Menghean War of Liberation
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| Menghean War of Liberation | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
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| Strength | |||||||
| 2,600,000 (1961 est.) | 1,400,000 (1960 est.) | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 1,200,000 - 2,000,000 military dead | 450,000 military dead | ||||||
| 6,000,000 civilian casualties (est.) | |||||||
The Menghean War of Liberation (Menghean: 멩국 해방 전쟁 / 孟國解放戰爭, Mengguk haebang jŏnjaeng), also known internationally as the Continuation War, was a civil war fought in Menghe between a variety of communist and nationalist insurgents, later unified into the Menghean Liberation Army, and the Republic of Menghe government, which succeeded the Menghe Occupation Authority. The war is conventionally dated from 9 November 1945, Menghe's surrender in the Pan-Septentrion War, to 27 July 1964, when the Allied powers signed an armistice with the DPRM. The victory of the communist forces led to the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe, which was officially proclaimed on 4 April 1964.
Names and periodization
Within Menghe, the period of fighting between 1945 and 1964 is known as the Menghean War of Liberation (멩국 해방 전쟁 / 孟國解放戰爭, Mengguk haebang jŏnjaeng) or the Fatherland Liberation War (조국해방전쟁 / 祖國解放戰爭, Jŏguk haebang jŏnjaeng). It is usually shortened to War of Liberation (Haebang jŏnjaeng). A number of longer official titles exist, including the "nationwide anti-imperialist anti-capitalist glorious war for the liberation of the fatherland."
In the countries that assisted the Republic of Menghe during its fall, including Tyran, it is known as the Continuation War. The name refers to the fact that it picked up almost immediately after the end of the Pan-Septentrion War; many newspapers and politicians treated it as a final phase of the PSW itself, though by the 1950s it came to be seen as a separate conflict. In the Republic of Menghe it was known as the Menghean Civil War (멩국 내전 / 孟國內戰, Mengguk Naejŏn), a term which remains in use with the Menghean Government in Exile.
Other differences relate to the war's periodization. Conventionally, the conflict is broken up into three stages: 1945-1952, when the main resistance forces were rogue units of the Imperial Menghean Army; 1952-1960, when the communist insurgency rose to prominence; and 1960-1964, when the insurgency boiled over into a conventional war as guerillas linked together regional power bases and formed a large ground force complete with combat vehicles shipped in from Polvokia and Maverica.
Background
On November 7th, 1945, faced with threats of a third nuclear attack on Anchŏn and still viewing the devastation of firebombing in Donggyŏng, Kim Myŏng-hwan sent a message through a neutral embassy that Menghe was willing to surrender if the Allied victors could hold to three conditions. First, Menghe would remain a sovereign country rather than an imperial territory; second, it would not be reduced or partitioned beyond its 1933 borders; and third, there would be no genocide or ethnic cleansing against the Meng people. After two days of negotiation, Allied diplomats agreed to the conditions, which were consistent with their demands against Menghe, and dispatched a letter accepting Menghe's surrender.
Kim Myŏng-hwan and his top ministers announced the surrender to the public on November 9th, which is generally regarded as the end of the war in Menghe. After finishing the speech, Kim appointed his first deputy minister as interim head of state to manage the surrender, then retired to his personal quarters in the Donggwangsan palace. He committed suicide later in the evening, cutting his throat with his ceremonial sword.
News of the surrender came as a complete surprise to many political hardliners and military commanders, who were under the impression that Menghe was in a position to continue fighting. To avoid undermining morale, negotiation had taken place through back channels, without the knowledge of top military leaders. Navy commanders, who had been resigned to the poor chances of victory since 1942, unanimously agreed to comply with the surrender agreement. Responses in the Army were more mixed.
Generals in the Chŏllo Plains Front, who had endured heavy losses in the final months of the war, ordered a halt to all operations when news of the surrender reached their positions, and sent officers across the front lines with white flags to announce their compliance with the surrender. The Eighth Army, further north, refused to turn over its personnel as prisoners, maintaining a standoff at the front. Other commanders further north in Chikai province followed the Eighth Army's example. Rear-line commanders and reservists who had not yet seen combat called for a resumption of fighting. Before long, a rumor was spreading through sections of the high command that Kim Myŏng-hwan had been assassinated by members of his civilian cabinet after reading the surrender instrument at gunpoint.
