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Im aware abt the south korean troop buildup, border clashes, that the peninsula being split in the first place was due to US meddling and the fascism, mass murders and rebellions in the south but im struggling to tie it together in a way that 1) fully makes sense 2) that id be able to explain to a normie without sounding like 
Also, if u have specific articles/sources abt the border clashes and general escalation from the south, id rly appreciate that 
September 1945: US forces land in South Korea. Grassroots people's committees already governing locally are dissolved by military decree. USAMGIK bans the People's Republic of Korea structures in December. American officers with no Korean language skills are appointed as provincial governors.
1946-1947: US military government suppresses labor unions, peasant land seizures, and student organizations. Political parties to the left of center are driven underground or banned. Syngman Rhee returns from exile with US backing.
May 1948: US-supervised elections held only in the South. Left and moderate parties boycott or are suppressed. Rhee elected president. DPRK founded in September in response, after separate elections in the North through the remaining people's committees.
April 1948: Jeju uprising begins against separate Southern elections. US retains operational control of ROK military via executive agreement with Rhee. Brigadier General William Roberts approves martial law. Scorched-earth campaign November 1948 to February 1949. 25,000-30,000 civilians killed.
1949: Border clashes along the 38th parallel intensify. ROK forces initiate multiple cross-parallel raids in Ongjin Peninsula and other sectors. Declassified US field reports document Southern artillery provocations and infantry incursions. Approximately 8,000 ROK soldiers and police killed in border fighting and counter-insurgency before June 1950.
Early 1950: ROK military buildup continues with US equipment and training. DPRK prepares defensive-offensive posture. Diplomatic efforts to reunify the peninsula fail as US rejects proposals for all-Korean elections under neutral supervision.
June 25, 1950: DPRK forces cross the 38th parallel. This is the escalation of a civil conflict shaped by five years of imposed division, political repression in the South, and armed border warfare. Not an isolated invasion. The culmination of material conditions created by foreign occupation and class conflict.
This is all not to mind the horrors the US and occupied Korea inflicted on the DPRK during the Korean war. The war the US waged on the DPRK was a campaign of extermination. Between 1950 and 1953, one in five to one in four DPRK civilians were killed. Every town, factory, school, and hospital was reduced to rubble. Survivors lived in caves. US Air Force records show over 635,000 tons of bombs and napalm were dropped on the North. That is more than 100,000 tons above the entire Pacific theater of World War II. The US military requested nuclear strikes multiple times. They were held back only by the risk of Soviet retaliation, not by restraint. Anyone who defends the US intervention stands on the same ground as Adolf Eichmann.
Some sources:
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Military_Government_in_Korea
-https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea_(1945%E2%80%931946)
https://www.kpolicy.org/post/early-cold-war-genocide-the-jeju-4-3-massacre-and-u-s-responsibility
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/1951/korea.htm
Diplomatic efforts to reunify the peninsula fail as US rejects proposals for all-Korean elections under neutral supervision
Could you link this up?
There's this from Max Hastings (British reactionary but still useful in this case):
https://erenow.org/ww/the-korean-war/2.php
Moscow made a proposal to Washington remarkably similar to that which General Hodge had advanced almost two years earlier: both great powers should simultaneously withdraw their forces, leaving the Koreans to resolve their own destinies. The Russians were plainly confident—with good reason—that left to their own devices, the forces of the Left in both Koreas would prevail. The Americans, making the same calculation, rejected the Russian plan.
There's also this excerpt from the June 13th 1954 issue of people's daily showing in my opinion how even after the armistice peaceful reunification was not a US interest (it very clearly never was or has been):
Translated excerpt of interest:
"In the discussion on the Korean question, our delegation proposed that a neutral nations commission, constituted like the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, should supervise Korean elections. However, the US representative opposed supervision by a neutral commission. At the Geneva meeting on June 5, Smith insisted: 'This international body is absolutely incapable of doing anything.' He vigorously denied the positive role the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission had played in assisting implementation of the Korean Armistice Agreement, saying: 'The painful experience such a body gave us in the Korean armistice has taught us a lesson, a lesson that remains vivid in our memory.'"
Hell yeah, good fucking sources. Thank you, comrade
Tyvm!
Important note I unfortunately forgot in my comment (though hopefully is obvious enough in context), The People's Republic of Korea and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea are 2 separate entities. I think it's noted in one of the prolewiki links but just to be more clear.
