The Korean War was the first “hot” war to come out of the recently formed Cold War, and the first (of many)  wars that the United States would not “win”.  As we will see below, the Korean War was basically Saturn and Neptune.  Those two planets don’t have a terribly good reputations, and together they are not improved.  Saturn and Neptune over the years were explored recently.

The Korean War started  on June 25, 1950 when the North, expecting to be invaded by the South, invaded the South in advance.  The War ended on July 27, 1953, after a couple of years of indecisive combat.  But, strangely enough, the Korean War has never been officially ended.  An armistice was declared, ending the hostilities, but a  peace treaty has never been signed to this day.

But to understand the origins of the Korean War, and the behavior of North Korea even to this day  (as I write, North Korea is accused of hacking the computers of Sony (a Japanese company) because of a movie depicting the assassination of the leader of North Korea, even though the evidence does not really exist and a former employee of Sony Pictures is accused by a company involved with computer security)  we need to look at the history proceeding the division of the Korean Peninsula into two zones.

It  all goes back to the end of World War Two.  Korea had been occupied by Japan since the beginning of the Twentieth Century.  Korean-supplied  “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers during World War II is just one manifestation of this.   The Koreans were not happy with this act and are still trying to get Japan to apologize for this.  After the War the peninsula was split arbitrarily at the 38th degree of latitude and the Northern half was given to those who had been against the Japanese during the War, and some who had fought with the Chinese against Japan, while the South was given to those who had supported the Japanese during the Second World War, and who were also, interestingly enough, friendly with the Americans.  The first leader of North Korea, the grandfather of the current leader, had served with Mao during the civil war in China.  The two parts of Korea did not get along well.  There were also some rebellions in the Southern part from people of South Korea who were not happy with being ruled by supporters of their enemies.  Some of these rebellions were ruthlessly put down by the South Koreans, at times with help from their American allies.

At the start of the Korean War transiting Neptune was on the US Saturn with an orb of 14 minutes.  It was   stationary  direct at the time and had been close to the US Saturn two month before and two months after the start  of the war.  Also on that day the transiting Sun was conjunct  transiting Uranus, suggesting unexpected events, and these two planets were on the Venus-Jupiter conjunction which is part of the core of the United States.  Mars was just past the Midheaven of the US and had crossed it two weeks earlier, at which time the transiting Sun was on the US Mars.

The Cold War was  high in America  at this time, since the Soviet Union had exploded its first atomic bomb in the previous year. The Communists had also defeated the Kuomintang in the Chinese Civil War the previous year, and Joseph McCarthy had made his notorious charge that the State Department was filled with Communists a few months earlier.  The United States was able  to convince the UN to sign on to the War only because the Soviets were boycotting  the General Assembly to protest the exclusion of the new Chinese government from that body.  The Korean War was used  to increase the defense budget of the US for fiscal year 1951 by almost five times from the previous year.   The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO – still in the news after all these years) had been formed the previous year and  was put on a more military basis.  The US had also recently passed NSC-68 — a founding document of the Cold War  — which put forth the policy of containment of the Communist menace.  This policy  was maintained until Nixon started a policy of détente with the Soviets, which was then again changed to a more active policy of rollback when Reagan assumed the Presidency.

The Year of 1950 was a good one for the US in the Korean War.  The American forces (actually called UN forces, with token representations from other countries) were led by a hero of the Pacific battles of World War II, General Douglas MacArthur.  MacArthur invaded Korea at Inchon in what was a questionable move, and it turned out to be a tremendous victory; then he rapidly pushed the North Korean troops back across the 38th parallel that divided the two halves of the Korean Peninsula, thus achieving the status quo before the invasion of the North.  The  war had been won at that point. If only MacArthur had declared victory at that point most of the bloodshed of the war would have been avoided.

In the chart for the start of the Inchon invasion, we see the Sun-Saturn conjunction of the US Neptune, repeating the Saturn-Neptune that highlights the Korean War.  Transiting Uranus if midway between Jupiter-Venus and Sun  — a good time for America.  And  finally, Neptune is still on the US Saturn; the war has gone on for less than half a year.

Two  weeks later MacArthur crossed the 38th parallel, thus entering North Korea.  The chart for this shows Venus conjunct Saturn — that does not promise good — midway between Saturn and the MC of the US.  For Venus at the midpoint of Saturn and the Midheavewn Ebertin says “bearing grief or suffering” which describes the rest of the Korean War, that had started  out so well for what was called he UN troops.

But no.  MacArthur wanted to conquer the Northern part of the peninsula and so he pushed forward.  And then, perhaps driven by the anti-Communist fear of his homeland, wanted to use the atomic bomb to replace the new Communist government in China.  This brought China into the war.  MacArthur so infuriated Truman that he was fired by the President.  MacArthur returned to the United States with a hero’s welcome, and many people thought that Truman was wrong.  Much fighting went on for the next two years with nothing resolved.  Dwight David Eisenhower, commander of troops in Europe during World War II and at that time President of Columbia University, then ran  for President of the United States vowing that he would end the Korean War.   The war in fact ended a few months after he took office.

Here are two charts for the end of the Korean War.  In the chart showing transits to the US, the Saturn-Neptune conjunction is trine the US Mars; Jupiter is also conjunct that Mars and thus square the US Neptune.  As discussed previously Saturn-Neptune is important.  In the chart for just the transits at the end of the war, we again see the Saturn-Neptune conjunction trine  transiting Venus with Pluto sextile Neptune-Saturn and Venus.  As  previously indicated, the long sextile of Neptune and Pluto is the marker of the long Cold War.  Also Uranus is square Neptune, a highlight of the Fifties which we will discuss at some other time.