10 Wars involving South Korea

This is a list of wars involving Korea and its predecessor states.

This is a list of wars involving South Korea and its predecessor states.

The Gulf War was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes.

The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict from 2003 to 2011 that began with the invasion of Iraq by the United States–led coalition which overthrew the authoritarian government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the coalition forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. An estimated 151,000 to 1,033,000 Iraqis died in the first three to five years of conflict. US troops were officially withdrawn in 2011. The US became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition; the insurgency and many dimensions of the armed conflict continue. The invasion occurred as part of the George W. Bush administration's War on Terror following the September 11 attacks despite no connection of the latter to Iraq.

The Korean DMZ Conflict, also referred to as the Second Korean War by some, was a series of low-level armed clashes between North Korean forces and the forces of South Korea and the United States, largely occurring between 1966 and 1969 at the Korean DMZ.

The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and insurrections in the south. The conflict had military support by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union in the north while South Korea was backed by personnel from the United Nations, principally the United States.

During the Vietnam War, the United States and South Vietnam began a period of joint warfare in South Vietnam in the 1960s. At the start of the decade, United States aid to South Vietnam consisted largely of supplies with approximately 900 military observers and trainers. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 and amid continuing political instability in the South, the Lyndon Johnson Administration made a policy commitment to safeguard the South Vietnamese regime directly. The Americans and other anti-communist nations in SEATO escalated, sending large scale combat forces into South Vietnam; at its height in 1969, slightly more than 400,000 American troops were deployed. The People's Army of Vietnam and the allied Viet Cong fought back, keeping to countryside strongholds while the anti-communist forces tended to control the cities. The most notable conflict of this era was the 1968 Tet Offensive, a widespread campaign by the communist forces to attack across all of South Vietnam; while the offensive was largely repelled, it was a strategic success in seeding doubt as to the long-term viability of the South Vietnamese state. This phase of the war lasted until the election of Richard Nixon and the change of U.S. policy to Vietnamization, or giving the main combat role back to the South Vietnamese military.

The War on Terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism and U.S. War on Terror, is an ongoing international military campaign launched by the United States government following the September 11 attacks. The targets of the campaign are primarily extremist groups located throughout the Muslim world, with the most prominent groups being Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and the various franchise groups of the former two organizations. The naming of the campaign uses a metaphor of war to refer to a variety of actions that do not constitute a specific war as traditionally defined. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. In the latter speech, George Bush stated, "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." The term was originally used with a particular focus on countries associated with al-Qaeda. The term was immediately criticised by such people as Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and more nuanced terms subsequently came to be used by the Bush administration to publicly define the international campaign led by the U.S. While it was never used as a formal designation of U.S. operations in internal government documentation, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was issued.

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, and other anti-communist allies. The war, considered a Cold War-era proxy war by some, lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

The War in Afghanistan was a conflict that took place from 2001 to 2021 in the central Asian country of Afghanistan. It started with an invasion that led to the United States and its allies toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in order to deny al-Qaeda a safe base of operations in the country. For most of the period the war was officially fought between allied NATO and Afghan Armed Forces, and opposing Taliban insurgents. The Taliban regained power and re-established the Emirate 19 years and 8 months later, thus winning the war. It was the longest war in United States history, surpassing the Vietnam War by roughly five months.