shock,” Everett Drumwright, the American chargé d’affaires in Seoul told Muccio. “The Communists are hitting all along the front.” Syngman Rhee heard of it at 6:30 A.M. , which means that for at least an hour and a half he did not alert the Americans. After Muccio spoke to Drumwright, they decided to meet at the embassy. On the way over there he ran into Jack James, a United Press reporter who had intended to do some work and then go on a picnic that day. Muccio told James that he was checking out a report that the North Koreans had attacked all along the border. Just as James entered the embassy, he ran into a friend who worked in military intelligence. “What do you hear from the border?” the officer asked James. “Not very much yet,” James replied. “What do you hear?” “Hell, they’re supposed to have crossed everywhere except in the Eighth Division Area,” the officer answered.
    With that, James went to a phone and started making calls frantically, trying to piece it all together. A little later, around