Battle of Inchon (1950): North of the parallel

Wolmi-do fell in the morning; the evening tide put Marines and soldiers onto the city. Kimpo airfield and the Han crossings opened the fight for Seoul, declared recaptured on 28 September. UN and ROK dead in the Inchon-Seoul operation are usually given in the hundreds; KPA losses in dead and captured were much higher. The landing wrecked KPA logistics in the south.

Chromite did not end the war. The UN drive across the 38th parallel and toward the Yalu invited Chinese intervention. For Korean readers this is a national-capital story as much as a MacArthur story: Seoul's second liberation in three months, and a reminder that operational brilliance can widen a war. Anglophone memory treats Inchon as the "clever landing" between two world-war amphibious myths (Overlord, Pacific islands).

Inchon was a harbour problem, a political deadline (retake Seoul), and a strategic temptation to go north. A landing at Kunsan or closer to Pusan would have been orthodox. Inchon promised to cut the Seoul-Pusan axis and collapse the KPA from the rear. The price was hydrography. Admiral Doyle's staff turned tide tables into a two-pulse landing (morning Wolmi, evening city).