Transcript
James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from Imperial War Museums.
Eddie Izzard: My name is Eddie Izzard. People would know me from, uh, nowhere really well just wandering around and go, oh, isn't that, isn't that Eddie Izzard? So I am just a person who's gonna ask questions of experts about Korea, the Korean War in particular.
Hilary Roberts: My name's Hillary Roberts and I'm curator of photography in the late 20th Century Conflicts team here at IWM. My job is together with others, give you some sense of how it happened and what its consequences were.
James Taylor: Eddie has joined our curator, Hillary Roberts, aboard one of IWM's landmark sites, HMS Belfast, to try and understand one of the major conflicts of the Cold War era. And in this episode, we explore the Korean War.
Clip: North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. Breaking news that headline, North Korea issuing its newest threat.
[A clip in Korean]
Clip: They will be met with Fire and Fury, like the world has never seen.
James Taylor: Kim Il Sung, Truman, the 38th parallel, the United Nations. Just some of the names and phrases associated with this conflict, but how are they all connected and how much further does the story go?
Owen Miller: It really changed from being almost a civil war to being a war that people at the time thought was gonna be the third World War.
James Taylor: On our way, we'll explore iconic items from the museum's collection and meet someone who actually fought in the Korean War so that we can all, for at least one moment in time, understand what happened when, and crucially why. All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor, and this is Conflict of Interest. We begin out in the open air standing on a steel gangway, which connects HMS Belfast to London South Bank.
Eddie Izzard: London is, is humming all around us and Tower Bridge is on our... the Tower London, very noticeable, visible landmark. And also in front of us this HMS Belfast, which is moored here permanently is a, uh, a part of the Imperial War Museum, and it's a gray day, which London or maybe the UK, maybe the north of Europe, actually is good at gray weather. We could have not had wars back in the old days and just talked about the weather.
James Taylor: Before the rain catches up with them, the pair head down the walkway, and onto the busy deck of HMS Belfast. On route, we find out what Eddie already knows about Korea.
Hilary Roberts: Eddie, you've not been to the Korean peninsula as I understand it. So what words come to mind when you think of that region?
Eddie Izzard: So, South Korea, I would say a democratic South Korea, a lot of business enterprise pop pop groups, young pop groups, boy, boy bands and girl bands, which the whole world is sort of cutting on to. North Korea, dictatorship has been for many years and always threatening to unleash into continental ballistic missiles, which I assume is long list for nuclear warheads. Always threatening things and doing what dictatorships do, mind control and everyone's has to... and again, lots of people marching in straight line
Hilary Roberts: choreography of power
Eddie Izzard: yes, and it's, um, one has got to understand what's behind that.
James Taylor: From the main deck, Hillary and Eddie make their way down a long and slightly precarious ladder into the bowels of the ship.
Eddie Izzard: Now, come down from the upper deck though on the, from the main deck, which is the outer deck of the, uh, of HMS Belfast. I do remember seeing in films that a lot of this, um, people would put their feet up on sideways, go forwards down, and they would slide down very fast in emergencies. There's a lot of white, the, the electronic things which are attached are all painted light blue. Stand out from the whiteness and phones, old dial phones. Yeah, I remember dial phones from my years. If you're growing up and you're a young person from anywhere in the world listening, then a dial phone won't make any sense to you. But this was attached to the wall and we used to dial things and used to turn, turn it around in a circle and clicks would happen.
James Taylor: We are getting slightly off topic, but luckily the admirals quarters and our first object are nearby. Once seated, Hillary begins to tease out Eddie's knowledge of the Korean War itself.
Eddie Izzard: Hillary, I'll tell you, it was before Vietnam, which gets a lot more press these days. So for me it's early fifties, 1952 seems to ring a bell in my head. Somewhere around there. I think the aggression came from the north. I was gonna say communist forces against, inverted against democratic forces, in inverted commas, but M*A*S*H the film and then the TV series is, is set in that conflict in the Korean conflict. UN came in as a peacekeeping force, but it's got stuck. The, the whole peacekeeping thing has not moved since that time, but it's in this sort of wary deante between North and South and North threatening belligerence, which is what dictators do.
Hilary Roberts: That's a great idea. That is really what people generally understand. Uh, Korea as a whole has been in the news regularly, off and on as new weapons come to mind as tensions go to and fro. So it's not a forgotten conflict, but the nature of what happened I think is probably misunderstood because the point you made about the M*A*S*H television series.
Eddie Izzard: Yeah
Hilary Roberts: which I grew up with, its setting Korea, but actually it tells you more about Vietnam, which was something rather different. So you know, you have a very good general knowledge of the conflict.
Eddie Izzard: Well, I was gonna be in the forces, and I think with a military mind, which sounds very odd as someone who hasn't been in the military, but that's just how I think. I, I can't explain. Well, I came out as trans back in 1985, and if you remember, back to 85, coming out as trans then was very toxic. So I try, I've, I've inhaled a lot of military history since Alexander to now.
Hilary Roberts: Uh, which is something that perhaps the public who know and love you wouldn't expect.
James Taylor: But Eddie is a little less sure about the geography, something she wants to clarify before they get started.
