The US Bombing of North Korea refers to the extensive bombing campaign against North Korea from 1950 to 1953 during the Korean War and its catastrophic consequences for the people of North Korea.
The Bombings
The U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, on Korea. By comparison, the U.S. dropped 1.6 million tons in the European theater and 500,000 tons in the Pacific theater during all of World War II (including 160,000 on Japan). North Korea ranks alongside Cambodia (500,000 tons), Laos (2 million tons), and South Vietnam (4 million tons) as among the most heavily-bombed countries in history, with Laos suffering the most extensive bombardment relative to its size and population.
After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops. On 13 May 1953, 20 F-84s of the 58th Fighter Bomber Wing attacked the Toksan Dam, producing a flood that destroyed seven hundred buildings in Pyongyang and thousands of acres of rice. On 15-16 May, two groups of F-84s attacked the Chasan Dam. The flood from the destruction of the Toksan dam "scooped clean" 27 miles (43 km) of river valley. The attacks were followed by the bombing of the Kuwonga Dam, the Namsi Dam and the Taechon Dam. The bombing of these five dams and ensuing floods threatened several million North Koreans with starvation; according to Charles K. Armstrong, "only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine."
USAF General Curtis Lemay commented, "We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too." Pyongyang, which saw 75 percent of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets. By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea. Public statements by the UN command obfuscated the extent of the destruction of North Korean communities with euphemisms, for example by listing the destruction of thousands of individual "buildings" rather than towns or villages as such, or reporting attacks on North Korean supply centers located in a city with language suggesting that the entire city constituted a "supply center."
Effects
- The war's highest-ranking U.S. POW, U.S. Major General William F. Dean, reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland.
- In May 1951, an international fact-finding team from East Germany, West Germany, China and the Netherlands stated, "The members, in the whole course of their journey, did not see one town that had not been destroyed, and there were very few undamaged villages."
- In June 1951, General O'Donnell, commander of the Far Eastern Air Force Bomber Command, testified to the US Senate that "almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worth of the name ... Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea".
- In August 1951, war correspondent Tibor Meráy said he witnesseed "a complete devastation between the Yalu River and the capital" and that there were "no more cities in North Korea." He added, "My impression was that I am travelling on the moon because there was only devastation - every city was a collection of Chimneys."
- The bombings led to people embracing the rule of North Korea's government. To quote Charles K. Armstrong, a historian on the Korean War "For the North Koreans, living in fear of B-29 attacks for nearly three years, including the possibility of atomic bombs, the American air war left a deep and lasting impression. The DPRK government never got for the lesson of North Korea's vulnerability to American air attack, and for half a century after the Armistice continue to strengthen anti-aircraft defenses, build underground installations, and eventually develop nuclear weapons to ensure that North Korea would not find itself in such a visitation again .. The war against the United States, more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats that would continue long after the war's end.