China Enters Korea: The War Escalates

Three hundred thousand soldiers crossed the Yalu River in secret during late November 1950. No air support. No motorized columns. Just men moving at night, hiding by day in the frozen Korean mountains. General Peng Dehuai commanded the Chinese People's Volunteer Army, and UN forces, which had been advancing rapidly toward the Chinese border after the Inchon landing turned the war around, were stunned when the trap closed. The Chinese attacked in waves, using bugles and whistles instead of radios, overwhelming American and South Korean positions along a front that stretched across the Korean peninsula. The retreat from Chosin Reservoir became one of the most harrowing episodes in American military history, with Marines fighting through fourteen miles of frozen mountain road while temperatures dropped to minus thirty-five degrees. MacArthur had promised the war would end by Christmas. It did not. China's entry transformed what had been a regional conflict into a superpower confrontation and stretched the war two more years. Tens of thousands more died on both sides. American intelligence had warnings: intercepted communications, prisoner interrogations, and reconnaissance flights had all suggested a massive Chinese buildup. MacArthur dismissed the intelligence. He believed China would not dare intervene against American power, a miscalculation that ranks among the worst in American military history. The Chinese intervention permanently divided the Korean peninsula. An armistice was signed in 1953, but no peace treaty has ever been concluded. The border between North and South Korea, roughly along the 38th parallel, remains the most heavily militarized boundary on earth.