Korean War (canon event)
| Scenarios | Truman 1949, Thurmond 1949, Wallace 1949, Dewey 1949 (and a custom president based on any of them) |
|---|---|
| Era | The Fifties |
| When | June 1950, the 18th month of the term |
| Attacker named | North Korea |
The Korean War opens with a scripted event: it is written to happen in a specific month of the term rather than being drawn at random. All four 1949 presidencies begin in January of that year, so the eighteenth month falls in June 1950, and each of them receives the event. Once it has played, it does not recur.
The event
The briefing reports that the North Korean army has crossed the 38th parallel at dawn behind Soviet-built armour. South Korean forces are falling back in disorder, and Seoul is likely to fall within days. American advisers describe the attack as a full invasion rather than a border incident. The United Nations Security Council is in emergency session, and General MacArthur is in Tokyo awaiting orders. The briefing frames this as the first hot war of the atomic age, and the first test of whether the United States will fight to contain communism by force. Three responses are offered. One is to commit American air, naval and ground forces under a United Nations mandate. Another is to send arms and air support while holding back ground troops. The third is to take the case to the United Nations and rally an allied response before deciding on force. The player answers in their own words, and the game reacts as it does to any other event.
War mode
When war mode is switched on, any military response to this event is recognised as a war against North Korea specifically, rather than against an unnamed enemy, and it counts as a defensive war because it begins against the country named in the briefing. Without war mode, the event plays like any other crisis, with no separate war tracking.
The rest of the war
The war that follows is not scripted. The Fifties era's pool of events includes several further Korea events available to the same four 1949 presidencies, drawn at random rather than tied to a set date. These cover MacArthur's proposal to land at Inchon, the Chinese armies crossing the Yalu, MacArthur's public defiance of Washington, the stalemate along the 38th parallel, reports of atrocities against American prisoners, and the deadlock at Panmunjom, along with a further MacArthur event available only to Truman. Because these are ordinary random draws, a 1949 presidency without war mode can see the Inchon landing or the Chinese intervention before the June 1950 invasion has even played. The 1953 presidencies, which inherit the war already under way, draw their own events on the armistice, war weariness, and the exchange of prisoners.
On the setup screen
The scenario picker introduces Truman 1949 as the winner of the 1948 upset, facing the Fair Deal, a Dixiecrat split within his own party, and the Korean War still to come. It introduces the 1953 presidencies as inheriting the Korean War unfinished. The Fifties era description names Korea alongside the Cold War, McCarthyism and the postwar economic boom.