Eddie Izzard: Where is Korea? because I know it's in what we consider the far East from a British perspective, but what are the countries around it?
Hilary Roberts: So Korea is a peninsula region in East Asia and consists of the Korean peninsula, the mainland right, and thousands of islands in the surrounding waters. It's bordered by China, to the northwest,
Hilary Roberts: And Russia to the northeast.
Eddie Izzard: Ah.
Hilary Roberts: It is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan. So those three countries, China, Russia, which at the time of the Korean War was of course the Soviet Union. Yep. And Japan, which at the time of the Korean War was occupied by the Americans.
Eddie Izzard: Yeah
Hilary Roberts: were the countries who were closest to the conflict and liable to be most affected by it.
Eddie Izzard: Gotcha. So tell me what was happening in Korea? What was the political situation in Korea before the Korean War?
Hilary Roberts: So from 1910, Korea had been governed by the Japanese Empire. It was part of Japan. It was not known as Korea, as known as Joseon. And during the Second World War, obviously it was affiliated with Japan. But it was not really until the final stages of the war that Koreans were expected to actively fight for the Japanese. They were required to support Japan's war industry. So many of them were conscripted to work in factories and deported to do that, but by the end of the war, a number of Koreans were serving with the Japanese armed forces. Now, in 1943 at the conference of Cairo, the question of what would happen to Korea came up in discussions between the United States and the United Kingdom. In other words, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, neither of them knew very much about Korea. Nevertheless, they were in the position of making decisions. So it was suggested at that point that Korea would. Become an independent united nation.
Eddie Izzard: Right
Hilary Roberts: but not at once because it was felt that after so long under Japanese control, it didn't have the infrastructure and the leaders and the basic systems to function.
Eddie Izzard: Right
Hilary Roberts: and so it was decided that the United Nations, which would come into being at the end of the war, would act as a trustee during this process of transition.
Eddie Izzard: Okay
Hilary Roberts: Now at the end of the war when Japan was defeated in August, 1945, obviously Korea was no longer under their control. There was a sort of a very quick decision, what should we do now?
And the Soviet Union, Stalin and America, the American forces decided to separate Korea into zones of influence. Temporary zones of influence along the 38th parallel, which was chosen because it was halfway down the peninsula.
Eddie Izzard: Right.
Hilary Roberts: They didn't intend a permanent division. This was temporary.
James Taylor: This feels like a good time to bring in another expert who can help us understand the tensions in Korea after the Second World War.
Owen Miller: Hello, my name's Owen Miller. I'm a lecturer in Korean studies at SOAS in the University of London.
Eddie Izzard: Wow. Your lecturer in Korean studies, just in specific. Wow so you really know I can ask you everything.
Owen Miller: Let's try. Yeah.
Eddie Izzard: So Owen, I didn't know that Korea was under Japanese, uh, control all these.... after World War II. What did the, the civilians in Korea feel about how the country was being partitioned or this...
Owen Miller: yeah, I mean, it was a, it was a horribly kind of ironic moment for Koreans. I think it was liberation in August, 1945, but at the same time it was immediate division and occupation. After the Second World War, you have decolonization, sweeping the world or not just the defeated powers, their colonies, ideally being decolonized, also the winning power. I mean the countries that supposedly won the war, like Britain and France. It also became a big issue, as we know with India and so on, another country that was, was partitioned because of decolonization, so that decolonization is part of it. And for Koreans, it was not going the way they wanted. So they got rid of one occupier immediately occupied by two countries. So they saw it really as a new colonialism, right? They were very dismayed by the idea of trusteeship. You know, this is a very patronizing idea. Uh, and then on top of that, you immediately have another complication, which is the Cold War. So the Cold War begins in, usually people say 1947. And that immediately complicates because you have that hardening of this division between the Soviet Union and, and the Americans.
Eddie Izzard: So in June, 1950, why did that happen? And what was, what was happening to start that off?
Owen Miller: The beginning of the war, we have to go back to the year before when Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, who had essentially been installed by the Soviets as their preferred leader. And he decided already in 1949, he didn't want to stand the situation of divided Korea. He wanted to unite Korea under his own rule. And to do that, he needed to attack and invade South Korea. And to do that, he needed the backing of the Russians and the Chinese. So he in 1949, began to go and visit Stalin and, and talk to Mao and say, are you gonna back me if I invade and, and, and unify my country?
Hilary Roberts: I mean, he had Cause didn't he? Because the United States was showing signs of disengaging.
Owen Miller: Yeah.
Hilary Roberts: From the south.
Owen Miller: Yeah so I think there was, there's in his famous or infamous speech, I think it was made by Truman in early 1950, in which he sort of expressly put the Korean Peninsula outside the defense perimeter of the Americans in the Pacific region. Um, so Kim Il Sung was going to Stalin constantly saying, please, please let me invade, please. And Stalin and the Russians really didn't wanna be involved, not directly involved. And, uh, one of the reasons he, he agreed that was on the basis that Mao's forces would really substitute if necessary for the Soviet Union. And, you know, the KPA, the North Korean Army was far superior at, at that point to the ROK Army. And you end up with the KPA driving south into South Korea and taking Seoul within a few days, taking the capital. Um, and then of course the Republic of Korea, Army trying to fight back. So if the Americans had not decided to
Hilary Roberts: The arrival of the Americans was a factor in the extent to which the Soviets and indeed the Chinese were willing to engage openly,
Eddie Izzard: ah
Hilary Roberts: in the conflict. So here you had the potential of nuclear powers confronting each other,
Eddie Izzard: right
Hilary Roberts: and the whole conflict spiraling very quickly out of control with devastating consequences. Um, when Kim Iil Sung's forces invaded South Korea, the immediate response of the Americans was to seek authority from the United Nations to respond.