The US and friends dividing the peninsula to start with is a pretty critical element, and so is the US banning the People's Republic of Korea, which was directly responsible for surviving elements fleeing North and founding the WPK and DPRK. Also, the US, etc. were pretty plainly planning to take over the north because of how incredibly useful a land border with China would be.
It's also important to note that while the north was supported by the USSR, the USSR emphatically wanted them to have their own political leadership and organization rather than be a colonial appendage, something that even neoliberal historians who basically view East Germany as West USSR would often agree with. In the Korean War, the US of course characterized the threat of North Korea as the threat of Stalin, but this was a crass misrepresentation just like their completely, completely ludicrous claim of democracy in the South decades before they even had liberal democracy.
So you have this external objectively colonizing force running a military dictatorship, inventing a territorial border that was not agreed to, engaging in substantial violence in the south including suppressing the political organization of the local population, and then "accidentally" attacking the north and crossing its own fake border, and eventually the north (the only remaining place where Koreans actually led political organizing) decided to drive them out.
So you can definitely say that in some respects the North started the Korean War, but that's because the Korean War on their side was an anticolonial struggle against a force that wanted to take them over along with their existing repression in the south against the will of the local population.
Blowback talks about this and many other things in their Korean War season.
Ty for the throught answer^^ i have listened to the Blowback season more than once but i sometimes struggle to connect the pieces when theres as much information as those do haha
I don't know much outside of the season of Blowback. The idea of NK being responsible has always been about "the first shot" — June 25, 1950. But...
"First shot" is a political construct. South Korea shot first by any reasonable definition. Jeju Island, April 1948 — 10,000 to 60,000 civilians and military personnel massacred by South Korean forces.
Responsibility is about causation, not timing. The US and South Korea created the conditions that made war inevitable. The 38th parallel was the US' idea. The US got in the way of every notion of peaceful resolution.
The standard narrative is propaganda. It was designed to justify US intervention, not to accurately describe the conflict's origin. The painting of NK as uniquely aggressive savages served the same purpose as the US declaring Native peoples savage — to dehumanize and justify violence.
From this post with many sources on a variety of topics about Korea
An extract from Churchill and the Bomb by Ernie Trory - I’ve read this and IMO it’s good - covers how the US sought to leverage an attack on Korea to escalate into war.
The US Imperialists Started the Korean War This is a 259 page book PDF. About 6 MB. I haven’t read it.
Blowback Season 3 helps a lot too
Blowback season 3 goes over the Korean war, highly recommended.
I don't feel like pulling out sources, not like those bozos ever read anything.
There's no sane logic in supporting the US and Occupied Korea at the time. A fascist military occupation set up by a foreign nation to keep the slavers in power. These Nazis committed the vast majority of the massacres and death in that "war". Theres a reason why the Korean War isnt discussed for more than a page in high school history class. There should be a term for something between war and genocide. Fuck these brainwashed fools
Im not looking to convince anyone who actively supports the US/occupied Korea, but ppl who are extremely uninformed abt the war/history of that period (most ppl) and receptive to new information (not as many but a sizable portion of those ppl). Also i wanna understand it better myself as much as anything
GDFs videos on are pretty good and have sources
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
"This Monstrous War" by Wilfred G Burchett
EDIT: oh I misread your post at first, isn't quite what you are asking for.
korea was occupied by the japanese empire for the first half of the 20th century until the end of ww2. in 1945 the american government simply decided to occupy korea up to the 38th parallel, and the soviet army cooperated for reasons, halting their advance at the 38th parallel and waiting for american troops to occupy the south. truman supported the creation of a rabidly anti-communist military government that quickly began murdering labor organizers and anyone suspected of communist sympathies. this led to the jeju uprising and massacre in 1948, during which at least 30,000 people on the south korean island of jeju were murdered by south korean security forces in a series of indiscriminate civilian massacres. after decades of occupation by foreign military empires the people of korea were prepared to fight for their own liberation, and so the north "invaded" their occupied homeland in the south to expel the american army in 1950 when it was abundantly clear that the american-backed regime would never stop murdering koreans. the americans responded by bombing every building in the north, killing 20% of the population, and maintaining military occupation of the korean peninsula for the past 75 years.