Opening A New Cold War Front: Korean War POW/MIA Campaigns of the 1950s

POW/MIA campaigns have motivated the U.S. military to repatriate servicemembers’ remains from overseas battlefields for decades. Although scholars tend to regard them as a product of the Vietnam War, this study argues their birth should be traced to the Korean War. The limitation of its military power during the Cold War prompted the United States to open a new front against the communist bloc. During and after the Korean War, China and North Korea accused the U.S. of preventing their prisoners from returning home under the pretext of voluntary repatriation; the U.S. countered that those states detained missing U.S. personnel in secret camps. U.S. officials used this to further an anti-communist agenda and mobilize a population upset by military setbacks and allegations of domestic subversion. The politicization of the missing prisoners after the Korean War was a harbinger of the post-Vietnam campaigns.