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The Daily Telegraph Saturday 26 June 2010
Beijing marks 60th anniversary of conflict by pointing the finger at its Communist ally
By Malcolm Moore
in Shanghai
China has used the 60th anniversary of the Korean War to finally admit the conflict was started by North Korea. Until now, Beijing has staunchly supported the version of events put forward by its ally, alongside which China fought.
It previously insisted that the war was waged to fight off American aggression. The official title of the conflict has been 'The War to Resist America and Aid Korea'. Mao Tse Tung, the former Communist leader, once stated that China and North Korea were "as close as lips and teeth".
Chinese history text books state that the Korean War began when "the United States assembled a United Nations army of 15 countries and defiantly marched across the border and invaded North Korea, spreading the flames of war to our Yalu river".
But yesterday, the official Chinese media stated for the first time that it was North Korea that dealt the first blow.
A special report by Xinhua, the Chinese government's official news agency, in the International Affairs journal, said, "On June 25th 1950, the North Korean army marched over the 38th Parallel and started the attack. Three days later, Seoul fell".
In Asia, however, the memory of the war is still felt strongly and has sustained a continuing alliance between Beijing and Pyongyang. While many Chinese historians privately accept the view that North Korea was the aggressor in the war, driven by Kim Il Sung's desire to unite the Korean peninsula under a Communist banner, the matter remains highly sensitive.
Zhang Liangui, a leading professor of Korean Studies at the Communist Central Party School in Beijing, refused to comment. "It is not convenient for me to comment on this matter" he said "I was not aware of this timeline [in the Xinhua article]. As far as I am aware there has been no change to the official view on the war".
Meanwhile, the Global Times, a government-run newspaper, said it was "high time to renew and strengthen efforts by Chinese scholars to discover the truth about the Korean War".
In Seoul, South Korea held an official ceremony to remember the war and Lee Myung-bak, the president, paid tribute to the dead. "Sixty years ago, North Korea's communists opened fire on a weekend's dawn when all people were sleeping peacefully" he said.
Across the border, North Korea put across its own view of the conflict. Under the headline "US, Provoker of Korean War" the country's state news agency accused Washington of starting the war with a surprise attack. "All the historical facts show that it is the US imperialists who unleashed the war in Korea and that the United States can never escape from the responsibility" the Korean Central News Agency said.
Below: Americans are held by Chinese Communists. The conflict was called 'The War to Resist America and Aid Korea'
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