On June 27, 1950, two days after North Korea invaded the south, US president Harry Truman dispatched the US Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait to protect Taiwan and prevent a Chinese invasion.
That move, 60 years ago, not only set the stage for US assistance to Taiwan over the next two decades but also helped stabilize Taiwan’s economy, allowing it to quickly develop into one of Asia’s fastest growing.
While Taiwan’s military did not participate in the conflict — despite offers to do so by dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) — academics and Korean experts said yesterday in Taipei that it was a defining moment for the country, still under threat at the time from Chinese aggression.
“Originally the US didn’t want to supply Taiwan or Penghu anymore. But the Korean War marked a significant change in US policy,” said Chen Yi-shen (陳儀深), president of the Taiwan Association of University Professors. “The forgotten war ... propped up the Republic of China government-in-exile.”
Following China’s entry into the war in October 1950, the Peoples Liberation Army reorganized its Taiwan invasion force into the Northeast Frontier Force and subsequently into the People’s Volunteer Army which was sent into the Korean peninsula.
“It can be said that the [Korean] conflict was of benefit to Taiwan ... it protected Taiwan from communization due to an invasion from China,” said Rick Chu (朱立熙) a Korean expert and founder of the Taiwan-based Korean Studies Academy.
Six decades later, the Korean War still offers valuable lessons for a burgeoning cross-strait relationship, said Paul Lin (林保華), a political commentator and researcher who specializes in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history.
After the war, Chinese history books wrote that the US and South Korea, which they said initiated the conflict, lost the war in the face of Chinese participation and suffered millions of casualties, said Lin who grew up in China during the period.
“It was a complete distortion of history. It shows China’s continued willingness to distort history through the media and through [education],” he said. “But some people in Taiwan continue to ignore China’s nature.”
Saying China has never given up its ambitions to unify Taiwan, by force if necessary, Lin added that, “China's danger to Taiwan has not changed one bit.”
“They wanted to [unify] Taiwan through the use of weapons before, but now they want to use the economy … [They want to] trick Taiwan into signing the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China.”
This has become increasingly apparent through the offshoring of Taiwanese businesses and industries to China, said William Kao (高為邦), who used to head the Victims of Investment in China Association, a move that could be accelerated by the signing of an ECFA.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
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