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The Korean War: A History (Modern Library Chronicles) |  | Author: Bruce Cumings
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 7858
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0679643575
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.9042
EAN: 9780679643579
ASIN: 0679643575
Publication Date: July 27, 2010
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Product Description
A bracing account of a war that lingers in our collective memory as both ambiguous and unjustly ignored
For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953 that has long been overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. But as Bruce Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight that still haunts contemporary events. And in a very real way, although its true roots and repercussions continue to be either misunderstood, forgotten, or willfully ignored, it is the war that helped form modern America’s relationship to the world.
With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its start as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America’s post–World War II occupation of Korea, the untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and the powerful militaries organized and equipped by America and the Soviet Union in that divided land. He tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, and exposes as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides and the “oceans of napalm” dropped on the North by U.S. forces in a remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians.
In sobering detail, The Korean War chronicles a U.S. home front agitated by Joseph McCarthy, where absolutist conformity discouraged open inquiry and citizen dissent. Cumings incisively ties our current foreign policy back to Korea: an America with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army, and a permanent national security state at home, the ultimate result of a judicious and limited policy of containment evolving into an ongoing and seemingly endless global crusade.
Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
 Hard truths September 6, 2010
John Baesler (Bloomington, IN)
My only gripe with this book is that its title "The Korean War" is misleading. "Essays on the Korean War in Korean and American Memory" would have been a more apt, but maybe less marketable, title. Thus, interested readers looking for a quick, up-to-date narrative of the period of combat involving the United States (1950-1953) might feel disappointed. I hope they will still read this literally eye opening book. After all, there is David Halberstam's recent opus magnum "The Longest Winter" that covers the "conventional" Korean War.
Professor Cumings--who has travelled in Korea and studied its history extensively over more than four decades--dispenses with the traditional story in chapter one and then moves on to uncover the dark sides of the conflict--covered up in Korea and repressed in America for decades. He explores the beginning of the conflict in the brutal Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 20th century, which created fierce guerilla resistance fighters (many of whom would fight for the North in 1950) but also collaboration among the economic and military elite (many of whom would become "our guys" in the South after World War II). He discusses the brutal violence used by corrupt southern leaders to suppress dissent BEFORE 1950, the merciless American air war, which employed napalm, against civilians, the massacres committed on POWs and civilians by both sides, and other topics most Americans never heard of back then and would prefer not to hear about now. After all, this was one of America's "good wars," even for most liberal commentators. Yet ignoring this history, as Cumings forcefully argues, prolongs the terrible traumas the war inflicted among all participants, and it makes it impossible to understand what is currently going on in Korea.
The book is full of revelations. I know a good deal about U.S. cold war policies, but had no idea that at least 100,000 south Koreans had been killed in brutal counterinsurgency operations by southern leaders--with American assistance--before 1950. That president Truman had actually signed the order to use nuclear weapons in April 1951 (Chinese restraint might have saved the world from nuclear war). That some of the worst Korean war criminals (and their families) who had collaborated with the Japanese regime ended up holding elite positions in South Korea for decades. That the Pentagon actively suppressed evidence of American war crimes and today refuses to pay compensation to the victims who are still alive. The list goes on...
The book reads less like a monograph than a series of essays. Cumings pulls no punches when criticizing American complacency and misjudgments, and he frequently inserts himself into the narrative. This is frankly a book for people who already know the basic conventional story and might be open to ponder its implications and neglected sides. Contrary to what some critics (who clearly have not read the book) have charged, Cumings not once excuses the violence, political persecutions, or cult of personality in North Korea. I kept track of how often he criticizes the North Korean regime and found him even-handed throughout the book. His acerbic criticism of U.S. attitudes toward Korea might be hard to swallow for some "patriotic" readers, but Professor Cumings knows his stuff. One can disagree with his interpretation of details, but his central argument--that American leaders intervened in a civil war they did not understand on behalf of people they did not care about--is hard to refute. Powerful, even moving, history.
Best, Concise History of the Korean War September 5, 2010
Honggildong
Prof. Cumings, the chair of the History Department at the University of Chicago,
has finally come out with a new concise, gripping history of the Korean War
that will serve the general public, who wants to learn more
about the War, very well.
Having read his huge two volumes on "The Origins of the Korean War,"
it is quite refreshing to read a short summary of the Korean War
in a panoramic perspective with helpful analyses and insights into
the background reasons for the tragic Korean civil war, which unfortunately
turned into the first, major international war in the post-WW II period.
So, what are new in this book?
I see several new additions.
1)Collection of some stunning, rare pictures of the Korean War.
