History Book: Lines drawn, frontier crossed

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, June 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. NASA investigates unpredictable space weather to see how it affects us on Earth.

But first, the sudden outbreak of the Korean War leaves the Western world scrambling to respond. Here’s WORLD’s Emma Eicher.

NEWSREEL: Close on the heels of discussions of far East strategy … comes news that communist troops have invaded Southern Korea …

EMMA EICHER: In 1950, tensions are running high. The end of World War II splits Korea into two distinct regions: the communist North with its Soviet occupiers, and the southern Republic.

There are goals to unify the country, but negotiations turn sour between Russia and the West. Even the United Nations has no solution.

Then, on June 25th, the simmering unrest bursts into all-out war. Audio from British Pathé.

NEWSREEL: While the world wondered, communism marched again.

North Korean soldiers attack strategic spots along the border—called the 38th parallel. They advance south and easily overtake the Southern capital of Seoul on June 28th.

The United States immediately joins forces with the U.N. and South Korea to repel the invasion President Harry Truman appears in front of the army reserves to make the announcement.

NEWSREEL: He proudly speaks of the momentous decision to defend Korea.

SOUND: [clapping]

TRUMAN: Gentlemen, we face a serious situation. We hope we face it in the cause [for] peace. The only reason for the action … was hoping, always hoping, that we finally arrive at the peace in the world which we anticipated when we created the United Nations. That’s the only reason for the action, thank you very much.

Truman sends his best general, Douglas MacArthur, to command the troops. But the communist forces are relentless, eventually pushing the Western army up against the tip of the peninsula. There’s nowhere else to go, and it seems like the North might eke out a victory.

SOUND: [Gunfire]

Then, in September, MacArthur launches an amphibious landing behind enemy lines at Inchon beach. It’s called Operation Chromite.

NEWSREEL: As the first wave lands, carrier aircraft, guns and rockets shift their attention to the mainland …

Marines clamber out of warships, surprising North Koreans in the assault, and the tide finally turns in favor of South Korea. The army gains ground and pushes the enemy back to the border.

NEWSREEL: And so the biggest landing since D-Day races to its successful climax. Planned and mounted in secrecy, whilst the cause on land seemed lost, the invasion to end the war quickly is pulled off. The daring trap is sprung. The rest is time.

And time it would take. After three more years of war, North and South Korea sign an armistice where both countries are left much the same as they were at the end of World War II. And 75 years later, the 38th parallel still divides the free South from the authoritarian North.

Next, NASA gets curious about the sun.

Audio from the Goddard Space Flight Center.

GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER: [HUMMING]

ALEX YOUNG: You’re actually hearing the vibration of the sun. It almost has a warmth to it … it’s just enough where I can almost feel the sound on my skin or on my clothes …

As part of its deep dive into heliophysics—or, sun science—NASA launches the IRIS spacecraft on June 27th, 2013 (twenty-thirteen). The craft’s real name is the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph—so, IRIS for short.

The sun has a thin layer around it called the chromosphere—between the sun’s visible atmosphere and the surface. As it orbits the star, IRIS takes images of the chromosphere, gathering data. That data—called “spectra”—is sent back to engineers on the ground.

IRIS’s specific mission is to examine solar flares, so scientists can find out how they affect us on Earth. How, for example, do they cause radio blackouts, damage satellites, and knock out power grids?

And IRIS leads to even more scientific knowledge after that:

YOUNG: The sun is vibrating at lots of different frequencies. And … we can use those vibrations in the sun to look inside the sun.

This year, on June 11th, another sun-orbiting mission captured the first ever images of the sun’s north and south poles. The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft uses data from the poles to examine the star’s magnetic field, among other things.

Audio from Space.com.

AUDIO: We’re going to places where no other solar telescopes have been before, we’re going to be very close to the sun to take very high resolution images of the sun …

Scientists are hopeful that the best is yet to come, as the Orbiter is already unraveling many of the sun’s mysteries.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

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