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socraticgadfly's review
5.0
A good history from a left-liberal perspective
The bipartisan mythologizing? It all centers around how, when, where and why the Korean War started.
In a series of essays, Cumings' central themes are:
1. The "Korean War" goes back before 1950, ultimately to Kim Il Sung and others fighting guerrila war in northern Korea and mainly in Manchuria/Manchukuo against Japanese imperialists, then facing a post-1945 South Korea with much of its leadership consisting of collaborators with the Jaapanese.
2. Kim deserves, therefore, to be viewed as being as much a nationalist as a Communist, a la Ho Chi Minh.
3. There were various left-wing movements, many of them non-Communist, in South Korea, in the 1945-50 period.
4. Unlike with Vietnam, most U.S. history has neglected to revisit Korea the way we have done with Vietnam.
5. We understood Korea as little as Vietnam.
In light of all of this, then, Korean War history needs to be "revised." Cumings himself rejects the label of "revisionist historian," and I don't blame him. Many people wrongly call him an apologist for North Korea, and he's not. His writing on 9/11 and Islam should further illustrate that.
Beyond being told myths about Korea, we're told myths about the U.S. by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
Two examples:
1. Dean Acheson didn't "goof" in leaving South Korea out of our defense parameters in his famous/infamous speech. Rather, as later U.S. governments do, to the present, with Taiwan, he was practicing some sort of strategic ambiguity.
2. The decision to cross the 38th parallel, and to push all the way to the Yalu? That started with Acheson, not MacArthur. While MacArthur was insubordinate, and Truman was right to fire him (in a swap with the Joint Chiefs to give a military trigger finger to nukes) Acheson and pushed him on, then undercut him.
I haven't even touched on Cumings' take on how this influence the Cold War, the military-industrial complex and more.
The bipartisan mythologizing? It all centers around how, when, where and why the Korean War started.
In a series of essays, Cumings' central themes are:
1. The "Korean War" goes back before 1950, ultimately to Kim Il Sung and others fighting guerrila war in northern Korea and mainly in Manchuria/Manchukuo against Japanese imperialists, then facing a post-1945 South Korea with much of its leadership consisting of collaborators with the Jaapanese.
2. Kim deserves, therefore, to be viewed as being as much a nationalist as a Communist, a la Ho Chi Minh.
3. There were various left-wing movements, many of them non-Communist, in South Korea, in the 1945-50 period.
4. Unlike with Vietnam, most U.S. history has neglected to revisit Korea the way we have done with Vietnam.
5. We understood Korea as little as Vietnam.
In light of all of this, then, Korean War history needs to be "revised." Cumings himself rejects the label of "revisionist historian," and I don't blame him. Many people wrongly call him an apologist for North Korea, and he's not. His writing on 9/11 and Islam should further illustrate that.
Beyond being told myths about Korea, we're told myths about the U.S. by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
Two examples:
1. Dean Acheson didn't "goof" in leaving South Korea out of our defense parameters in his famous/infamous speech. Rather, as later U.S. governments do, to the present, with Taiwan, he was practicing some sort of strategic ambiguity.
2. The decision to cross the 38th parallel, and to push all the way to the Yalu? That started with Acheson, not MacArthur. While MacArthur was insubordinate, and Truman was right to fire him (in a swap with the Joint Chiefs to give a military trigger finger to nukes) Acheson and pushed him on, then undercut him.
I haven't even touched on Cumings' take on how this influence the Cold War, the military-industrial complex and more.
adamvolle's review
3.0
I feel that other reviewers who have complained the book's title is misleading have failed a test of their reading comprehension; Cumings' overall argument is that we are the ones who don't know what the term signifies, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this generic name was chosen in order to lure in as many of us ignoramuses as possible.
Calling the book unwieldy is more valid, but it's impossible for me to mind when the information is so important and Cumings is the only popular historian so far I've found really telling it.
Calling the book unwieldy is more valid, but it's impossible for me to mind when the information is so important and Cumings is the only popular historian so far I've found really telling it.
milliemuroi's review against another edition
4.0
Perhaps at times slightly partisan, but it’s difficult to find an account which isn’t biased to some degree. Cumings is palpably a literary enthusiast as much as he is a historian. I loved the reconciliatory tone, and lucid examination of the extant impacts of the “forgotten war”.
libby_libby_3's review against another edition
Game changer! Well organized, engaging, eye-opening!!
mtyanco's review against another edition
3.0
The roots of the Korean War go back much further than the war itself (1950-1953). That much this book really makes clear. The division began with Japanese occupation between 1910-1945. North Koreans see the war as beginning in 1932 with anti-colonial uprisings against the Japanese and their collaborators in Manchuria. Kim Il Sung and the North Korean leadership fought the Japanese occupiers, whereas South Korean leadership after 1945 consisted largely of the much detested collaborators of the Japanese occupation. The U.S. military government, however, saw it as a black and white issue of communism and anti-communism. They were willing to turn a blind eye to atrocities committed by the Rhee regime. Cumings argued that South Korea committed much more atrocities than did North Korea at the time, but I don’t know enough to confirm or deny that. Whatever the case, Cumings wants Americans to have a clearer view of the Korean war than simply bad North, good South.