This ambiguity had a deep foundation. Even before the coup of February 1927 that placed Kwon Chong-hoon in power, recruits in Menghe's armed forces had been inculcated with the belief that it was their duty to fight to the end in defense of Menghe's sovereignty; after the coup, and especially after the beginning of the war, these teachings had spread to the whole population. Even as the war turned sour, the Imperial Menghean Army's high command favored a "war of resistance" strategy, hoping to leverage Menghe's large population and rough terrain to bleed the invaders until the enemy public lost the will to continue the war and agreed to a withdrawal. One internal document estimated that the cost to Menghe would near 10 to 20 million deaths, and added that "while such losses are tragic they are a small price to pay for independence." By 1944, citizen militia in many villages were already training with bamboo spears, and rural warehouses were turning out simplified rifles en masse. In the eyes of the Army's nationalist leaders, the surrender decision was not only at odds with military honor, but also unnecessary given the present war situation.
1945-1952: The Continuation War begins
Yang Tae-Sŏng's broadcast
General Yang Tae-sŏng, 8th Army Commander, Broadcast to the Troops of the Menghean Ground Forces (excerpt)
Yang Tae-Sŏng, the commander of the Eighth Army, broke the silence on November 12th, recording a radio message in which he called upon "patriotic commanders and soldiers" to carry on the fight against the Allied forces as guerillas and resistance fighters. The message was broadcast locally on the Eighth Army's own radio network, and despite a hasty effort by the civilian government to post troops outside of radio offices, several civilian towers broadcast the message as well.
Responses to the broadcast varied, with some commanders declaring that they would follow Yang's call for a war of resistance. Others denounced it as treason and moved behind the surrender agreement. One lieutenant's diary records a typical intermediate response: "A member of the Regiment Commander's staff came into our barracks on the 14th. In plain language, he stated that the commanders would adhere to the surrender, but that any officers who wished to take part in the resistance had until sunrise to gather their weapons and belongings and move out of the camp. They would be marked as deceased on the personnel register when handed over."
The Eighth Army itself retreated under the cover of darkness on the 15th, moving back into the Suksan mountains to the northeast. Rear-guard units maintained a security perimeter against counterattacks, and demolished bridges after the last units had passed. Allied commanders declined to launch a pursuit, still holding out hope that once Menghe's political situation stabilized, the Eighth Army would agree to the surrender. In time, they would come to regret this decision.
Operation Henhouse
In other areas of Menghe, where regular Army units had mostly disbanded, Allied forces faced a different crisis. Morale among surrendered troops was dangerously thin, and the full extent of the Army's reluctance to surrender was becoming apparent. Where units did turn over their men and equipment, inventory and personnel lists showed signs of last-minute alteration, with large numbers of weapons and personnel missing or unaccounted for.
Realizing what was going on, Tyrannian commanders hastily organized and carried out Operation Henhouse, a breakneck campaign to seize control of all divisional camps, armories, and munitions factories in Menghe to pre-empt further militia defections. Before the instrument of surrender had even been signed, motorized columns raced inland among the major roads, broadcasting news of the surrender as they went. As soon as the main coastal airfields had been turned over, airborne and air-mobile forces joined the effort.
Across the Chŏllo plain, Menghean forces remained compliant, if resentful, with the searches. Elsewhere, hostilities prevailed. A train full of Tyrannian soldiers was derailed by a bomb while passing over a bridge in Ryŏngsan Province, killing nearly all aboard; units following along roads were turned back by rifle fire from the hills. Spies in villages spread news of the soldiers as they approached, giving warehouse commanders time to hide weapons or disperse personnel. Army Aviation units begant to flee the country entirely, flying their planes across the border to Polvokia, which was neutral. Fearful of retaliation, the Polvokian government returned many of the pilots, but kept the planes.
More worrying, in the longer term, was what Allied soldiers found when they arrived at their objectives. Nearly all of the arsenals were missing some of their stockpiled weapons, a problem the local guards attributed to wartime shortages; some had been emptied entirely. Some factories had entire machining tables missing, the bolts for mounting them still protruding from the floor. The list of stockpiles and factories passed on by the civilian government also omitted the vast network of rural production sites set up under the homeland defense plan, as many of these had never been centrally documented to begin with. For the time being, the country's major cities, railroads, and factories were under control, but the mountains and forests were rumored to be teeming with soldiers.
