Battle of Lake Khasan

하산 호 전투

A border battle fought from 29 July to 11 August 1938 over Zaozernaya Heights (known in Chinese and Japanese as Changkufeng), where the Soviet, Manchukuoan, and Korean frontiers met. The Japanese 19th Division of the Korea Army seized the heights; the Soviet 39th Rifle Corps counterattacked from 2 August and retook them, and a ceasefire took effect on 11 August. Soviet dead: 792; Japanese dead: 526. That the clash was started by the Korea Army rather than the Kwantung Army, and that Marshal Vasily Blyukher, commander of the Soviet Far Eastern Front, was arrested two months later for his confused handling of it and died under torture, make the battle a reading of the Red Army's condition in the immediate wake of the Great Purge.