Inchon: the battle that saved South Korea

Operation Chromite, the American-led amphibious landing at the port of Inchon [Incheon] in September 1950, is arguably the most famous battle of the Korean War. Often hailed as a masterstroke on the part of its creator, General Douglas MacArthur, its consequences were vast. Seoul was liberated by the end of the month, the invasion of South Korea by North Korea rapidly reversed, and the stage set for an advance toward the Yalu River by United Nations and South Korean forces that would lead to Chinese intervention and a whole new war. The Inchon-Seoul campaign is also noteworthy for the way in which participating states and commanders developed different and sometimes irreconcilable accounts of what had transpired and conclusions as to its ultimate meaning.

This volume chronicles the origins and course of the battle itself, and then examine its cultural afterlife-first through press coverage, then through published memoirs, in official histories, on the big screen, and finally via sites of commemoration-down to the present in the United States and the two Koreas. The overarching aim of Inchon is to explore how complimentary or competing narratives at both the national and individual level developed over a timespan of more than seven decades.