Owen Miller: To put it in a very simple way, you could see that when the war began in the summer of 1950, it was a civil war between two countries, both claimed they should be the whole of Korea. By the end of that year, it really changed from being a conflict on the Korean Peninsula, almost a civil war to being very much an international war, and it always kept that kind of dual character. It's something that historians spend a lot of time puzzling over with the Korean War, which is it, but actually you don't have to choose. It was definitely both. It was definitely a civil war and an international war, and even war that people at the time really thought was gonna be the Third World War.
Clip: On Sunday, June 25th, communist forces attacked the Republic of Korea. This attack has made it clear beyond all doubts that the International Communist Movement is willing to use arm invasion to conquer independent nations. An act of aggression such as this, it creates a very real danger to the security of all free nations and communist invasion was lost in great forest.
James Taylor: It's time to bring in our first object of the day. Hillary places what looks like a photograph in Eddie's hands.
Hilary Roberts: It is quite an interesting photograph.
Eddie Izzard: It's a collage, looks like
Hilary Roberts: it is indeed a collage. It says a montage made up of dozens of photographs.
Eddie Izzard: Um, there's a person who looks like a, a Korean citizen that maybe a someone from rural area who's pointing up at the sky there. And then you've got various soldiers, the, the some with American helmet. Some with more British helmets. They've got some down to towards the bottom. We've got some naval officers. We've got what look like Korean forces in military uniforms as well. So there's not only the rural citizens there, but there's, there's a depiction of Korean people in, in combat, someone, I mean, it's one of the
Hilary Roberts: most complex examples of photo montage in our collections.
Eddie Izzard: Yeah.
Hilary Roberts: And so actually producing that work, we we'll have taken a considerable amount of time.
Eddie Izzard: You can imagine how many okays have had to happen all the way up to presidential level in different countries, okaying it and people United Nations saying, yeah, okay, let's go with that one.
Hilary Roberts: Well, probably a lonely man in a dark room, but you know, today, of course, with the digital technology, we take this sort of thing for granted in those days, film and darkroom processing, and in Korea where you are dealing with very hot, stuffy damp conditions. It's really tricky piece of work to produce. Um, the United Nations, you know, it was, uh, at this point in time as an organization, it was very wet behind the ears. And the whole purpose behind this montage was to celebrate the fact that for the first time nations of the United Nations were working together in this, in the context of this conflict, this is the first time that the United Nations had deployed a force in war.
James Taylor: After North Korea's invasion of the South on the 25th of June, 1950, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution calling on them to immediately cease hostilities and withdrawal to the 38th Parallel the line dividing North and South Korea, when Kim Il Sung refused the UN called its member states to intervene militarily under the structure of a force called the UN Command. The United Nations led by the USA was concerned that if North Korea's invasion went unchecked, it would provoke similar communist aggression elsewhere in the world. And suddenly the Korean War became a major international conflict.
Owen Miller: Just only a couple of days after the war broke out at dawn on the June the 25th. So two days later.
Eddie Izzard: What year again?
Owen Miller: 1950.
Eddie Izzard: 1950.
Owen Miller: So, and June the 27th I believe is the first time when the United Nations met to discuss this. Um, I, I think we do have to be honest here and say that this was largely an American war, so it's certainly significant that many countries fought in it, but they were doing this, I think, out of any sense of obligation to the US or out of a sense that they might get something in return for it from the US countries like Ethiopia, places like. Turkey, Turkey and Greece both fought in the war, which I find amazing on the same side. Um,
Hilary Roberts: it's actually a remarkable situation because it's the first iteration of trying to legitimize going to war in a foreign country.
Owen Miller: Yeah.
Hilary Roberts: Um, I mean, what happened was that in security council resolution number 82, the United Nations condemned what North Korea had done and then a security council, resolution 83 was passed, which recommended member states provide military assistance to the Republic of Korea. Now, the Security Council has a small cohort of permanent members, including the United States, Britain and France.
Eddie Izzard: France,
Hilary Roberts: and the Soviet Union
Eddie Izzard: yeah
Hilary Roberts: The remarkable thing about it is that at this particular point in time, the Soviet Union was boycotting the United Nations in protest at its refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Mao's regime in the Republic of China and mainland China.
Eddie Izzard: Right.
Hilary Roberts: So this was a lesson which I think the Soviet Union learnt through bitter experience. You know, if you boycott something, then things will go ahead without you having any control. So we ended up with 21 separate nations actually fighting in Korea,
Eddie Izzard: including UK.
Hilary Roberts: Including the UK and a further 16 supplying humanitarian aid.
Clip: In Korea. United Nations troops push on and the cautious advance against the communists, and it's up to the infantry to clear out the pockets of diehard communists.
James Taylor: The Korean War didn't start well for the UN at the outset of the conflict. Kim Il Sung's, communist Northern forces were significantly superior in manpower and equipment to both South Korea and the UN. And after suffering major territorial losses, the combined South Korean and forces were pushed all the way back to the Pusan perimeter, a defensive line at the southernmost tip of the Korean Peninsula. South Korea was on the brink of defeat, and the war looked lost until the tide was turned at the Battle of Inchon on the 15th of September, 1950.
Owen Miller: I think the next significant event is the Inchon Landing, which is obviously very famous. It was widely seen as a decisive and very well planned and thought out military action, which was designed by General MacArthur, and this was to split the North Korean forces in two by landing at Inchon, which is the port near to Seoul, so right in the middle of the peninsula and it was very successful. It managed to do what it intended to do and force the North Korean forces back and the UN forces then began chasing them up the peninsula towards the border with China, which is at two Rivers, the Yalu River and the Tumen River.
James Taylor: The Battle of Inchon is widely seen as one of the riskiest, yet most successful military operations in history. Under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur, US Marines launched a surprise amphibious landing at the strategic port of Inchon. The terrain was incredibly unfavorable for a landing, and many senior generals considered the operation impossible, but it was a resounding success.
Clip: A mighty fleet steams off Korea on board men are busy. It's good to be busy when you're waiting, and a dirty rifle can mean death. They're passing out ammunition now. Something big's about to break. While the rest of the world fears a collapse of the United Nations front in Korea, MacArthur is striking back at the very heart of the enemy landing craft leads....
James Taylor: After the landings, US and South Korean troops were able to break out of the Pusan perimeter chatter, the North Korean defenses, and retake South Korea's capital, Seoul, and they continued to push North.
Hilary Roberts: And that was a red flag for China. And that was the point when Chinese forces became involved.
Owen Miller: The entry of the Chinese forces in October, November, 1950. Um, that's a really big turning point. And the Chinese really then took the leading role on the, on the North Korean side, fighting the UN. The Soviet Union then provided aid of various kinds, but really, no, no Russians fought in the war, apart from, um, some pilots actually did.
Hilary Roberts: They flew in Chinese uniforms and they flew aircraft with Chinese markings. The aircraft themselves were mixed, so Russian,
Owen Miller: so that was the extent of the direct Soviet involvement, but it was real. And, and of course they were there backing the Chinese and the North Koreans. Gotcha. So it's at that point, it becomes, is it any longer just a defensive action or a police action as the Americans called it to recover South Korea? Or does it become then almost an offensive war to, to liberate the whole of North Korea and to do the reverse of what Kim Il Sung was trying to do?
Eddie Izzard: Well, it looks like a birthday cake, but isn't a birthday cake. It's just being presented. Oh, things. These are items. So the actual, so this is an item, which looks like a bag to me. Looks like a looks, no maybe just a bag. And come and touch this. I can give you gloves. Oh, we need gloves. Need gloves to touch things. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna do just one glove and I'll, and with my nails, I'm probably gonna rip through. Okay. I'm pulling. Hillary, you're gonna have a look at this as well. And Owen, have you, do you want a glove? There's a glove under there if you want one.
Owen Miller: Okay, let's go for it, let's look.
Eddie Izzard: One handed glove. So this looks like a backpack.
Hilary Roberts: Yes.
Eddie Izzard: Is this a facsimile or is an actual.
Hilary Roberts: It's a genuine one.
Eddie Izzard: Wow. So this would've been made in North Korea?
Hilary Roberts: Well, it was made in, in China we believe. It's a very simple, very light, not particularly robust rucksack in which the North Korean soldier would've been expected to carry personal possessions, water, food, everything. And it is a sample of the kind of equipment that the North Korean forces had in 1950. Uh, their uniforms were equally simple and lightweight. So none of the sophistication of the Western, I mean, if you look at the straps, they are, yeah, the straps just tied, hand tied. Um, there are no buckles, there's no metal anywhere in this. There's nothing..
Eddie Izzard: Just stitching.
Hilary Roberts: It is literally a hand sown sort of bag.
Owen Miller: Obviously they had some supplies coming from China and, and the Soviet Union, but shortages were just such a huge problem for North Korea in the war.
Hilary Roberts: They, they really were, and indeed, on both sides, because of course, South Korea in the prelude to the war had been in such a state of chaos.
Eddie Izzard: Right
Hilary Roberts: So yes, equipment supplied by third parties, friendly countries, and weapons, of course was absolutely vital. But yes, this one was made in China and supplied by China.
James Taylor: China directly entered the Korean War In October, 1950, China's leader Mao Zedong ordered hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops under the banner of the Chinese people's volunteer army to cross the Yellow River from China into Korea. Their goal was to repel the UN forces, which had crossed the 38th parallel and were advancing into North Korea. Eddie begins to unwrap a second object.
Eddie Izzard: So this is Body Armor. Is it from North or the South?
