Carl Hempel philosophy of history monograph (The Korean War)

The Cause & Effect of the Korean War

Personally, I had a truly hard time dealing with Hempel’s philosophy of history because I’m neither a mathematician nor a scientist and it takes both skills of science and math in order to understand the concept of Carl Hempel.

I have briefly discussed about my position and what Hempel is emphasizing through his theory by my position paper so here, I would like to apply the method of Hempel and in order to do so, I believe that we should clarify some symbols.

C for Hempel is cause. E stands for Effect. C is the group 1 and the general law that derives the effect is group 2. That means that E itself should flow from group 1 to group 2 and it should also be connected with the outcome of C and the general law.

C1 = Cause number 1
C2 = Cause number 2
C3 = Cause number 3
Arrows = general law
E = Effect

My topic for this paper is the cause and effect of Korean War of 1950. Effect of Korean War was for North and South Korea to split into half. It also had casualties that are estimated but historians until this day doesn’t know the exact number. The effect of the war also made South Korea one of the main technologically important countries in the world while making North Korea one of the poorest nations in the world.

My C1 is difference of regime between North and South Korea. C2 is communist victory in China and C3 is different leaders elected and boycott of President Seungman Rhee.

General Law that is behind this Korean War itself I believe has some similarities that are shared with Vietnam War so I have read some articles about the Vietnam War and the general law that is behind both of this war. In the case of Vietnam War, America had to protect the spread of communism in Asia. If the communism spreads all over the weak nations of Asia then America will suffer much of its consequences as a capitalist nation.

Same law is applied to the Korean War of 1950. The war was between the different regime of North which was pro communism and South which was pro capitalism. But the effects differed from these two wars. I believe that different outcome of these two wars is not because the general law is wrong but the situation was different therefore the outcome itself can vary.

So to sum up with everything that has been said, C1 the different regime, C2 communist victory in China, and C3 election that wasn’t accepted had a general law which was the spread of communism and capitalism trying to spread the domino effect of communism. The effect of the Korean War protected South Korea to become a wealthy capitalist nation while leaving North Korea to become a poorest communist nation.

Prabhakar Pillai (2008) The cause and effect of the Korean war.

Andrew J. Rotter (1999) The cause of Vietnam war.
Retrieved on Oct. 16, 2008
from http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/vietnam/causes.htm