2)New emphasis on the impact of the war on the emergence
of the US as the policeman of the world with a military-industrial complex.
3)Further information on the civilian atrocities committed by both sides,
in particular by the US and the fascist regime of Syngman Rhee regime od ROK, incorporating some of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Comission
of ROK (2005-2010). Regarding the Taejon massacre, Cumings was not sure who
committed it at the time he wrote "Korea's Place Under the Sun" in 1997.
However, with new evidences, he is now quite clear in his open indictment of
the US government for "one of the most astonishing cover-ups in postwar U.S. history,the black-and-white reversal of the truth of what happened in Taejon."
His call for a truth commission hearing on the US war crimes during the
Korean War is courageous but who will listen to him?
4)His perspective on the Korean civil war has broadened from 1945 to the 1930s
when some Koreans were fighting for Korea's independence against the Japanese
in Manchuria while other Koreans were helping the Japanese in the suppression of
the Korean guerrillas.
5)His philosophical rumination on the past, present and future history of
Korea and the U.S.
On the negative side, it is quite troublesome that Cumings seems to try to
walk a fine line in the middle deliberately so that he would not be seen as a
pro-North Korean scholar. One example of these is his
frequent use of the mainstream, official language: North Korean "invasion" although
he reminds readers that this expression doesn't make sense since Koreans cannot
invade Koreans. Another example is his uncritical acceptance of some of the
mainstream accusations against North Korea: that there are "political prisons
and forced labor camps holding somewhere between 100,00 and 200,000 people"
in North Korea. This number is based on a lot of conjecture.
Of course, it goes without saying that there are no doubts that North Korean leaders made many mistakes in the Korean War and that there may be many political prisoners in North Korea today. However, Cumings does not contribute to the healing of the wounds between the U.S. and North Korea, if he ends up in perpetuating the myth of the North Korean "invasion" and the anti-North Korea propaganda of "the worst of Communist states."
Finally, despite these minor shortcomings, we owe a great deal of thanks
to Prof. Cumings for his outstanding research, knowledge and insight of the forgotten,unknown Korean War. His invaluable contribution to the understanding of the Korean War will pave the way for future historians to find the real truth about the hidden history of the Korean War.
 A history - but is it the whole (hi)story? September 5, 2010
Aldo Matteucci (hikurangi)
This book contains revisionist history. It focuses less on the mechanics and manoeuvres of the immediate conflict (1950 - 1953), as it portrays the broader context (the Japanese occupation of Korea, the US occupation after WWII) and the antecedents of the conflict (rebellions in the South of the country). It focuses more on the suffering of the civilian population (terror in the South, bombing in the North) than on losses by the respective armies. And it shows the long story of deceitful forgetting that has allowed the official story line to go unchallenged for so long.
Under Dr. Cumings' well-honed pen history of the Korean War comes alive in a fully new light. One feels the exhilaration of leaving a dense forest for open fields. The story is well told, and the atrocities that emerge from the darkness of suppressed memory are appalling. A job well done.
The responsibility of American civilian decision makers - to get the US into Korea in 1945, and to move beyond the 38th parallel in "roll-back of Communism" mode in the second half of 1950, are well discussed. The global implications for American "containment" policy are very well fleshed out in the last two chapters. These chapters warrant repeated reading for the light they shed on American policy ever since.
Revisionism brings forth new facts, as well as new interpretations. Its sets itself the task to provide "the whole truth, nothing but the truth". This task is daunting. Dr. Cumings approach, however, is rather impressionistic - more like car lights sweeping the night than a thorough painstaking step by step dissection. It focuses on disjoined events, never illuminating the full story; or it sweeps away "old truths" with but a sentence or two, leaving one harking for substantiation and authentication - or at least better notes buttressing the claims. It is not so much one's lack of trust in Dr. Cumings. I was quoting him to a diplomat with North-Korea "expertise" on Kim's origins. I was confronted with the old canard that Kim had been an impostor. I did not find on pg. 46 what I needed to refute the "doubting Thomas".
The Korean War was fought under UN flag. The UN abetted and covered up the crimes that took place under its stewardship, or did not ask too many questions. Over the ensuing decades other such instances followed, and one would like, at one point or another, the historians of the Organisation to take stock of the human rights record of well-intentioned interventions. Too much collateral damage has been perpetrated in its name. Today, multilateral armed "peace-making" too often is the "default starting position", whenever a conflict arises. The rules of engagement better be spelled out in clear and general terms beforehand, lest we be forced to "repent at leisure" later.