Hilary Roberts: This is American Body Armor. It's the M 69 fragmentation vest.
Eddie Izzard: It's heavy.
Hilary Roberts: It weighs eight pounds.
Eddie Izzard: Eight pounds.
Hilary Roberts: And the key thing about the material is that it's nylon,
Eddie Izzard: right
Hilary Roberts: but prior to this, the Western allies used body armor in those times, most of the protection came from metal.
Eddie Izzard: So this is just lay layers and layers and layers of nylon.
Hilary Roberts: That's right. And the aim is that it will stop shell fragments.
Eddie Izzard: Right
Hilary Roberts: or small arms fire. At least it will not kill. It's designed to save lives. Not every American soldier had this in Korea. There was, you know, some resistance to actually being weighed down in the heat of all cold of Korea work with something like this. You know, imagine trying to hike through mountain terrain for miles in blistering heat wearing one of these.
Eddie Izzard: Yeah.
Hilary Roberts: But soldiers were told this jacket will save your life. I mean, the contrast between our first object, the very simple, straightforward, cheap light rucksack and this marvel at the time of the most modern military technology where they've done their ballistics research and they're using this new artificial material nylon. It gives a very good sense of the equipment of the opposing sides and what the nature of the war was.
Eddie Izzard: But it's an interesting thing for my analysis of warfare, it's morale and motivation is more important than anything. And I think Vietnam proved that in their thousand years of fighting off the French before they refer off the Americans, they just kept going and they had the will and the political will in the north, and they just wouldn't stop fighting. Now, what is this?
James Taylor: At this point, a brightly colored square of fabric is carefully lifted from a box and placed on the table between Hillary and Eddie.
Hilary Roberts: This is a handkerchief which was produced by the Chinese people's volunteers. So in other words, those, uh, from Republican China who were serving in Korea. And it was distributed in the context of Christmas as a Christmas greeting to United Nations troops in 1951. And so what you have there around the edge is a slogan which says, from the Chinese people's Volunteers, Korea 1951, demand peace, stop the war. And I can't read that upside down. So Eddie turns it up for me. It's no disgrace to quit fighting in this unjust war, withdraw all foreign troops from Korea, leave Korea to the Koreans. So you know, that's a very, very plain message to English speaking troops in Korea. Then you have Christmas greetings and drawings, which all follow the same sort of theme.
Eddie Izzard: And there's one image here and it's obviously trying to encourage people why fight for him. And there's a picture of someone who looks more Asian than, than British. So do you know anyone know who that 'him' is there?
Eddie Izzard: They actually have yellow hair. I think they're the Simpsons family.
Owen Miller: Yes quite possibly. Yes. So this is what a Chinese propagandist thinks, an American family, a typical American family looks like, and they're trying to get their, get to the heartstrings of the American soldiers. They also did, I mean this is obviously not aimed at black soldiers, but they had propaganda specifically aimed at American Black soldiers.
Eddie Izzard: They weren't allowed to fight in the Second World War officially, but they were, and they, I don't think in, in the Korean War, but yes, in by the Vietnam War.
Owen Miller: They, they were fighting in the Korean War.
Hilary Roberts: They were,
Owen Miller: but they were segregated.
Eddie Izzard: It was insane because Black soldiers, African American soldiers fought in the American Civil War, which ended in 1865, which an insane thing that happened in America having fought a whole, you know, it's about a hundred thousand of them having fought...
Hilary Roberts: They were known as B, the Buffalo soldiers, the segregated regiments.
Eddie Izzard: Right, right.
Owen Miller: So it is very much, this is really playing on segregation, playing on the lack of civil rights and the fact that, you know, we are, we we're the ones who are really on your side, the Chinese, we are communists, we believe in equality for all. Your government does not believe in that.
James Taylor: The team is on the move once again, back up the ladder and through winding corridors onto the deck of HMS Belfast, where Hillary wants to tell Eddie a little more about the history of the ship and the important role it played during the Korean War. They stop at a large wooden plaque with brass lettering.
Eddie Izzard: So we have a plaque here, which has ah, the, the where HSB Belfast source service in the Arctic in 1942 in the Arctic. Wow.
Hilary Roberts: So HMS Belfast was constructed in the Second World War and saw action of the beaches of D-Day in 1944. It had an interesting career during that time, as you can see from the commemorative board here, it has battle honors, the Arctic Convoys of 1943 Normandy, 1944 D-Day, and then you have Korea 1950 to 1952, and it arrived off the coast of Korea in July, 1950. So very soon after the fighting started and the ship was there off and on for two years. It became known by the Americans as the straight shooting ship. Because its gunnery was so accurate, it fired thousands of shells. And if you look up above the board, you can see three of its six inch guns now it has 12 of those altogether, and they were used to bombard targets on land, so railways, defenses, roads, whatever needed to provide cover and it fired more shells during the Korean War than it did during the entire second World War.
