On 25 June 1950, the North Korean army crossed the 38th Parallel behind Soviet-built tanks and took Seoul in three days. The Marine Corps had 74,279 Marines on active duty, scattered around the world, and no unit of any size in the Far East.
This episode covers how Korea became divided and what the Corps did in the first weeks of the war. The long rivalry over the peninsula, two armies built on either side of a temporary line, Task Force Smith at Osan, a brigade assembled at Camp Pendleton in one week, and a reserve call-up that pulled World War II veterans and high school students out of their hometowns in 53 days. By mid-July, 6,500 Marines were at sea, bound for a shrinking corner of Korea called the Pusan Perimeter.
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