The situation was more serious in the north. Following the Eighth Army's example, army groups opposing Hallian forces had banded together into the Northwestern Emergency Government, with Marshal Bak Ho-jin as acting head of state. After news crossed the front lines that Menghean forces were refusing to surrender, Hallian commanders ordered a resumed offensive, pushing toward Jinjŏng and Kanghap. Heavy resistance delayed their advance, and gave Menghean forces time to fan out through the countryside in depth, seizing control over factories and refineries owned by the civilian government.
The Occupation Authority
While Operation Henhouse was underway, and as Hallian and Menghean troops traded fire in Chikai province, the surrender agreement itself was signed. The Menghean government offered to conduct the ceremony in Donggyŏng, but the Allies insisted on a southern city, as the Imperial Dayashinese Navy still represented a threat to any ships sailing into the East Menghe Sea. Representatives of Menghe's transitional government responded by traveling by train to Sunju, signing the official instrument of surrender on December 5th at a relatively unscathed villa outside the city. With the agreemnt signed, and the civilian government formally capitulated, the Allies began the work of setting up an Occupation government to administer the country.
The resulting Provisional Council for the Occupation of Menghe (PCOM) was jointly overseen by two Allied generals, one Tyrannian and one Hallian. This joint structure soon led to disagreements on how to proceed. Tyrannian officers wanted to thoroughly dismantle Menghe's nationalist administration, removing influential members of the old government and bringing in expats or foreign experts to run the country in the interim. Hallian officials disagreed, fearing that removing too many civil servants would worsen instability.
PCOM also quickly came to realize that they had underestimated the challenges of running a war-torn country as large and impoverished as Menghe. While the Allies did send food aid in response to news of shortages, they severely underestimated the scale of the problem and the extent of the damage to transportation infrastructure. A Tyrannian scheme to replace regime-aligned landowners in Chŏllo with Occupation sympathizers running large estates further disrupted food production, and sparked resentment among peasants, who refused to hand over their crops. Coupled with a dry monsoon season in 1946, these problems culminated in a famine that may have killed as many as five million people. Rising food prices in the cities intensified Menghe's hyperinflation, which had already taken off in the last two years of the war as the government attempted to print money to fund continued production. Rumors that PCOM was planning to invalidate the Menghean Won and import foreign currency intensified the problem, rendering existing bills worthless.
In response to the formation of PCOM, Yang Tae-sŏng proclaimed the formation of the Emergency Patriotic United Front for Anti-Western Resistance, known in brief as the Menghean Resistance Front (대멩 항서 전선 / 大孟抗西戰線, Dae Meng Hangsŏ Jŏnsŏn). Due to the presence of Tyrannian troops on the central plains and the destruction of railway routes in the mountains, Generals and Warlords from the other factions were unable to meet in person to coordinate with Yang, but they all pledged allegiance to the new front in short order. Allied press referred to the new alliance as the Nationalist forces.
Strategic bombing resumes
Initially, the Allies sought to defeat Nationalist units with ground forces alone, anticipating a brief mop-up operation. By late December it was becoming clear that this was too optimistic. Bolstered by a large local population, Menghean forces in Jinjŏng and Kanghap repelled repeated attacks by Hallian ground forces, who faced narrow supply lines across the Central Hemithean Desert. Tyrannian forces in the Southwest were unable to reach Daegok and Goksan, as ambushes in the narrow mountain passes of the southwest repeatedly turned them back. Plans to demobilize ground forces were further delayed as the Allies prepared for a long-term operation.
On January 4th, PCOM issued Emergency Order 517, which authorized strategic bombing in areas of Menghe held by the Resistance Front. The order was issued over the protests of collaborating civil servants, who warned that it would intensify opposition; the surrender agreement on November 9th had been issued with the understanding that strategic bombing would be suspended altogether. Tyrannian and Hallian commanders justified the decision on the basis that areas controlled by militia had not yet complied with the surrender agreement and could not be held to its terms.
