Korean War Causes

The first example stems from World War 1. Before the start of the war, the participates that were in the war had originally thought the war was going to be short (Jervis 681). In addition to the shortness of the war, the participates were also very confident and optimistic about the outcome of the war, thinking that a win for them was in the bag per say. However, this was deemed to be a misperception as their optimism was quickly adverted. The misperception that occurred was Germany thinking the British were going to remain neutral in the war, and they also had great hopes of keeping France and Russia out of the war (Jervis 682). So, with that said, the misperception in this case was the Germans thinking the British would remain neutral and …show more content…
The causes of the Korean War are going to be discussed as well as the two theoretical reasons that led North Korea to actually attack South Korea. In order to get a thorough understanding of what led North Korea to want to attack South Korea, some background of the Korean Conflict will be first discussed. The one simple thing that is the sole cause of disputes in Korea has to do with the thirty-eighth parallel (Chang 19). The issue of the thirty-ninth parallel goes back to the conclusion of World War …show more content…
The first reason the North Koreas attacked the South Koreans was because they thought they were overall stronger than South Korea in terms of manpower, alliances, and by weapons power. The North Koreans saw themselves as inferior to the South Koreans and did not really get scared of them. This is due to the fact that they had more supplies than the South Koreans. They had them beat numerically; they had 242 T-34 tanks, fifty-four armored carriers, and 210 aircraft (Chang 37). The South only had twenty-seven amour carriers to the North’s fifty-seven. In addition to the weaponry advantage, the North Korean military was far more trained, as they already had their division training completed while South Korea only had its company-level training completed (Chang 37). With all of those numbers, the North Koreans truly felt confident that they would win an easy war against the south if they were to attack. Lastly, the Koreans felt they were stronger than South Korea because they felt they had more support than they did. North Korea knew they had the Soviet Union’s support and eventually China’s support, and the North Koreans thought in their minds that South Korea would not have any allies (Chang 10). The only ally that had thought would help them would be the United States. However, the North Koreans did not think