Pusan Perimeter Falls

Okay, so, potential repercussions of the following POD

Pusan Perimeter falls, possible scenarios

Scenario 1: US is able to evacuate most troops and critical members of the ROK government (e.g. Syngman Rhee, etc)

Scenario 2: US can only evacuate it's own troops, ROK government caught on the ground in Busan

Scenario 3: No major evacuation is successful, and US forces are also taken out on the ground.

Repercussions on both Korean War and for the Cold War in general? How much bolder might the Soviet Union be if they see that they can take down an American backed government this early in the Cold War? Does America re-invade or write off the Peninsula? Repercussions for politics in America?
 
Would Cheju be the Korean Taiwan?

Didn't think about that myself for a second, but that could be interesting. Cheju's really really tiny tho, like 1900ish sq km, (600 sq miles). On the other hand, with the whole Jeju uprising in 1948, I could see the ROK purging the society there of anyone not being sufficiently anti-NK. A de-facto Republic of Jeju would be very very interesting if it could hold, just not sure how hard it would be to hold it.
 
I don't see how the US would fail to evacuate both the troops and as many civilians as it can get aboard transports. Certainly the naval power was there, plus civilian owned LSTs from Taiwan and Japan if it came down to it (a lot were available as sold for surplus post war).

The official US Navy history on the Korean War lists the tonnage and support available at varying time periods and certainly the ships are there. Enough US units would have held together even in a route to buy time for a successful evacuation. The big question is how many troops get cut off during a general collapse of the line (probably a few battalions, possibly less). But bagging the whole army isn't likely. Equipment losses would have been high, vehicle losses probably higher, but the US is able to fix that easily enough within a few months at best.

However, this assumes a much better supplied NKPLA, which was having problems at Pusan because of heavy air interdiction of their supply lines, and losses suffered on the way south. It was a pretty brittle force by the time Inchon happened, which is why it collapsed so completely after being outflanked.
 

PipBoy2999

Banned
Any discussion about withholding atomic arms goes out the window. Atomics would be used to cover the evacuation, at a minimum.
 
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