Eddie Izzard: Right. If ships bombarding land forces or land installations, it's very difficult for the opposing people in those situations. If you, if you assume that they're hitting the right targets, it's very difficult for the opposing forces to get back at the plane. They have to actually send airplanes in to stop the, the, the ship and the guns can be massive, huge things such just these massive shells coming in from the boats, just like freight trains coming in and they're just causing massive destruction. They were just, these things could bring a lot to bear in a situation, a military situation,
Hilary Roberts: the, the, the part played by the Royal Navy in Korea was very important because Korea is a peninsula with hundreds of miles of coastline and it's very easy for an army to become cut off, you know, a penzer movement, and so landings and evacuations were all part of the war. So Belfast's job was not only to bombard, but also to protect and to assist. It's worth noting that neither the north nor South Korea had much in the way of a navy.
James Taylor: As Hillary finishes that thought, a third guest walks towards them.
Eddie Izzard: Hi Brian. Nice to meet you.
Brian Parritt: I'm a fan. I'm a fan.
Eddie Izzard: Thank you very. And you're brigadier.
Brian Parritt: Yeah. Yes,
Eddie Izzard: Brigadier General we should say general, shouldn't we?
Brian Parritt: The Americans do, but
Eddie Izzard: why don't we? I don't know why we don't
Brian Parritt: mean
Eddie Izzard: we're gonna call you General. General Brian.
Brian Parritt: My name's Brian Parritt. I was a regular Army officer commissioned in early 1952, like my father and grandfather and great-grandfather. I went out by boat to Hong Kong to join 20th Field Regiment in December. Uh, the Colonel got the whole regiment together, uh, and he said, I've been posted to Korea and you're all coming with me. And we landed in Korea in December, 1952 and took over in the line on Christmas Day in 1952 and were there for a year.
Eddie Izzard: Can anyone tell me what was, uh, Britain's part? Know the kingdom's part in the Korean War?
Hilary Roberts: So, 1950 Britain is still recovering from the Second World War, which had ended in 1945. It was a time of austerity. A lot of people had just been demobilized from the armed forces and were reservists. They were trying to rebuild their lives and in some cases rebuild their homes because they had been obviously bombed during air raids. So it was a very difficult time for Britain financially. Britain was borderline broke and so there wasn't a lot of money to go around, but it had many countries, its former Empire, which was morphing into a commonwealth to support, and there was an act of conflict going on in Malaya. So it's fair to say that politically the thought of going to war in Korea was not something that, you know, prompted an awful lot of enthusiasm for Attlee's Labor government. But Attlee himself saw it as fulfilling Britain's responsibilities to the United Nations, but also reinforcing Britain's relationship with the United States because at this point in time, the Soviet Union was transforming into an opponent rather than an ally.
Eddie Izzard: Yeah.
Hilary Roberts: And in terms of securing Britain, Europe and the rest of the world. Atley felt that Britain needed to do its part. Britain eventually supplied the fifth largest force to Korea in terms of manpower. But Brian, you were in the Army at the time, serving with the royal artillery. What was that like?
Brian Parritt: Well, we were the largest contingent, but we started, as you know, the intelligence that was available and misinterpreted about the strength of the, uh, North Koreans and even that they were going to attack. And so when Truman said, we will go, we had isolated units in Hong Kong, as you say, in Malaya. But there was really no form body available to go into, undertake a large combat operation, and they went, was sent without artillery support or armored support, and they were called the Woolworth Brigade because they had to borrow everything from the Americans.
Hilary Roberts: And you were a mixture of professional soldiers, regulars, reservists, those who had served in the Second World War and were called up again, and then there were national servicemen who were doing a short period of compulsory military service. How did all that blend together?
Brian Parritt: There would be a, an infrastructure, say my own troop of NCOs, senior Sergeants and WOs, who had all been in the desert or through Italy and some through Normandy and so on. But there was a few senior ranks, uh, and there were one or two, a very small number of actually regular gunners, but 75% of them were young men called up aged 18 to 20 and did a bit of basic training on a, on a ship for a month out to the far east and then put into this combat. But no, none of the conscripts were allowed to go until they were 19.
Clip: Soon another troopship will be slipping out from an English port dropping down on the tide toward the ocean beyond. For them comes a sharp break with familiar things, and as they set sail the cheers and songs hide mixed emotions. No new thing for Britain this sending of men to the far corners of the earth. What is new is the kind of force she sends a hardcore of professionals, and for the rest, young man called up for national service. This is something that affects the life of every man in Britain of military age. They all must serve their time in the armed forces. Those who were soldiers, for example, must serve with Britain's great reserve force. The territorial army, like this young man here, his days work over. He's turning up for one of the compulsory training parades. The skill and knowledge he is acquired as a national serviceman must be kept up to date, or there is no telling when he might be needing.
Hilary Roberts: This is a public information film, which was made by the successor to the Ministry of Information, the Central Office of Information, which tells the Nation all about what it means to be a national serviceman. It's called They stand Ready?
Eddie Izzard: Yeah. They're getting called up onto, uh, ships to go out. Is that, was that to Korea or was that to..
Hilary Roberts: Yes, that that, that's right. Um, they were being sent halfway around the world.
Brian Parritt: Take, took a month? Yes.
Hilary Roberts: Goodness Me
Brian Parritt: And the troops would train by firing over the back of the ship and so on. But they were really not combat training ready for hitting Korea in straight into action.
