September 1945: US forces land in South Korea. Grassroots people’s committees already governing locally are dissolved by military decree. USAMGIK bans the People’s Republic of Korea structures in December. American officers with no Korean language skills are appointed as provincial governors.

1946-1947: US military government suppresses labor unions, peasant land seizures, and student organizations. Political parties to the left of center are driven underground or banned. Syngman Rhee returns from exile with US backing.

May 1948: US-supervised elections held only in the South. Left and moderate parties boycott or are suppressed. Rhee elected president. DPRK founded in September in response, after separate elections in the North through the remaining people’s committees.

April 1948: Jeju uprising begins against separate Southern elections. US retains operational control of ROK military via executive agreement with Rhee. Brigadier General William Roberts approves martial law. Scorched-earth campaign November 1948 to February 1949. 25,000-30,000 civilians killed.

1949: Border clashes along the 38th parallel intensify. ROK forces initiate multiple cross-parallel raids in Ongjin Peninsula and other sectors. Declassified US field reports document Southern artillery provocations and infantry incursions. Approximately 8,000 ROK soldiers and police killed in border fighting and counter-insurgency before June 1950.

Early 1950: ROK military buildup continues with US equipment and training. DPRK prepares defensive-offensive posture. Diplomatic efforts to reunify the peninsula fail as US rejects proposals for all-Korean elections under neutral supervision.

June 25, 1950: DPRK forces cross the 38th parallel. This is the escalation of a civil conflict shaped by five years of imposed division, political repression in the South, and armed border warfare. Not an isolated invasion. The culmination of material conditions created by foreign occupation and class conflict.

This is all not to mind the horrors the US and occupied Korea inflicted on the DPRK during the Korean war. The war the US waged on the DPRK was a campaign of extermination. Between 1950 and 1953, one in five to one in four DPRK civilians were killed. Every town, factory, school, and hospital was reduced to rubble. Survivors lived in caves. US Air Force records show over 635,000 tons of bombs and napalm were dropped on the North. That is more than 100,000 tons above the entire Pacific theater of World War II. The US military requested nuclear strikes multiple times. They were held back only by the risk of Soviet retaliation, not by restraint. Anyone who defends the US intervention stands on the same ground as Adolf Eichmann.

Some sources:

https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Military_Government_in_Korea

-https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/People's_Republic_of_Korea_(1945–1946)

https://www.kpolicy.org/post/early-cold-war-genocide-the-jeju-4-3-massacre-and-u-s-responsibility

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/1951/korea.htm

https://www.workers.org/2025/07/87162/

The US and friends dividing the peninsula to start with is a pretty critical element, and so is the US banning the People’s Republic of Korea, which was directly responsible for surviving elements fleeing North and founding the WPK and DPRK. Also, the US, etc. were pretty plainly planning to take over the north because of how incredibly useful a land border with China would be.

It’s also important to note that while the north was supported by the USSR, the USSR emphatically wanted them to have their own political leadership and organization rather than be a colonial appendage, something that even neoliberal historians who basically view East Germany as West USSR would often agree with. In the Korean War, the US of course characterized the threat of North Korea as the threat of Stalin, but this was a crass misrepresentation just like their completely, completely ludicrous claim of democracy in the South decades before they even had liberal democracy.

So you have this external objectively colonizing force running a military dictatorship, inventing a territorial border that was not agreed to, engaging in substantial violence in the south including suppressing the political organization of the local population, and then “accidentally” attacking the north and crossing its own fake border, and eventually the north (the only remaining place where Koreans actually led political organizing) decided to drive them out.

So you can definitely say that in some respects the North started the Korean War, but that’s because the Korean War on their side was an anticolonial struggle against a force that wanted to take them over along with their existing repression in the south against the will of the local population.

Blowback talks about this and many other things in their Korean War season.

From this post with many sources on a variety of topics about Korea

An extract from Churchill and the Bomb by Ernie Trory - I’ve read this and IMO it’s good - covers how the US sought to leverage an attack on Korea to escalate into war.

The US Imperialists Started the Korean War This is a 259 page book PDF. About 6 MB. I haven’t read it.

I don’t know much outside of the season of Blowback. The idea of NK being responsible has always been about “the first shot” — June 25, 1950. But…

1. “First shot” is a political construct. South Korea shot first by any reasonable definition. Jeju Island, April 1948 — 10,000 to 60,000 civilians and military personnel massacred by South Korean forces.

2. Responsibility is about causation, not timing. The US and South Korea created the conditions that made war inevitable. The 38th parallel was the US’ idea. The US got in the way of every notion of peaceful resolution.

3. The standard narrative is propaganda. It was designed to justify US intervention, not to accurately describe the conflict’s origin. The painting of NK as uniquely aggressive savages served the same purpose as the US declaring Native peoples savage — to dehumanize and justify violence.

Blowback Season 3 helps a lot too

Blowback season 3 goes over the Korean war, highly recommended.

https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-6hzmj-14c22254

I don’t feel like pulling out sources, not like those bozos ever read anything.

There’s no sane logic in supporting the US and Occupied Korea at the time. A fascist military occupation set up by a foreign nation to keep the slavers in power. These Nazis committed the vast majority of the massacres and death in that “war”. Theres a reason why the Korean War isnt discussed for more than a page in high school history class. There should be a term for something between war and genocide. Fuck these brainwashed fools

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/strong-anna-louise/1949/in-north-korea/ch02.htm

“This Monstrous War” by Wilfred G Burchett

EDIT: oh I misread your post at first, isn’t quite what you are asking for.

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