The Korean War began with North Korean leader Kim Il-sung launching an attack on Seoul, South Korea’s capital on June 25, 1950. This attack, was made with the tacit approval of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and three days later, Seoul succumbed to Kim’s forces.
On June 27, then-US president Harry Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait to protect Taiwan from invasion by communist forces. Subsquently, a UN force, led by General Douglas MacArthur, was formed on July 7, following a decision by the UN Security Council. Those forces landed at Incheon shortly after and pushed the forces of North Korea back. At this point, however, Kim called on Mao Zedong (毛澤東) to dispatch his troops to the Korean Peninsula.
What was happening in Taiwan during this period? On Dec. 10, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who resigned as president earlier that year, flew from Chengdu in China to Taipei’s Songshan Airport. Central government agencies had already relocated to Taipei.
On March 1, 1950, Chiang announced he was officially resuming his duties as president. At the time, US reaction was rather cool. Not long before, in a statement issued on Jan. 5, Truman had announced that although the Cairo Communique and Potsdam Declaration had effectively placed Taiwan under Chiang’s control, the US would not provide any form of military support or consultation to his forces stationed in Taiwan.
Truman changed his policy less than six months later when he ordered the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait. However, no decision was made regarding Taiwan’s future status, as this question was deferred to a time when security in the region was more stable, a treaty was signed with Japan, or a decision reached by the UN.
Chiang responded to a UN call for assistance in its “police action” in Korea and offered to send 33,000 troops and 20 air transports to help. His proposal was, however, declined by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on June 30, 1950, as they sought to limit the war to the Korean Peninsula.
It is generally understood that MacArthur’s judgments were formed by the instincts of a career soldier. He viewed Taiwan as a natural shield, a fortress island capable of repelling enemy submarines, ocean-going vessels and aircraft. As far as he saw it, Taiwan should be been given up under no circumstances.
Truman made the decision on April 11, 1951, to dismiss MacArthur for being “unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the US and of the UN in matters pertaining to his official duties.”
In his testimony to the US Senate’s Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees following his dismissal, MacArthur made clear that Taiwan’s status had yet to be decided by any official treaty and it consequently remained under Japan’s de jure sovereignty. Just as the Allies had placed Japan under the supervision of the US, Taiwan had likewise been placed under the supervision of the Republic of China, he pointed out.
At the same public hearing, MacArthur responded to questions regarding the Cairo Communique, by saying that previous decisions had been a serious mistake putting Taiwan at risk of falling into the hands of the communists and that this issue had to be dealt with properly by signing a treaty with Japan. The Treaty of San Francisco, signed in 1951, stipulated independent status for Korea and gave sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands to the US, since transferred to Japan. As far as Taiwan was concerned, the treaty merely stated that Japan was to renounce its sovereignty over it. From that point on, Korea and Taiwan would have very different destinies.
Chen Yi-shen is chairman of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
TRANSLATED BY TAIJING WU
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS