During the Korean War, during the more than two months that the KPA controlled the southern part of the peninsula, more than 400,000 local manpower was mobilized to participate in the war, of which more than 100,000 people directly fought against the US Rok army on the front line. Today, I will talk about the manpower mobilization of the People's Army in South Korea.
First, the inevitable mobilization of manpower
A week after the outbreak of the war, in addition to the successful capture of Seoul, many of the optimistic estimates made by the KPA commander before the war were obviously not realized, the South Korean government did not surrender or disband, the ROK army was severely damaged but the rest of the army was still holding on to the battle, there was no large-scale uprising in Jeolla and Gyeongsang, and what was even more unfortunate was that the US advance team had landed in South Korea, and as the KPA contingent preparing to attack the port of Busan was wiped out by the ROK submarine hunters at sea, the goal of quick victory had been completely defeated
In order to replenish the front line, in early July the KPA expanded several security brigades into divisions and sent them to the front line urgently. However, affected by the fierce fighting and the bombing of US aircraft, by the end of July, more than 120,000 KPA troops who crossed the 38th Line had suffered more than 50,000 casualties, and at this time, the ROK army had recovered to more than 80,000 troops through the frenzied lazhuangding replenishment, and with the 35,000 paramilitary troops mainly formed by the student army and the US troops landing one after another, the KPA strength was actually at a disadvantage.
In this case, large-scale mobilization of manpower is very urgent, and as the KPA gradually establishes stable administrative organizations throughout the southern part of the peninsula, the human resources of the south are naturally included in the mobilization system. Because the northern part of the peninsula is mountainous and the south is hilly, the population of the south before the war is nearly twice that of the 11 million people in the north (21 million), especially after the implementation of land reform in the north, 2 million people have fled to the south, and it is really impossible to say that such a huge human resources are not used.
In fact, as early as 1 July, the Northern People's Assembly passed a decree on manpower mobilization, stipulating that all those in the territory of the peninsula with birth years between 1914 and 1932 must obey the mobilization and requisition orders, even those involved in the cultural and press circles. On July 30, the KPA Military Commission formulated a mobilization plan specifically for the South Korean manpower, and decided to mobilize all South Korean men aged 18 to 37 years old to participate in the war as soon as possible.
Second, several mobilizations of manpower
The mobilization of South Korean manpower began long before the people's assembly mobilization order was officially promulgated. As soon as Seoul fell, the People's Army recruited 13,000 young people from all walks of life, and their large troops were political prisoners released from prison, underground members of the South Labor Party, unemployed young people, and left-wing journalists and cultural circles. In line with the principle of less and more, KPA was forced to reduce the recruitment age to 18-25 years.
At 11:00 a.m. on July 3, at the Seoul Gymnasium and the campus of Jinhua National School, the People's Army, through the newly established Democratic Student Union, recruited more than 16,000 students from 85 universities and colleges in Seoul. Except for a small number of students who were sent to the north to participate in cadre training, most of them were replenished into the people's army after one week to ten days of training, and some of them served as local garrison tasks, some served as logistics transport tasks, and some directly participated in front-line battles. In addition, nearly 10,000 female students have been recruited into health care units.
However, with the massive loss of KPA troops on the front line, it was clear that the initial recruitment of these men was no longer sufficient, since, minus the number of troops responsible for local garrison and transport tasks, only a part of them could be replenished by the front-line troops. So at the end of July, the KPA had to start a second large-scale recruitment, when the number of volunteers was no longer enough. The KPA had no choice but to adopt a semi-forced recruitment method, that is, to let the Young Koreans hold a mass oath-taking meeting, and then recruit them all by a full vote.
However, the war with the US and Roksar armies was a bottomless pit after all, due to the shortage of troops, the third and fourth large-scale conscriptions soon began, at this time affected by the stalemate on the front line and the tragic casualties, the initial enthusiasm of the Korean people to participate in the war also quickly faded, and not many people came back to the oath meeting. There was no way, the People's Army had to use villages, factories or schools as units to forcibly recruit all the male young men aged 18-35 in the form of "farewell parties", which was not much different from the South Korean army's Lazhuangding method.
3. Koreans in the People's Army
How many manpower has the KPA mobilized from South Korea on several large-scale recruitments? The Korean War, compiled by the Japan Land War History Research and Popularization Association, is attributed to 470,000 people. Nearly 300,000 of them were incorporated into the Transport Engineering Corps, and due to the large-scale bombing of the US military, most of the railway and road traffic on the entire peninsula was paralyzed, so a large amount of manpower and material resources were needed to undertake road repair and manpower transportation tasks.
Fortunately, the Koreans were incorporated into the security forces, and in order to maintain law and order in the rear, the People's Army divided the occupied areas in the southern part of the peninsula into twelve security districts, and established a total of twelve regiments of security forces, each with three battalions and a total strength of 24,000 troops. Since there was basically no Korean guerrilla activity in the occupied areas, most of the security forces soldiers were equipped with rudimentary weapons such as bamboo guns, sticks, knives and earth guns, and only the 104th Regiment of Sizhou and the 102nd Regiment of Jeonju, which were close to the front line, were equipped with light machine guns, which were responsible for searching for and suppressing the RUM or infiltrating troops.
It is more unfortunate that the Koreans who are directly integrated into the front-line people's army in the name of the volunteer army are directly recruited by the Koreans in the name of the volunteer army, and due to the convenience of reorganization, the divisions and regiments of the people's army on the front line basically recruit Koreans directly on the spot, so the proportion of Koreans in the front-line people's army is also rising rapidly. U.S. intelligence estimates that by late August and early September, more than half of the 70,000 KPA troops on the front line were South Koreans, and some even reached 70 percent. Under the supervision of KPA officers, these South Korean soldiers were able to sustain the First World War, but their poor tactical qualities also caused repeated setbacks to the KPA Offensive in August and September.
After the Inchon landing, the First and Second Armies of the KPA on the front line were cut off from retreat and forced to retreat into the mountains. Under the pursuit of the US and ROK troops, the formation of the KPA divisions was completely disrupted, and those Koreans in the troops who were forcibly recruited took the opportunity to take off their uniforms and run home or hide in the refugee crowd, which is why the ROK army only captured more than 10,000 people during the pursuit. Unexplained, South Korean newspapers also published news such as the "disappeared 1st Army", speculating about where the other KPA troops had gone.
400,000 Young Koreans went north
With the fall of Seoul, the KPA command had anticipated that the northern part of the peninsula would soon be mired in war, and in addition to sending several new units of newly formed northerners to delay the enemy near the 38th Line, the KPA began to consider longer-term plans for the future. At this time, there were still 100,000 newly recruited South Koreans in the hands of the KPA who were being trained, and Park Hyun-yong and others immediately decided to transport these reserve forces to a further northern place, not to be used by Rhee.
On the eve of the Chinese Volunteer Army's entry into korea and entering the war, after the Consent of the Chinese Government, the People's Army secretly transported these 100,000 South Koreans into northeast China to form 10 new divisions and regiments to receive training from Chinese instructors and supplement weapons aided by the Soviet Union. In the second and third battles of the Volunteer Army, these new divisions returned to the north of the peninsula, and as the main force of the People's Army, they cooperated with the Volunteer Army in successive battles and victories, and once again crossed the 38th Line.
Therefore, when the war entered the armistice stage, there were still tens of thousands of southerners in the KPA serving, and for the Koreans who liked to hold small groups, they were obviously the most powerful supporters of the Nanlao faction of Park Hyun-yong and Lee Seung-yeol, and in order not to affect the stability of the northern regime, the main leaders of the Southern Labor faction such as Park Hyun-yong and Lee Seung-yeol were eventually purged.
With the end of the war, it was clear that a large number of South Koreans serving in the People's Army could no longer return to their homeland, while their families remained in the southern part of the peninsula, raising an important issue in future North-South relations – the issue of separated families. It was not until a few decades after the armistice, with the normalization of relations between the North and the South, that a few of them were able to meet their relatives in the South for a short time. The 88-year-old Choi Hoon-sik, an 88-year-old man who met his family in 2015, left his hometown forever after a People's Army conscription in August 1950, and his wife has not remarried since he left.
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