The resumed bombing campaigns were initially organized on the same basis as wartime ones, targeting barracks, factories, and oil storage tanks under Menghean Army control. Pilots were surprised to encounter a small number of Menghean fighter aircraft, particularly in the Chikai region, where Army forces still controlled oil wells and refineries. Yet with the help of fighter escorts, bombing missions proceeded relatively smoothly in comparison to wartime years.
Before long, bomber command was encountering a different problem: a lack of clear targets. Airfields and oil refineries were the hardest hit, prompting a second wave of aerial evacuations to Polvokia, some of them intercepted by Allied air patrols. But even before the surrender, Menghean commanders had devised strategies to reduce bombing damage, dispersing ground forces' bases and moving small arms production from factory complexes to caves and rural warehouses. The shift from conventional opposition to guerilla warfare intensified this dispersal. Under pressure to keep hitting guerilla fighters, bomber command shifted to more marginal objectives, such as mountain roads, footbridges, and villages suspected of housing enemy soldiers or weapons caches. When Jinjŏng fell on February 9th, Hallian forces estimated that 90 percent of the city's buildings had been leveled; Daegok, captured on May 13th, did not fare much better.
Attacks on infrastructure also had lasting consequences. Dam-busting attacks, easier now that short-range bombers could be brought in, set off serious flooding, in some cases affecting downstream areas in occupation-held territory. The emptying of reservoirs hampered drought relief efforts the following year, and made transportation canals impossible to navigate. Strikes on bridges and railroads did little to slow Nationalist forces, who had taken to moving by foot on mountain paths, but they would make it much harder for government troops to reinforce inland areas in the future.
Transition to counterinsurgency
With heavy air support and no enemy armored opposition, Hallian and Tyrannian forces made steady advances into Nationalist-held territory. Determined to bleed the enemy heavily, Nationalist troops initially responded with head-on counterattacks. The largest of these, at Mungyŏng Pass south of Suksŏng, succeeded in turning back a major Tyrannian offensive into the Eighth Army's zone of control, but at the cost of some 5,000 Menghean casualties. Stalled in the west, Tyrannian forces devoted more troops to the southeast, which held more factories and posed a greater threat to Occupation-held ports. Daegok fell in May 1946 after a two-month battle in and around the city, and Goksan fell later the same year.
Initially determined to fight for every valley, southeastern forces began to re-evaluate their strategy. After the fall of Goksan, General Chi Dae-sŏng reportedly commented that "ten thousand lives are replaceable, ten thousand rifles are not." At Daegok the defenders exhausted their wartime stockpile of artillery shells, then lost the guns they had brought forward to batteries in the mountains. Village machinists continued to turn out emergency-model rifles designed under the late-war plan, but these were of generally poor quality, and their production could not match wartime attrition. The situation was simialr in the northwest, where relentless bombing of ammunition stockpiles and rural arsenals cut into wartime stockpiles.
By late 1947, Nationalist forces throughout Menghe had all but ceased front-line resistance, instead withdrawing into the mountains and forests to fight as partisans. The Eighth Army was the only Nationalist unit that still operated with a clear front line, and its controlled territory consisted mostly of semi-arid highland, far from any valuable transportation routes or population centers. Yet intermittent guerilla warfare continued, with Menghean forces ambushing trains, villages, and occupation patrols in quick hit-and-run attacks, retreating to the hills as soon as reinforcements arrived.
Disagreements on how to deal with the guerillas divided PCOM. Faced with dwindling public support for a long occupation, Hallian leaders began looking for a way out, even as their Tyrannian counterparts called for escalation.
General Immonen, commander of Hallian forces in the Northwest, declared on 23 February 1948 that Nationalist conventional forces no longer posed a threat of foreign invasion and therefore the post-war mission was accomplished. Hallian forces withdrew over the next few months, handing over patrol and policing duties to the provisional Menghean Domestic Security Force. This reversal opened a power vacuum in the north and northwest, allowing guerillas to recover from the harsh losses of 1946 and 1947 while linking up and expanding their operations.
