Letter from John J. Hearne to the Department of External Affairs (Dublin)
'Korea'

I have the honour to report as follows:-

We were guests of Ambassador of Canada and Mrs. Wrong at dinner on the evening of the 13th June. Mr. and Mrs. Foster Dulles¹ were guests on the same occasion. I had not met Mr. Dulles previously. He had, as you will recall, then recently been appointed a Republican adviser to the Secretary of State. His appointment had been variously interpreted; as a result of President Truman's increasing anxiety about the attacks on the Department of State; as a formal re-affirmation, for domestic reasons, of the bipartisan principle in the making and conduct of foreign policy; or as a forthright effort to fortify counsel in the Cabinet on international affairs against the never remote contingency of a sudden crisis abroad. Mr. Dulles was to leave Washington on the morning of the 14th June for the Far East. In conversation after dinner he spoke of his journey and he described his coming visit to the Orient as 'a tour of inspection'. He referred all the time to his journey as his 'trip to Korea', as if Korea was at the core of the matter. It was to be his first visit abroad since his new appointment, and it was spoken of as a routine affair. There was no sense of urgency or crisis in the conversation. Ambassador Wrong's guests wished Mr. and Mrs. Dulles happy landings, good luck, and so on, at the end of the evening. Early next morning they were on their way to the Far East.

It was on the 20th June that Mr. Dulles made his remarkable speech to the National Assembly in Seoul guaranteeing American support to South Korea and declaring that the Communists would be made to let go their hold on Northern Korea. On the 24th June, the forces of Northern Korea attacked and Sunday the 25th was thought of by many reading their morning newspapers as a second Pearl Harbour Sunday.

Newspaper speculation is still rife on a number of points, as to whether, for example, the Department of State was taken by surprise; the attack on the 24th June was ordered as a reply to the speech to the National Assembly of the 20th; and so on.

At a dinner given in our honour on the 24th June by Mrs. Harold Walker the conversation turned again and again to Korea. Mr. Constantine Brown columnist of 'The Washington Star' described the invasion as 'an attempt to swing the sickle around Southern Japan'. 'If we lose Korea,' he said, 'Formosa will be Russia's next target, then Iran. If we had occupied Formosa in 1941 McArthur would never have been driven out of the Philippines'. He gave the number of U.S. divisions in Japan as four and said that only two could be used elsewhere in the Pacific without jeopardising the security of Japan itself. He accused the Koreans of diverting the aid to Korea money voted by Congress last year to purposes other than that of equipping the military forces. (Ten million dollars were appropriated last year for military assistance to Korea. But it was revealed in the Senate Appropriations Committee last week, when an additional sum of sixteen millions was sought by the U.S. Government, that only two hundred thousand dollars worth of military equipment had actually been sent across the Pacific.) Mr. Brown spoke of the Chang Kai Shek character of some of the policies of President Syngman Rhee.²

Dr. John Chang,³ the Korean Ambassador in Washington, to whom I offered the sympathy of the Government on 29th June informed me that he had been warning the Department of State of the danger of an invasion of the Republic for many months past.

A reasonable interpretation of the Dulles speech on the 20th June would be that it was based upon a knowledge of what was about to take place four days later, and that it was not so much an assurance of an immediate termination of Russian power in Northern Korea as a last minute bid to bolster morale in Southern Korea in the face of the coming invasion. The U.S. Government must have known that the Southern Korean forces could not withstand the onslaught of a well-equipped invading force, and, as the U.S. Government were determined to defend the Republic, the visit of Mr. Dulles and the military chiefs must have been a formal underwriting again of the independence of South Korea and an appeal to the people to hold on, through whatever might befall, until adequate aid came and their deliverance was accomplished.

The explanation of the attack from the North as a reply to the Dulles démarche and a warning to the United States from Moscow that the arming of South Korea was then too late is hardly the true explanation.

The explanation given by Moscow that the attack was launched as a defensive measure to turn back an attempted invasion of North Korea by South Korean forces was emphasised to me by the Polish Ambassador, Mr. Jozef Winiewicz, when he called on me on the 26th June. The Ambassador had gone out of his way on a previous occasion to inform me that he was a Roman Catholic.

The question as to why, if the U.S. Government was determined to defend Korea, no real attempt seems to have been made to effectively arm the Republic is not easy to answer. When I called on Assistant Secretary of State Perkins on the 29th June the burden of his remarks was as reported in my telegram No. 339⁴ of that date, that Russia had assumed, that as the U.S. had pulled out of Korea last year and as Congress had at first rejected the Aid to Korea Bill, the U.S. was not serious in its policy of guaranteeing the Southern Republic. Mr. Perkins took Congress to task for first rejecting the Aid to Korea legislation in a fit of pique after the loss of China. He laughed outright when he said that, annoyed at the loss of China, the House reacted by refusing at first to vote aid to Korea. Representatives soon changed their minds as they had done on the Fogarty Resolution when they realised the absurdity and the possible results of their action. (Mr. Perkins could not resist the somewhat irrelevant reference to the Fogarty Resolution). I did not ask him the direct question as to whether the Department of State had expected the attack on Southern Korea then. I felt that the direct question would have seemed like a criticism of the Department of State. I felt, moreover, that the real questions to ask in connection with Korea merged too closely on security to be put directly. I therefore confined myself to the scope of the enquiry asked for in your telegram No. 331 of the 27th June,⁵ namely to seek an official opinion on events and a close appraisal of the views of the Department of State regarding the outcome in Korea. Mr. Perkins gave the explanation of the events reported in my Cable No. 339 of the 29th June;⁶ and he gave it as his view that the Korea affair is not the commencement of World War III. He safe-guarded himself by a reference to the inscrutability of the Russian mind. But he repeated that their best judgment was that 'Korea' is not the commencement of another world war.

The reaction in the United States to Mr. Truman's firm and prompt stand on Korea was immediate, profound and universal. No dissentient leader appeared in the press, no dissonant voice on the radio. Opinion throughout the United States at once rallied to the President. Deep resentment against the attack on South Korea was manifest on every hand. Criticism of the Department of State, for the alleged Communist leanings of some of its present personnel, was suddenly disarmed. And there seemed to be an end to confusion, bickering and disagreement on the foreign policy of the country. The President's prestige at home rose, his stature abroad was enhanced. He became overnight, as perhaps till then not yet, the leader of his own people, and the spokesman of the free peoples of the world.

The support of the Security Council for the United States stand on the 38th parallel is an event of major importance in the history of the United Nations. It might mean that, should no general war break out now, the next act of aggression, so found by the Council, may be met by an international military force acting under the control, as well as with the authority, of the United Nations Organisation. That may be too far a cry from what is actually taking place; and it may be that an international military arm directed by UNO against an aggressor State will never go into action so long as the act of aggression does not imperil the security of one or other of the great powers represented on the Security Council. At the moment, we are witnessing the co-operation of two great powers to protect major joint or several interests in the Far East. It so happens that they are committed at the same time to stop the spread of Communism by military force in the world. And that is why they are acclaimed and must succeed.

I shall consider in another report the possible and probable reaction in the United States on our own policies and problems arising out of the new international situation.⁷