Eddie Izzard: I take it, it's, it's really difficult to train people. I was, I watched Band of Brothers, the series and now you've got people who are obviously gonna be in the, in the American Airborne and they went through a lot of training, but still, until you're under fire....
Brian Parritt: No, it's a good point. It was a pre Korea training camp in Kure in Japan.
Eddie Izzard: Oh, right.
Brian Parritt: So they would do simulated attacks and simulated ammunition fired, well actual ammunition fired at them to give them a bit of flavor. These national servicemen didn't get long training. They were thrust in at a very short notice comparatively, I mean, the gun as you get to practice firing on your guns and movement. It isn't the same as looking at a, a hoard of guys coming at you with bayonet and sitting in a trench with a rifle and so on.
Eddie Izzard: So, but Hillary, what was the po I, I see that, that that video and it showed people getting on, on onboard ships, but why did they make that?
Hilary Roberts: I think the film could be described variously as public information or propaganda.
Eddie Izzard: Right
Hilary Roberts: During the Second World War, the Ministry of Information had established a routine of producing public information films or soft propaganda, which showed British forces always in a a positive light and their successes. The Central Office of Information will have made this film because national service, of course, was something that some young men took to like ducks to water and others of course didn't.
James Taylor: Brian recounts his own experiences at the Third Battle of the Hook, a major confrontation between British and Chinese forces. Which took place in 1953 in an important strategic region of North Korea.
Brian Parritt: The Hook was a hill, which, uh, dominated the valleys in order to strike down to Seoul. The Chinese wanted to take it, so three times they launched these extremely heavy attacks by mortaring shelling for a long time and then by the Chinese charging up the hill with their bayonets to take it. And were you in, were you wounded in
Eddie Izzard: in that battle? Yes.
Brian Parritt: The Chinese swarmed up the hill, but we firing those VT shells, which burst in the air,
Eddie Izzard: right
Brian Parritt: We splattered down, and if you are running up a hill, it was pretty deadly to the Chinese, so very sensibly they started digging caves in the hills in front of it, so that would have less vulnerable time between getting out of their cave and reaching our barbed wire,
Eddie Izzard: right
Brian Parritt: and so they were putting all their soldiers in, leaving them a night. Next night they'd be ready, poised to come. And it was decided that they'd send out a company attack to go out one night and blow up the caves. And I was the young gunner officer with the fire plan to support the tack. So I went down the day before
Eddie Izzard: yep,
Brian Parritt: into the paddy and registered those targets.
James Taylor: At this point, Brian produces an object of his own. It's a ledger of references, numbers and notes scrolled on grid paper. A list of targets and caves.
Eddie Izzard: Well, you General Brian's about to get out. Ah,
Brian Parritt: that's the um, thing I was carrying.
Eddie Izzard: This is all the details here. I can see all grid references. This is all your handwriting? Yeah.
Brian Parritt: Yes.
Eddie Izzard: And remarks at the thing on rates and that just down the left hand side there's red and blue pencil,
Brian Parritt: which would gives the targets. Yes. And that night we went out through the wire, through no man's land. Um. With the sappers who had charges on poles, which were gonna put into the caves and blow them up. And being a very efficient officer. When I got in the dark and black hook, I hadn't brought a bloody torch. Um, halfway along there, we ran into a minefield and it, it was a pretty big, uh, you know, noise and lights and the two guys next to me were killed. I was knocked over but we went on and the, the infantrymen went forward on their own and put the charges in and blew the caves up.
Eddie Izzard: How were you wounded?
Brian Parritt: Through the legs.
Eddie Izzard: The legs. That's the stick, the walking stick.
Hilary Roberts: I mean, it was a lucky escape, wasn't it? All, all the way through. I mean, so many young men were taken prisoner in those circumstances, right by the Chinese, and often we're never seen again. So, you know, it's wonderful that you came through and you're still with us today.
James Taylor: We're approaching the end of our trip around this floating museum. But before we go, we have one last object to explore.
Hilary Roberts: So I'd like to show you our final object from the collection, which is an aerial propaganda leaflet, which is really quite lurid in its colors, but it basically is dropped by South Korean forces on the North.
Eddie Izzard: So we've, it's a, it's a big, like an A5 leaflet. It's got Chinese, it's Chinese script on the, the bottom. But the picture is, and this is, this is coming from the South's point of view yeah?
Hilary Roberts: Yes.
Eddie Izzard: Yeah. So you've got an oppressive figure that's leaning over. You've got a face mask that looks like Joe Stalin, Joseph Stalin, a leader of, uh, Soviet Russia has been pulled to one side and behind that there was a green face with fangs. And then there's people in the, in the foreground in chains, baby in chains of mother and a and a father, I think is like a family unit. And they are chained up and basically the North is gonna come and enslave you, I think is the feeling that's coming out of that.
Hilary Roberts: Yes. On the back there are Chinese characters, which I unfortunately cannot read, but one way or another the message gets through.
Eddie Izzard: That seems to have a glib question, but, uh, the civil population of Korea, what was the effects of all this war and all this death in different ways from the air land forces going backwards and forwards? How did the civilians survive all this? What was the effect on them?