Tyran also began drawing down its conventional ground troops in Menghe, but it stepped up other operations. Focusing first on the southeast, where the guerilla threat was greatest, Tyrannian special forces began launching raids into areas of Nationalist operation, seeking to eliminate high-profile commanders and capture weapons caches. Civilians who resisted were treated as enemy combatants. These "search-and-destroy" missions, among the first of their kind in the modern era, saw the first large-scale experimentation with helicopters as military transports. They also appeared more successful than regular ground operations had been so far, leading to the capture or killing of dozens of top reservist commanders, including Chi Dae-sŏng. Checkpoints installed along mountain roads made it harder for guerillas to supply remote positions or move through the area. In some areas, Occupation authorities experimented with a "fortified village system," relocating farmers from outlying hamlets to central settlements which could be easily defended by police or soldiers. In addition to deterring raids, these changes also made it harder for civilians to pass supplies to the guerillas or join their ranks. Gradually at first, raids on towns and villages in the valleys became less frequent, and supply lines between major cities were secured.
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Suguk uprising
For the first few months of the occupation, General Yang's Eighth Army remained more or less isolated in the Chŏnsan Mountains. Following the withdrawal of Themiclesian and Columbian forces from the interior, they enjoyed de facto control over the countryside in Baeksan and Pyŏngsu provinces, moving with impunity through the mountains and living off of supplies requisitioned from the local population. After hearing news that Allied troops were withdrawing, Yang Tae-sŏng decided to act. On August 15th 1946, his troops marched into Susŏng, the provincial capital and a Chŏndo holy city, and proclaimed the establishment of the Menghean Suguk Independence Front (Menghwa Suguk Dongrib Jŏnsŏn).
General Wilson, the leading Tyrannian commander in Menghe, requested a force of twenty divisions to defeat the Eighth Army, with an additional follow-up force to maintain control. Yet with uprisings in Khalistan and Azbekistan already underway, and troops depleted by the war itself, the Royal Army only allocated nine. To compensate for this, they did allocate a substantial force of strategic bombers left over from the war's final years. Unfazed, Wilson led his troops on Susŏng in October.
At Hwalsu Pass just south of the city, Yang's forces launched a large-scale ambush on October 21st and continued to attack until the 23rd but were driven back by tank fire and air support, the first major engagement of the war. Wilson's troops then advanced to Susŏng, where they found enemy troops deeply dug into its 16th-century fortifications. Unwilling to risk his men in a direct assault, Wilson surrounded the city and began a sustained artillery and aerial bombing campaign. True to their word, the Eighth Army soldiers fought to the death; of some 20,000 soldiers stationed in the city, only 112 appeared as prisoners of war in Tyrannian records. Yang Tae-sŏng was not among them; he had withdrawn into the mountains prior to the assault, in order to lead counterattacks against the enemy's flank during the battle.
Fighting in the mountains continues
In their initial confrontations with Tyrannian forces, the Eighth Army had relied on the same tactics used in the Pan-Septentrion War, including manse charges and entrenched defensive positions. After the fall of Susŏng, General Yang was forced to change his approach. While his army, reinforced with volunteers from other Army units, had no shortage of personnel, weapons and ammunition were scarce. General Wilson's forces in the valley were under orders to shoot at any peasants who came by to collect the Menghean dead, suspecting correctly that they had actually been sent to collect their rifles and ammunition belts.
Rather than continue confronting the enemy head-on, Yang's Eighth Army withdrew into the mountains, where it would conduct a long-term guerilla campaign. Spread thin across the Chŏnsan range, Wilson's forces patrolled the valleys but were never able to establish permanent control over the inner mountains. Relying on intelligence from the local population, Eighth Army soldiers withdrew as enemy forces approached and launched ambushes from the hills as they passed, initially targeting combat units but later focusing on supply trains and rear-area bases.
Unable to seek out the enemy directly, General Wilson committed to a war of attrition. He set up permanent armed outposts around the low-lying towns to prevent hostile guerillas from coming by in the night to requisition food and other supplies, and instructed his troops to search for stockpiled weapons and rations in any villages they passed through. In the deeper areas of the mountains, he relied on reconnaissance aircraft and bombers to strike at any suspected encampments.
In the end, neither side was able to establish a decisive upper hand. The Eighth Army gradually dwindled in strength but managed to retain a presence throughout the mountains, using equipment gathered in the early Occupation period to set up small ammunition and handmade-rifle workshops in the upper villages, which themselves became bombing targets. Yet while they extended their rural presence further north into Gangwŏn, Chikai, and Taehwa provinces, General Yang's forces were unable to repeat their initial success at Susŏng by capturing a major city.
