There was even an ominous parallel in the fact that another civil conflict in another peninsula had been the prelude to Armageddon in the 1930’s. For it might well have been asked if the Korea of 1950 were destined to become the Spain of a new world war.
The answer of the United Nations was prompt and decisive. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon on 25 June 1950, a meeting of the Security Council was called to order at New York. A dispatch had just been received from UNCOK--the United Nations Commission on Korea--reporting that four Soviet YAK-type aircraft had destroyed planes and jeeps on an airfield outside of Seoul. The railway station in the industrial suburb of Yongdungpo had also been strafed.[48]
By a unanimous vote of nine member nations (with the U. S. S. R. being significantly absent and Yugoslavia not voting) the blame for the aggression was placed squarely upon the North Korean invaders. They were enjoined to cease hostilities immediately and withdraw from ROK territory.
The United Nations had no armed might to enforce its decisions. But the Security Council did not intend to rely merely upon moral suasion or economic sanctions. At a second meeting, on 27 June, the Council proclaimed the NKPA attack a breach of world peace and asked member nations to assist the Republic of Korea in repelling the invasion.
For the first time in the war-racked 20th century, a group of nations banded together for peace had not only condemned an aggression but appealed to armed force to smite the aggressor. On the same day that the Security Council passed its historic resolution, the United States announced that it was giving immediate military aid to the Republic of Korea.
President Truman, as commander in chief, ordered American naval and air forces into action. Fifty-two other members of the United Nations approved the recommendations of the Security Council. Their pledges of assistance included aircraft, naval vessels, medical supplies, field ambulances, foodstuffs and strategic materials.
Only 3 of the 56 nations responding to the Council were opposed to the majority decision. They were the Soviet Union and her two satellites, Poland and Czechoslovakia, which had been brought into the Communist orbit by compulsion after World War II.