The Korean War: A History: 33 (Modern Library Chronicles)
£11.60£12.10 (-4%)
A BRACING ACCOUNT OF A WAR THAT IS EITHER MISUNDERSTOOD, FORGOTTEN, OR WILLFULLY IGNORED
For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953. But for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long struggle that still haunts contemporary events. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Bruce Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its origin 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, reveals untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, exposing as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides.
Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Random House Publishing Group, Reprint edition (12 July 2011) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 320 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 081297896X |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0812978964 |
| Dimensions | 13.11 x 1.75 x 20.22 cm |
by Bellringer
This book certainly gives a new and much needed report on this war. I believe it is a necessary work because as one progresses through life you learn that nothing is black and white. So that being case it should not been viewed as gospel truth but likely to contain a much higher amount that is true than those who wrote the other histories would want you to believe.
by S Wood
While reading through the reviews of Bruce Cummings “The Korean War” I noticed more than one reviewer complain that Cummings book isn’t a history of the war. Up to a point they are right, it is not a conventional history of that war beyond the first thirty-seven pages of two hundred and forty-three that narrate the actions of leaders and armies from beginning to end of the “war”. But it only takes a moment of reflection to realise that the remainder of the book is as valid a part of the history of that war.
Cummings places the war of 1950-53 firmly in its historical context, making it clear that there had in essence been conflict going back decades in Korea, exacerbated by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and between those who collaborated with the Japanese and those who didn’t. To an extent this division was also class based. He also disabuses the reader of any notion that South Korea was a land of peace and tranquillity prior to the war, insurrections were endemic and the South Korean regimes response were extremely brutal. The background detail on the two regimes that formed when the U.S. artificially split Korea in 1945 is useful in so far as it diminishes assumptions based on the current state of North & South Korea.
Other issues dealt with include a fresh look at how the war started, the role of foreign powers (of whom the U.S. followed by the Chinese were the most important), the question of U.S.’s possible use of nuclear weapons, the role the war played in the origin of the Military-Industrial complex, attrocities (Cummings claims the U.S. & South Korean forces were responsible for roughly six times more attrocities than the Chinese & North Korean forces), how both sides viewed one another, and how memories of the war have effected all sides (not least the North where the War and their previous experience with Japanese Imperialism provide historical justification for the regime).
This is a fascinating book, and in my opinion gains more than it loses for not being a chronological account of the movements of armies and the decisions of generals and political leaders. Instead its thoughtful analysis, and multifaceted approach serve to give the reader a richer view of a war that in the West has largely been eclipsed by the Second World War that preceded it and the War in Vietnam which was the next Asian country to feel the effects of U.S. military intervention. “The Korean War” is a book I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.
by MR STEPHEN GREGORY
I purchased this book after reading a recent article by the author in the Guardian newspaper. I had realised that my knowledge of the history of the Korean peninsula and the Korean War was previously minimal and reading this book has gone a long way to rectifying that situation. On the evidence of current media coverage of events in Korea, it seems to me that many journalists and politicians would be well advised to also purchase and read this book. Mr Cumings starkly relates an historical and cultural context which makes the present crisis no less acceptable but certainly more understandable. There are some minor mistakes with sentence construction and repetitiveness, but I think these are allowable given the gravity of the content.
by JaguarJon53
A shocking reappraisal of the Korean War, a war which was little known to me, and, as the author so rightly says, the vast majority of people not directly affected.
What makes it shocking is that it’s like reading the media relating to today’s conflicts in the Middle East with just a change of venue. What I gain from this book, besides a much better grasp of what happened and why, is that “Nobody knows nothing” (Hollywood’s motto).
It seems that political and military leaderships spend a great deal of time dreaming up theoretical strategies for governing the world whilst failing utterly to account for how ordinary people are, how they think, what they want in life. Its grand title is History but the often missing subtitle is What Really Happens. The great and the good (it’s just an expression) are both cynical about wealth and power and naïve about the PBI (the poor bloody infantry).
The history of twentieth century Korea is complicated in the view of us, looking up. The friction between the regional powers, Korea, Japan and China meant that folk wishing to survive had to make some grim choices.
These choices had consequences which in turn gave birth to more consequences which bend and distort lives and decision making. A lot of the decisions reflect a total lack of knowledge of the region but an overwhelming belief that they are “right”. And hence, completely wrong. McCarthur’s Caesar complex was just one tiny fly in the ointment.
This is essential reading with lessons on considering global strategy for now and for the future.