Pusan Perimeter either never forms or falls, does Korean War end?

[Deleted member 1487]

IOTL the US was nearly driven off of the Korean Peninsula in 1950 in the initial North Korean invasion of the South, but they managed to hold a perimeter in the very southern tip of South Korean and proceeded to hand on until invasions of the peninsula turned the North Korean flank and drove them back to the Yalu river. What if either the US+SK forces were unable to hold or even form the Pusan Perimeter and North Korea is able to clear the country of hostile forces before the US is able to land more ground forces at Inchon? Would it effectively end the war or would the US try and land? Could the North Korean forces defeat a US landing if they had no active fronts left on the peninsula by the time the US tries to show up? What impact would South Korean total defeat have if the war goes on?

 

[Not James Stockdale]

By the time the Norks got to Pusan, they would have expended a total of one and a half armies to get there, the ten-division mechanized army that pushed the front line to the Pusan perimeter and the fourteen divisions of conscripts they had to use once they got there. I doubt the Norks would have anything more than 50,000 poorly trained conscripts active, including a lot of South Korean communist sympathizers, even after a very successful campaign to capture the UN pocket. By that time, the amphibious forces assembled for the Inchon landings would be able to land anywhere and restart the ground war. The fact that the UN forces held total air and sea superiority meant that they could land anywhere with essentially no notice, as they did in Inchon, which would negate the advantages the Norks would have as defenders in being able to position reserves and build static fortifications. The landing would probably come between two and four weeks after the hypothetical fall of the Pusan perimeter.

 

[ben0628]

As the person above state, if the Pusan Perimeter is able to form, the North Koreans did not have the manpower strength to properly destroy the perimeter. I would also like to add that the North Korean logistics were horrendous as well, which prevents the speedy movement of necessary supplies and reserves to the front. Had the Pusan Perimeter been broken, it would most likely have only been a small break, and the remaining US forces would have simply fallen back to several miles outside the city of Pusan (there was already a plan for this, by the time the North Koreans attacked the existing perimeter). Breaking the perimeter would merely force the North Koreans to attack a smaller, more defensible perimeter, and even cost them more men (which at this point they cant waste) and stretch their supply lines even further.

Not only that, but it must be said that Douglas MacArthur did not actually give damn about the Pusan Perimeter and was dead set on the Inchon Landings, regardless of whether or not the city of Pusan fell. And even if Pusan fell around the time that the perimeter was being attacked in otl, there is no way that North Korean troops could be deployed to Inchon in time to stop the landing, and once the Americans secured the beachhead at Inchon, North Korean troops in South Korea are forced to either retreat North or face encirclement because retaking the city is practically impossible in my opinion, due to the troop numbers used in the Inchon Landing, combined with Naval and Air support.

Once it reaches this point, the war will end in stalemate no matter what (either the US doesn't invade North Korea, or China becomes involved). The only way of securing a North Korean victory durin the initial invasion of South Korea is to have a pod that positively changes the military/political situation of the Korean Peninsula for the North Koreans sometime before the war breaks out.

Also, other 2016 discussions on the Pusan Perimeter/North Korean Victory
2) https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-north-korea-wins-the-korean-war.405825/
2) https://www.alternatehistory.com/for...wins-korean-war-controls-all-of-korea.386410/