 The Korean War August 31, 2010
Jone Lee (Oakland, CA United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is well written book and gives the reader different aspects of the war that was fought nearly 60 years ago. The author is known to be pro North Korean schlolar in his writings and his point of view of the peninsula. It makes one wonder how a former peace corps volunteer to Seoul turned out to be a US and South Korean critic. One can only surmise that his experiences in South Korea in his tender age may have soured him. where did he get the materials he used in his book. He prefaced in the introduction that the book is designed primarily for the American readers. But then there are many Korean-Americans who have experienced the war. There are many controversial statments he made in the book and magnified insignicant facts as if atrocities taken place all through out the war. He repeated the Nogunri incident over and over. He may not have known the dire situation the allies were in when the southern half of the peninsula was almost overrun by the war tested North Korean armies. One thing he did not realize was the red army had covered their uniforms with the Korean woman's white skirts in the battle fields. In the beginning of the war there were many American soldiers killed and wounded by the skirt camouflaged red soldiers. I have eyewitnessed as a 9 year refugee boy. Were North Korean soldiers more humane then the allied soldiers? Absolutely not. I had eyewitnessed them massacred the captives they were not able to transport to North. Mr. Cumings should have done more research in order to give an object view of the war as a respected scholar should.
The Value of Truth August 30, 2010
Joseph Ryan (Islamabad, Pakistan)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
After a lifetime of enduring a dominant historical discourse that reflects what Reinhold Niebuhr called "the moral mediocrity, on the level of which every society unifies its life," it's natural that Bruce Cumings should follow up his long, scholarly history of the Korean War with this shorter reflection about what good is it, anyway, to worry about historical truth?
While Cumings uses facts about the war to motivate his musings, his book does, as some have noted, bely its subtitle, "A History." There's enough history to be of value, but the real story is in the role of historical truth.
Historical falsehood is generally recognized to have geopolitical value to realist politics. Winners write history to help build what they fought for. That's the reality. So, what exactly is the point of contradicting them? Having killed the losers, are we now to kill the winners also? Is truth counterproductive?
Holding truth per se as a value, as I suppose he does, Cumings' goal is to snatch victory on its behalf from the jaws of defeat by saying that the truth is necessary to cure enduring psychological and social wounds, wounds that break through even when their expression is suppressed. He gives South Africa credit for demonstrating the power of truth in overcoming conflict and creating the basis for social progress, and of course hopes that more of the same will finally happen in the Korean peninsula.
Cumings argues that North Korea's 1950 invasion was intended to put an end to the era of Korean history that started with Japan's occupation in 1910, encouraged as we know now by Teddy Roosevelt, an era that continued with the U.S. occupation of 1945-48 where the U.S. brought sadistic Korean Quislings from the Japanese forces to displace local administrations in the south. Rhee's U.S.-backed regime intensified the conflict in the south after 1948; on top of that, Rhee adopted, to consternation of the U.S. State Department, a policy of provocation in the north meant to justify an eventual war of unification.
Rhee got what he wanted, but the north's regimen of guerrilla fighting against the Japanese since 1932, largely alongside the Chinese in Manchuria, proved better training than Rhee's underlings' collaboration with Japanese overlords did. The south's army fell apart virtually immediately, succeeding only in completing during its retreat the slaughter of opponents that they had jailed in scores of localities. A U.S. re-invasion saved Rhee but then erred in taking on Japan's old role by trying to conquer the rest of Korea, and potentially part of northern China as well. The U.S. suffered the same result as Japan had, but not before laying waste to the north, intensifying through the end of the U.S. incendiary bombing in 1953, in the hope that mass civilian deaths would break the enemy's morale.
The truths that endure are sustained, Cumings says, by the special veneration of Koreans for the ancestors slaughtered by the Japanese successors in this long history, not being able even to speak of their deaths or to give them honorable burials in the face of opposition by Rhee's successors, until the Presidency of Roh Myoo-hun.
The ongoing opposition of current President Lee Myung-bak to South Korea's truth commission's operations makes Cumings' contribution to remembrance materially useful, and it's clear that Cumings hopes that he can carry his grain of sand in broadening the understanding of the hostility in both north and south, leading perhaps to something closer to peace.
What Cumings writes of is already better known, if not acknowledged, in Korea than in the States. It surely would not hurt the cause of peace for the truth to be acknowledged more widely in the U.S. also. Being able to add Korea to the list of "their tigers, our rabbits" episodes is instructive, and the commonalities between U.S. occupation policy in Korea and Vietnam in 1945 (and indeed the attempted policy in France in 1944) are striking. Which brings up one other benefit of the truth. As opposed to submitting to authoritarian dogma, valuing truth is a stimulus to learning.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
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