Occupation ends
On June 5th, 1951, the Provisional Council for the Occupation of Menghe formally transferred power to an independent domestic government, the Republic of Menghe (멩화 궁화국 / 孟華共和國, Menghwa Gonghwaguk). Concerned about the risk of a nationalist resurgence, the Allies, and New Tyran in particular, retained a military presence in the country's government and its armed forces.
Distraught over the war's rising costs in funding and manpower, the Tyrannian government decided to shift more responsibility onto the shoulders of the newly formed Republic of Menghe Army. Generous volunteer wages in a period of economic stagnation drew millions of recruits, and by 1964 the RoMA would count some 2.1 million personnel under its payroll. Yet the force's morale and cohesion were never high, and its commanders were seldom effective. For the time being, it was adequate, but as the war progressed it would increasingly show signs of strain.
1952-1960: Insurgency
Communist movement gains strength
At the outset of the resistance period, communist movements in Menghe had held very little sway over the population. While the Greater Menghean Empire was not distinctly anti-communist, it had left little space for ideologies other than its own, and Marxism rarely spread beyond reading circles of factory workers and intellectuals.
Under the Occupation period, however, communist movements in Menghe rapidly gained momentum. Seeing an opportunity and a common cause, the Menghean Workers' Party and the Menghean Peasants' Resistance Front merged in 1948 and began sending political agitators into the countryside. Their anti-elite, pro-redistribution strongly resonated with peasants and tenant farmers, who resented the restoration of commercial landlord rule and the imposition of policies favoring cash crops. There were also external factors at work: Polvokia and the Federation of Socialist Republics began sending training and advising teams of their own into Menghe, hoping to take advantage of the restless atmosphere and establish a new communist ally.
Without an organized army like Yang Tae-sŏng, the emerging communist guerilla forces had to be even more cautious. Throughout the early 1950s, they focused on two modest goals: establishing new resistance cells across the countryside, and obtaining arms and explosives for a guerilla army. The latter need drove them to carry out raids on small police stations and RoMA armories, actions which simultaneously won them publicity and support among the peasantry. The communists also gradually built up a large arms smuggling ring near the Polvokian border, headed by Ryŏ Ho-jun and Jang Su-sŏk.
By 1953, when the insurgents began attacking military supply convoys, the Republic of Menghe government and its backers identified the communists as their main priority. The RoMA stepped up the number of armed guards outside bases and warehouses, and began assigning escort vehicles to any arms or food shipments in high-risk regions. Tyrannian forces adopted a more offensive approach: paying informants in villages to pass on any intelligence about insurgent activity and identify members of guerilla cells.
The latter strategy decimated the ranks of the Communist Party leadership. Three General-Secretaries were killed or arrested in four years, and Ryŏ Ho-jun narrowly escaped assassination on at least one occasion. For a brief period, the insurgents' pace slowed, though their guerillas remained active in the northern forests.
Resistance forces unite
The emergent communist movement faced opposition on a second front, this one internal. The Eighth Army, which by now had fully rebranded itself as the Menghe Suguk Independence Front, refused to cooperate with the Menghe People's Communist Party, viewing it not only as a rival for power but also as a threat to their nationalist aims. The two insurgencies regularly skirmished against each other in the 1950s, struggling for influence in the provinces of Taehwa and Chikai.
By 1958, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that the internal war posed a threat to the broader resistance effort. Isolated in the mountains for more than a decade with no access to smuggled arms, the Suguk Independence Front had steadily dwindled in strength, and the communists were still struggling to maintain a viable power base. In July of that year, Sun Tae-jun requested a meeting at the village of Sangwŏn in Gangwŏn Province, a blurred area between the two sides' power bases. Yang Tae-sŏng arrived expecting a ceasefire, but instead Sun offered a more radical proposal: the two sides, which both valued Menghean independence above all else, would combine their forces in a shared struggle to defeat the Republic of Menghe and its foreign backers, and would share power after the war's end. Several days of heated negotiation followed, but in the end Yang accepted, placing the national interest before his own.
