In October 1950, the heroic Chinese Volunteer Army crossed the Yalu River and opened the prelude to the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, in fact, long before this, China had already given strong support to North Korea - a considerable number of officers and soldiers in the Korean People's Army were transferred from the People's Liberation Army.
When the Korean People's Army went south, the Fifth Division, the Sixth Division, and the Seventh Division were basically Korean soldiers in the former People's Liberation Army, especially the Fifth Division and the Sixth Division, which were the former 164th and 166th Divisions of the People's Liberation Army. The Seventh Division was formed by drawing Korean soldiers from the 139th, 140th, 141st, and 156th Divisions of the former Shiye Division.
Most of these officers and men are party members, and many of them have made great contributions, and more than 100 of the 4,500 men transferred by the 156th Division alone have been awarded the title of individual "hero" by the headquarters of the Northeast Field Army. They are very experienced in combat and are extremely good fighters.
So the question is, if the Korean People's Army has such help, why did it suffer the landing at Inchon and then usher in a major rout?
The answer to this question should be viewed in the light of the overall situation of the North Korean army. Careful friends may have found a strange place, why does the North Korean army have such a name as a division? This is not a mistake of my writing, but the Korean army is a collection of three major military systems: the Soviet Union, China, and Japan.
In 1910, the Japanese invaders forced the Korean Peninsula to sign a treaty of annexation, and the colonial era began. Japan's enslavement education in Korea was extremely serious, linguistically, ideologically, and culturally.
North Korean men begin Japanese military training as long as they are over 16 years old, and they undergo retraining every year, even if many Koreans do not want to admit it, but the fact is that they all have a deep Japanese imprint.
Just like the title of the army organization, Korea is a regiment, division, brigade, company, etc., and those who are familiar with the history of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression should have seen these things in the Japanese army.
China's relationship with Korea in history is not ordinary, so after Korea was colonized by Japan, many righteous soldiers came to neighboring China to continue to resist, and many also joined the Chinese army. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, several divisions in North Korea are from the People's Liberation Army. The personnel base is there, and there will still be Chinese influence when fighting to a greater or lesser extent.
However, the most profound influence on the Korean People's Army was the Soviet Union, the commander-in-chief of the DPRK Kim Il Sung, the chief of the general staff Nam Il-sung, the commander of the front line Kim Choe and other major senior officers have all been trained in the Soviet army, and they all have Soviet ranks.
In order to make the Korean People's Army have such combat effectiveness, General Kim exchanged a lot of gold for a large amount of Soviet-style ordnance, and also invited more than 3,000 Soviet advisers to guide the training.
Most of these Soviet advisers looked down on the PLA's tactics, believing that they were somewhat guerrilla. It is not surprising that the Soviet Union would be like this, considering that in the early days of our Party, when those who remained in the Soviet Union returned to China for guidance, they also advocated a head-on duel of large corps, and this kind of play that did not care about reality made the Red Army pay a lot of unnecessary sacrifices.
Because of this stereotype, Soviet advisers paid little attention to the army transferred from China, and they focused on building the third and fourth divisions of the Korean People's Army, which completely copied the Soviet Union in terms of equipment and training methods, and took it as the absolute main force.
After the battle began, the Korean People's Army, which had the advantage of equipment, fought very smoothly against the South Korean troops reorganized from the puppet army, but as it gradually deepened, the tactical problems of the Korean People's Army were revealed.
For example, during the Battle of Seoul, the Korean People's Army let the Third and Fourth Divisions attack head-on, and with the advanced T34 tanks to fight hard, they only wanted to break through the enemy's defense line from the front, and what was interspersed and what division was completely disregarded, which was a wave of strong pushing.
The Third and Fourth Divisions had no previous experience in major wars, belonged to the First Army, and should have continued to penetrate deeper after taking the Government of The Parliament, so that the enemy could not stop effective resistance, thus expanding the results of the battle.
However, in the advance battle plan, the First Army should also break through from the direction of Chuncheon, and then the two legions should continue to attack in coordination.
The commander of the First Army, Jin Xiong, saw that the Second Army had not yet arrived, and decided to rest first, believing that he had reached the combat objective and that it might be dangerous to continue to advance, or to wait until the friendly forces moved. The tactical rigidity is evident.
I don't know if it was too careless to take the enemy seriously, but the First Army did not reserve sufficient garrisons during the rest of the night, so it was attacked by the South Korean 7th Division at night and suffered heavy damage.
The Second Army did not arrive as scheduled, and the reason was that it would only break through head-on, and the commander Jin Shaoxia saw that he could not attack for half a day, so he recalled a division that had already broken through the defensive line, which was barely taken.
However, as soon as the reinforcement division went from the front, a large gap appeared in the entire encirclement, and Jin Shaoxia was dismissed.
A large part of the reason for this result is that there is no combat experience. From the commander-in-chief to the division commander who attacked, most of them were only cadres at the regimental and battalion levels in the army before.
Only Fang Hushan, Choi In, and a few others had experienced China's liberation war and had experience in hundreds of thousands of battles, but they were not protagonists in the early stages of the war, but were arranged to contain the South Korean army around the Ongjin Peninsula.
This is more interesting, simply to contain the task with second-line troops is completely enough, if these former PLA troops are transferred to attack Seoul, perhaps the end of the campaign will be earlier.
General Jin arranged this arrangement with the hope that he would be independent and minimize China's influence, but the combat capability is not something that exists. Therefore, behind the three-day capture of Seoul, the Korean People's Army paid more than 6,000 casualties, and at the same time failed to achieve the strategic goal of eliminating South Korean forces near the Han River.
In the ensuing campaign, the tactics used by the Korean People's Army were nearly identical, and the fighting was extremely stiff, and it took 20 days to reach Daejeon from the 38th line south, which was still half the distance from Busan.
Moreover, their main purpose is to advance, not to annihilate the enemy's living forces, which makes the UNITED States and South Korea have enough foundation and time to arrange a response.
In the face of the Busan defense line prepared by the United States and South Korea, Kim Il Sung ignored the warnings made by China and the Soviet Union that the US troops were most likely to land in the rear, and still ordered the front-line troops to continue to attack, completely ignoring the fatigue of officers and men. At the same time, in order to take Busan, he also continuously transferred fresh troops from the north to prepare, and was eventually cut off by the Inchon landing, and his troops suffered heavy losses.
Later, with the support of the Chinese Volunteer Army, General Jin was relieved.
Although the transfer of the former troops from the People's Liberation Army did not change the overall situation, the will shown in some battles was also feared by the US army, such as the famous Sadness Ridge and Blood Stained Ridge, which were fought by the Sixth Division led by Fang Hushan.
In the battle of "Blood Stained Ridge", Song Dashan, the deputy squad leader who had made great contributions in the Battle of Crossing the River, led a 5-man combat team to block the attack until the last moment, and according to the recall of Cui Changjun, a soldier who was ordered to evacuate, the last shout from the Blood Stained Ridge was "Long live Chairman Mao"!
Such bloodiness made US Commander Ridgway can't help but evaluate: The battle between Blood Stained Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge is perhaps the most brutal and tense battle to date.