Owen Miller: It's hard to know where to start with this. It was a really. A devastating war for civilians. I, I don't know whether you can get into sort of, uh, league tables of wars, uh, and how they affected civilians, but I think it would be fair to say the Korean War was one of the worst of the 20th century for civilian population. It led to millions of, um, civilian deaths. I would boil it down to four main reasons why it was so devastating. I think the first thing is, is the very mobile frontline over the first year of the war, moving back and forth, up and down the peninsula. So you imagine a mobile frontline moving at speed, you have then hundreds of thousands of refugees moving in the, in the wake or in front of that line of advance. That movement was very destructive and it scattered people and it led to the hundreds of thousands of divided families, which still exist today in the two Koreas because they were ended up on either side of the, the front line. The second thing I would say is aerial bombardment. I mean, the, the aerial bombardment of North Korea was quite astonishing that the Americans dropped more bombs from the air on North Korea than they did in the Pacific War. So I mean, they ran out of targets effectively. They sort of flattened every, every city, every industrial area in North Korea, they use nepalm, et cetera. Things that we associate with the Vietnam War, actually, they began to do already in the the Korean War. A third thing I would say is, is the civilian massacres, massacres were carried out by all sides in this war, perhaps most notoriously by the ROK government in the summer of 1950 at the beginning of the war, when they effectively tried to eliminate people that they thought could be a fifth column behind the lines, anyone that they considered to be communists sympathizers but that obviously swept up many people who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Final thing, fourth thing, and this rather depressing list is it was an internecine ideological war. Between two sides that had hardened ideological positions and you had to choose one of those sides. What if you didn't want to be a communist or a supporter of the ROK or capitalist side, you know? It was very, very difficult, you had to pick a side, if you think about it. Seoul was occupied and liberated four times, and each time that happened, everyone in the city had to decide. And I've talked to people and and heard their accounts of what that was like. You had to be on a side. And then when it was occupied again. You had to hide whatever evidence there was that you were on the other side and that you were aiding the communists or aiding the, the, um, Americans or whatever. So that hardened ideological war split in families down the middle. That's another, I think, very deadly feature o of the war and one that's lasted in both North and South Korea.
James Taylor: The Korean War was one of the most violent and destructive conflicts of the modern era with almost 5 million killed, and virtually all of Korea's major cities destroyed. After years of a brutal stalemate between North Korean, Chinese, south Korean, and UN forces, an armistice was signed in 1953. The terms involved the creation of a Korean demilitarized zone following the 38th parallel and the re-division of Korea into North and South. But as Eddie soon finds out, this doesn't mean the conflict was resolved.
Eddie Izzard: So how did the conflict officially end? Was it, is this 1953 we're talking about?
Owen Miller: Yes. July. So I think, yeah, the, the end of the war was with this armistice disagreement in July, 1953 and this was really signed between the, the UN side, the Chinese and the North Koreans. The South Koreans did not sign this armistice agreement. I think, if I remember correctly, that's largely to do with. The, uh, the leader of, of, of South Korea. His reluctance, actually, he, he wanted the war to go on. He wanted to pers... you know, prosecute the war to their bitter end. That wasn't gonna happen. Um, but the, this is always now famously described as being a war that's not over because there is not a peace agreement between North and South Korea and South Korea did not even sign up to the armistice. I, I think for both sides, big legacy is divided families, parents and children, brothers and sisters, and so on. They're dying now. And the last chance for some of them to be reunited is, is passing as we speak. There's no postal service between North and South Korea. There's no telephone service, there's no video links, there's no way for people to contact each other, and that's been true for the last, uh, 70 odd, odd years.
Eddie Izzard: This is on both sides?
Owen Miller: I'm sure it's on both sides, but what we know about is the South Korean side. Our access to information about what goes on in North Korea is much more limited. So the official way it's described in North Korea is the great victorious Fatherland Liberation War. That is the title of the great huge War Museum, which I've been to in Pyongyang. Um, and, and North Korea is a highly militarized society, even to this day in which a war lives on, in people's uh, minds, and in which America is always there as the number one enemy, which the North Korean state can always use to mobilize people. They don't mention so much how negative it was in terms of the devastation that North Korea suffered.
[A clip in Korean]
Clip: They will complete their plan to quote "attack waters near Guam by mid-August."
James Taylor: Just before we go, Eddie takes a moment to reflect on her day on HMS Belfast.
Eddie Izzard: Uh, I think a lot of people go through life being quite uninformed and just making decisions based on emotions, so it's good to have actual information on board and I didn't know much about the Korean War. I knew the basic outline I knew roughly where it was, but it's, it's great to have come along to be an HMS Belfast, which took part in that war and to be able to, to fill in a lot of the blanks and figures and details and, and what was going on at the time, before and after, and what's unfortunately continues to go on in, in Korea, in the North and the South, which is hopefully in a much better position. Thank you.
James Taylor: Thanks again to our guests, Eddie Izzard, Owen Miller, and Brian Parritt, as well as our IWM specialist this week, Hillary Roberts. If you want to learn more about some of history's most complicated conflicts, subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. My name is James Taylor, the producer was Lauren Armstrong Carter at Rethink Audio with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin, and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums.