From that point onward, the two factions united to form the Menghean Liberation Army (대멩 해방군 / 大孟解放軍, Dae Meng Haebanggun), which would later be renamed the Menghean People's Army. Internal fighting ceased, though disagreements between commanders continued, and the "Kalashnikov trail" of Polvokian rifles was extended southwest into the heart of the Chŏnsan mountains. The two factions not only cooperated, but complemented each other: staffed with veteran soldiers and officers, the former Eighth Army had the expertise the communists needed to train their forces and direct them in combat.
Rural insurgency and escalation
During the same period, the communist insurgency continued to gain strength. Increasingly daring in their attacks, the guerillas moved on to larger targets, derailing trains and ambushing military patrols. As before, the main priority was to establish a presence in the countryside, where the RoMA's control was weaker and peasant support for land redistribution stronger; in Sun Tae-jun's words, the cities would become "islands in a sea of red." By 1957, there were reports of insurgent activity on the far outskirts of Sunju, though for the time being the northeast was the center of revolutionary activity.
1960-1964: Conventional phase of the war
Decisive changes in the balance of forces
While by the Menghean Liberation Army had been gaining ground for several years, a number of factors came together in 1960 which turned the tide decisively in its favor.
The first was a new unity in the Communists' recruiting message. With the legitimacy of the Eighth Army behind them, they no longer faced skepticism from demobilized soldiers and rural traditionalists, who made up a large sector of the population in the East. Sun's gamble at Sangwŏn had paid off: the communists enjoyed a degree of unity which they had been unable to achieve before.
The second had to do with the location of their initial breakthrough. After a surprise attack by massed militia forces, the city of Myŏngju fell to Menghean control in December 1960, opening the second-largest checkpoint on the Menghe-Polvokia border to unrestricted trade. Entire trains full of rifles and anti-aircraft guns began to roll across the border, allowing the Menghean Liberation Army to properly equip the millions of peasants flowing into its ranks. Tyrannian commanders drafted a plan to bomb the narrow road and rail bridges over the Baekkang river, but the FSR declared that it would consider this an attack on Polvokian territory and a provocation to nuclear war.
The third major change came from the opposite direction: the southwest. Initially the most stable part of Menghe, due to its distance from Polvokia and the local minorities' wariness of the Suguk Independence Front, the four southwestern provinces had become a secondary priority for the Republic of Menghe and its backers. Yet in 1960, as Maverica fell to its own Communist revolution, Menghe's long southwestern border became awash in smuggled arms. Eager to export the revolution, Maverican volunteers crossed the border to train and lead the local communist movement, forcing the Republic of Menghe to divert troops away from the northeast.
Deeper problems lay within the Republic of Menghe itself. From the outset, the new regime had never enjoyed particularly strong legitimacy; most Mengheans regarded it as a puppet of foreign interests, and resented its promotion of landlord-organized cash-crop production. Its few supporters backed it mainly because it offered decent pay in an otherwise unstable economy. As the death toll on the front climbed, even this support began to dwindle. Kook Moon-shik, the new President installed in 1957, launched an erratic campaign to crack down on dissident religious organizations, deepening resentment within the RoM administration. By the time the communists' southward drive began, foreign advisors in Menghe were already warning that RoMA morale was "disastrously low."
Southward drive
Once the cross-border arms flow at Myŏngju was underway, the Menghean Liberation Army launched a renewed offensive to expand their control in the northeast. This time, their aim was to seize and hold ground, confronting hostile forces directly with head-on attacks and rear-area uprisings. Foreign troops held well, but the Republic of Menghe Army, which had recently transferred a large portion of its personnel to the southwest, collapsed. By the end of 1961, the provinces of Sinbukgang and Gilim were under MLA control.
Having established directly-controlled territory and built up a conventional force, the MLA were now in a position to drive southward. Local uprisings broke out across the central Jijunghae Basin, a long-standing cauldron of peasant resentment, which fell to communist forces as fast as they could advance. Resistance along the urbanized east coast was tougher. There, foreign troops were able to slow the communist onslaught, and in some places turn it back. Donggyŏng, the former capital, fell in October of 1962, but by the time winter arrived the Republic of Menghe and its allies still held most of the coastal cities and had established a coordinated defensive line.
Aftermath
Legacy
Atrocities and war crimes
Carried out by occupation forces
Carries out by insurgent forces
Death toll
Death toll in Menghe
Deaths and casualties among occupation forces
New Tyran: ----- killed, ----- wounded, ----- missing