<P> The Chinese and North Koreans estimated that about 390,000 soldiers from the United States, 660,000 soldiers from South Korea and 29,000 other UN soldiers were "eliminated" from the battlefield . </P> <P> Recent scholarship puts the full battle death toll on all sides at just over 1.2 million . </P> <P> In a postwar analysis of the unpreparedness of U.S. Army forces deployed to Korea during the summer and fall of 1950, Army Major General Floyd L. Parks stated that "Many who never lived to tell the tale had to fight the full range of ground warfare from offensive to delaying action, unit by unit, man by man...(T) hat we were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat...does not relieve us from the blame of having placed our own flesh and blood in such a predicament ." </P> <P> By 1950, U.S. Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson had established a policy of faithfully following President Truman's defense economization plans, and had aggressively attempted to implement it even in the face of steadily increasing external threats . He consequently received much of the blame for the initial setbacks in Korea and the widespread reports of ill - equipped and inadequately trained U.S. military forces in the war's early stages . </P>

What was south korea fighting for in the korean war