Who won the Battle of Inchon?
The Battle of Inchon, 15 to 19 September 1950, was a decisive United Nations victory in the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur landed a large amphibious force at Inchon, far behind the North Korean army that had nearly overrun the south. Despite extreme tides that made the landing risky, it succeeded, led to the swift recapture of Seoul, and collapsed the North Korean position, reversing the war.4
In the summer of 1950 the North Korean army had driven the defenders into a tiny corner of the peninsula. Then General Douglas MacArthur gambled on a landing where no one expected it, at Inchon, and turned the war around within weeks.5
Part of Battles of Korea · Before: Noryang, 1598 · Next: Chosin Reservoir, 1950
Part of The greatest battles in American history · Next: The Battle of Chosin Reservoir
A war nearly lost
By September 1950 the North Korean invasion had pushed UN and South Korean forces into the small Pusan Perimeter in the far southeast. Rather than grind forward from there, MacArthur proposed a bold stroke: an amphibious landing far up the west coast, behind the enemy, at the port of Inchon near Seoul.6
The gamble at Inchon
Inchon was a planner's nightmare, with huge tides, narrow approaches and sea walls that left only brief windows to land. Many officers thought it too risky. MacArthur insisted that its very unlikeliness was why it would surprise the enemy, and he got his way.7
The tides were the heart of the problem. Britannica puts the tidal range at about 30 feet (some 10 meters), which left the beaches usable for only about six hours in every 24, and the Army's official history gives a maximum range of more than 31 feet. At low water the approaches turned into wide mud flats. Naval planners wanted at least 23 feet of tide for landing craft and 29 feet for tank landing ships, and on 15 September the high tides came at 6:59 in the morning and 7:19 in the evening, so the assault had to be split in two.8
Why did MacArthur choose Inchon?
MacArthur chose Inchon because it was a port near Seoul, and a landing there would put UN forces across the supply lines of the North Korean army fighting at the Pusan Perimeter. Its forbidding tides and approaches also made it the last place the enemy expected an attack, a surprise on which he based the whole plan.9
The plan, code-named Operation Chromite, was argued out at a briefing in MacArthur's headquarters in the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo on 23 August 1950. The Army chief of staff, General J. Lawton Collins, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, had doubts, and they suggested landing instead at Kunsan, nearly 100 miles farther south, where the risk would be smaller. According to the Naval History and Heritage Command, MacArthur answered the objections in a talk of about 45 minutes, and he kept Inchon.10
The landing
On 15 September 1950 the UN force seized the harbor island of Wolmido and then stormed ashore at Inchon against light opposition, exactly as MacArthur had bet. Within days a secure beachhead was established and the drive inland began.11
The assault force was X Corps under Major General Edward M. Almond, built around the 1st Marine Division and the Army's 7th Infantry Division, with South Korean units added. Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble commanded the fleet, 261 ships from eight countries by the Korea Times count. At 6:30 on the morning of 15 September the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines landed on Green Beach on Wolmido and had the island secured by noon. The main landings by the 1st and 5th Marines came on the evening tide, at about 5:30 in the afternoon, at Red Beach in the city and Blue Beach to the south. Marine losses on the first day were about 20 killed and fewer than 200 casualties in all.12
How many troops took part in the Inchon landing, and what did it cost?
About 75,000 troops and more than 260 ships took part in the Inchon landing, according to South Korean newspaper accounts of the operation; the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture counts 261 ships and about 70,000 ground troops. The US Navy's Naval History and Heritage Command gives nearly 70,000 men and 230 ships from seven navies, and counts 53,882 personnel put ashore at Inchon by 21 September. Losses on the first day were light, about 20 Marines killed. The whole Inchon-Seoul campaign cost X Corps close to 3,500 casualties, 2,450 of them Marines, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.13
The recapture of Seoul
From Inchon the UN forces pushed on to retake the South Korean capital, Seoul, in hard urban fighting. With the UN now astride their supply lines and the Pusan defenders breaking out to the south, the North Korean army in the south collapsed and fled north.14
An armored spearhead of the Eighth Army, driving north from the Pusan Perimeter, met the 7th Infantry Division near Osan, south of the capital. X Corps announced the capture of Seoul late on 25 September, but the announcement was premature: the fighting in the city went on until the North Korean defenders broke and withdrew on 27 September. On 29 September MacArthur formally handed the city back to President Syngman Rhee at a ceremony that re-established Seoul as the capital of the Republic of Korea.15
Why Inchon mattered
Inchon transformed a war of near-defeat into one of pursuit, and stands as a textbook example of a decisive amphibious operation. The UN advance that followed carried deep into the north, until Chinese intervention and the ordeal at the Chosin Reservoir turned the war again.16
How is the Inchon landing remembered today?
In South Korea the landing is remembered as the turning point of the war, and Incheon marks its anniversary each September. On the 75th anniversary in 2025, veterans, the UN Command and South Korean forces gathered at the inner harbor for a reenactment of Operation Chromite, and wreaths were laid at a monument to MacArthur in the city's Jung District.17
The city's Memorial Hall for the Incheon Landing Operation, in Yeonsu-gu, was unveiled on 15 September 1984. It tells the background of the Korean War and displays weapons, uniforms and documents from the operation, along with captured North Korean equipment.18
