Syngman Rhee
The founding civilian name -- wartime politics, conscription, and a 1960 fall. A state-and-army file, not a battle captain.
Office
3
War
3
End
3
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale34
Intensity46
Duration66
Tech shift62
Political impact54
Cultural memory42
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Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
How many ROK soldiers died in 1950-53?
Scholarly bands for ROK military dead are typically given in the low hundreds of thousands; civilian dead on the peninsula are a larger, still-debated range (see the Korean War page). Use ranges, not a single spectacle number.
What is Yulgok?
A Park Chung-hee-era force-modernisation and industrialisation effort to reduce dependence on grant aid and worn US types. It is policy history -- and it sits beside, not instead of, the 12.12 coup file.
What is the 1953 treaty?
The US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty, signed 1 October 1953, in force 1954. A political object that structured the defensive frontier. Not a live basing guide.
Did the ROK fight in Vietnam?
Yes. A large expeditionary force under Chae Myung-shin and successors, 1960s-73, still argued in Korean politics (civilian harm, veterans' disease, alliance motives). Dated history, not a template.
Is this a current order of battle?
No. No unit list, no missile-site map, no combined-command diagram, no mobilisation how-to. Era-bounded defensive force-structure history only.
A 1950 refugee-and-soldier still, the War Memorial's bronze groups, a K9 parade as a late industrial icon, a conscript haircut as family memory.
Paik's portrait as the correction to MacArthur.
People
Paik Sun-yup
The English-readable ROK field name of 1950 -- First Division, then higher command. Use to correct a MacArthur-only still.
War
3
Role
3
Point
3
Chung Il-kwon
Army chief in the war years and a long public career -- an institutional name, not a clean hero stencil.
War
3
Role
3
Point
3
Sohn Won-yil
The navy's civic founding name -- a maritime half English Korea books skip.
Service
3
Role
3
Point
3
Park Chung-hee
1961 seizure (a coup file) and Yulgok industrialisation (this page's policy hinge). Split the sentences. No method for 16 May.
Policy
3
Politics
3
Point
3
Chae Myung-shin
Commander of the Vietnam expeditionary force -- a dated, argued chapter of alliance and domestic politics.
Theatre
3
Era
3
Point
3
Kim Dae-jung
Sunshine-era defence and engagement politics -- a civilian hinge of the reform decades.
Office
3
Theme
3
Point
3
Roh Moo-hyun
Defence-reform and OPCON-transition politics as a public argument -- history of a debate, not a present command chart.
Office
3
Theme
3
Point
3
Debate
Is the ROK force best taught as a US appendix or as a state project that used an alliance?
This atlas wants both sentences: 1950 near-end under UN command, and Yulgok as a later ownership project. Neither erases the other.
How should 12.12 sit beside Yulgok?
Same decades, different files. Modernisation is not a moral solvent for a coup. See korea-1979.
A defence-fair KF-21 film is not 1950.
A 12.12 photograph belongs on the coup page -- do not launder it here as "strong army."