Kayforce sent to Korea

Korea had been a Japanese colony since 1910. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, Soviet and American forces entered the peninsula to take the surrender of Japanese forces, and the 38th parallel (line of latitude) became the line between their zones. In 1948 the Republic of Korea was created in the south under United Nations oversight, with Syngman Rhee as president, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north under Kim Il-sung. On 25 June 1950, with the backing of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the Chinese leader Mao Zedong, North Korea invaded the south and captured Seoul within three days. The UN Security Council called on members to help South Korea. It could act because the Soviet Union was boycotting the council, and it was the first time the council had been able to act in a peace enforcement role.

New Zealand was one of the first states to answer the call; 16 eventually did so. Te Ara notes that the government had long supported the UN, but also hoped that taking part might help it obtain a security commitment from the United States, and wanted to stand alongside Britain. The government offered two frigates on 29 June 1950, and HMNZS Tutira and Pukaki left Auckland on 3 July. They escorted supply ships between Japan and the port of Pusan (now Busan), and on 15 September they helped screen General Douglas MacArthur's landing at Inch'on, near Seoul. On 26 July 1950, after a further UN appeal, the government agreed to send a thousand-man ground force. Kayforce, built around 16th Field Regiment of artillery, had to be recruited and trained first. Five men came forward for each place within five days.

The force sailed from Wellington on 10 December 1950 and reached Pusan on New Year's Eve. NZHistory gives its strength as 1056 men; Te Ara says it was initially 1,100-strong. By then China had entered the war and driven the UN forces back south of the 38th parallel. The New Zealanders joined the 27th British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade on 21 January 1951 and were in action within days. At Kap'yong, from 23 to 25 April 1951, the gunners supported Australian and Canadian battalions in a defensive battle that checked the Chinese offensive in that sector. Second Lieutenant Dennis Fielden became Kayforce's first fatal battle casualty, and the regiment received a South Korean Presidential Citation. After the 1st Commonwealth Division was formed in July 1951, Kayforce grew to 1500 men with signallers and a transport company. A stalemate followed on a front likened to a hilly Western Front, and by the end of the fighting the gunners had fired more than three-quarters of a million shells.

An armistice signed on 27 July 1953 ended the fighting, but no peace settlement followed. The gunners left in November 1954, and Kayforce was finally withdrawn on 27 July 1957. All six of New Zealand's frigates served in the conflict in turn. About 4700 men served in Kayforce and 1300 on the frigates. Forty-five died, 33 of them during the war, two of whom were navy men. One member of Kayforce was taken prisoner and was repatriated after the armistice. Te Ara records that over the whole war about one in seven members of Kayforce were Māori, at a time when Māori were about 6% of New Zealand's population.

At home the war had what NZHistory calls a 'dramatic indirect economic impact'. American buying of wool for strategic stockpiles set off the greatest wool boom in New Zealand's history, with prices tripling almost overnight. Inflation followed, and the boom formed the backdrop to the 1951 waterfront dispute (see The 1951 waterfront dispute). In foreign policy the war helped New Zealand gain a security commitment from the United States, opening the way for the ANZUS treaty, signed on 1 September 1951 (see The ANZUS treaty is signed). Te Ara records that the war was uncontroversial in New Zealand and that once it reached stalemate there was little interest in it. There were occasional complaints that Kayforce was a 'Forgotten Force', and the conflict is now often called the 'forgotten war'.