North Korea Seizes Seoul: Korean War Escalates

Seoul fell in three days, and the speed of the collapse stunned military planners who had assumed South Korea could hold for weeks. On June 28, 1950, North Korean forces captured the South Korean capital after crossing the Han River bridges, which South Korean engineers had prematurely demolished while thousands of their own retreating soldiers and civilian refugees were still crossing. An estimated 500 to 800 people died on the bridges, and much of the South Korean army’s heavy equipment was trapped north of the river. The North Korean advance was spearheaded by 150 Soviet-built T-34 tanks, against which the South Korean army had no effective defense. The Republic of Korea possessed no tanks, no anti-tank weapons capable of penetrating T-34 armor, and no combat aircraft. South Korean soldiers, many of whom had never seen a tank, broke and fled when the armored columns appeared. President Syngman Rhee’s government had evacuated Seoul the previous day, and the decision to blow the bridges was made in panic by a South Korean army colonel who was later court-martialed and executed. North Korean troops entering Seoul immediately began rounding up government officials, police officers, and anyone associated with the Rhee regime. Over the following three months of occupation, North Korean security forces executed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 South Korean civilians, burying many in mass graves that were not discovered until after the city’s recapture. The occupation also destroyed much of Seoul’s infrastructure, as the retreating South Koreans had burned government buildings and the advancing North Koreans looted what remained. General MacArthur’s amphibious landing at Inchon on September 15, 1950, cut North Korean supply lines and forced the rapid abandonment of Seoul. The city was recaptured on September 28, then lost again to Chinese forces in January 1951, and retaken a final time in March 1951. By the end of the war, Seoul had changed hands four times, and roughly 75 percent of the city lay in ruins.