The Korean War: A History by Bruce Cumings offers a new look at the history of the Korean War. The book seeks to provide an alternative to the typical military history of the Korean War and challenges the reader to critically think about their previous presumptions of what happened in Korea. A major theme in The Korean War is memory and the idea of how war is remembered. Cumings’ main argument is that the common idea among scholars and the general public that the Korean War should be remembered as the “forgotten war” should be discredited, because it was only forgotten by dominant American memory. Cumings further points out that the American military history perspective on the Korean War is not valid as Americans failed to know their ‘enemy’,
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In the introduction of the book, Cumings right away states that the Korean War was a few years of actual warfare in a long history of Japanese-Korean conflict rooted in national division, colonialism and foreign intervention, in which greater powers got involved. This is to contrast the reader’s likely past presumptions of the Korean War starting in 1950 and ending in 1953. In fact, Cumings states, the war has never technically ended, but a cease-fire agreement was signed instead of a peace treaty in 1953. Further highlighting the gap between Western memory and what happened during the Korean War, Cumings speaks to the violence and murder carried out by Republic of Korea army in South Korea, supported by American lack of intervention. Cumings cites a New York Times correspondent, Walter Sullivan, as witnessing the “extreme brutality” of the conflict between the ROK Army and guerillas. Cumings notes that Sullivan was one of the only Americans in the media who paid attention to this, and that Americans in general were often quick to praise the South Korean counterinsurgency campaign against ‘communist’ guerillas, regardless of the violence used. This challenges the dominant memory of the Korean War because it criticises South Korea’s actions, when North Korea is often criticised in popular history to be the more violent …show more content…
With the title being The Korean War: A History, the reader expects more than a chapter on the history of the war; the book would have been more appropriately titled if it alluded to a new perspective being introduced on the Korean War. Cumings’ book reads as a series of articles on related problems surrounding the Korean War, instead of a monograph which the title also alludes to. Furthermore, Cumings intermittently adds in first-person narrative which can be confusing for the reader in the midst of chapter overlap. For example, Cumings describes himself sitting in the Hoover Institution Library looking at sources. He should have left this out and described the source along with its importance, leaving out his personal involvement. This requires the reader to shift from a revisionist history framework to a first-person narrative, making the book more complicated than it already
In the introduction of the book, Cumings right away states that the Korean War was a few years of actual warfare in a long history of Japanese-Korean conflict rooted in national division, colonialism and foreign intervention, in which greater powers got involved. This is to contrast the reader’s likely past presumptions of the Korean War starting in 1950 and ending in 1953. In fact, Cumings states, the war has never technically ended, but a cease-fire agreement was signed instead of a peace treaty in 1953. Further highlighting the gap between Western memory and what happened during the Korean War, Cumings speaks to the violence and murder carried out by Republic of Korea army in South Korea, supported by American lack of intervention. Cumings cites a New York Times correspondent, Walter Sullivan, as witnessing the “extreme brutality” of the conflict between the ROK Army and guerillas. Cumings notes that Sullivan was one of the only Americans in the media who paid attention to this, and that Americans in general were often quick to praise the South Korean counterinsurgency campaign against ‘communist’ guerillas, regardless of the violence used. This challenges the dominant memory of the Korean War because it criticises South Korea’s actions, when North Korea is often criticised in popular history to be the more violent …show more content…
With the title being The Korean War: A History, the reader expects more than a chapter on the history of the war; the book would have been more appropriately titled if it alluded to a new perspective being introduced on the Korean War. Cumings’ book reads as a series of articles on related problems surrounding the Korean War, instead of a monograph which the title also alludes to. Furthermore, Cumings intermittently adds in first-person narrative which can be confusing for the reader in the midst of chapter overlap. For example, Cumings describes himself sitting in the Hoover Institution Library looking at sources. He should have left this out and described the source along with its importance, leaving out his personal involvement. This requires the reader to shift from a revisionist history framework to a first-person narrative, making the book more complicated than it already