The Forgotten War Remembered reminds us that the precarious Korean Peninsula equation is the most dangerous piece of unfinished foreign policy business confronting the United States in Asia. Author Bill Shinn conveys his eyewitness accounts from the battlefield as an Associated Press correspondent along with incisive analysis of North Korean strategy to provide the best and most comprehensive book in print on the Korean question. Includes the key "China factor."
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Bill Shinn s Korean War: the Forgotten War Remembered is a former Associate Press war correspondent s recollection, primarily of the Korean War. Shinn begins his book with a personal narrative of his youth during the Japanese colonial and the American Military Government periods. ...Shinn s book thus provides perspectives of a Korean civilian, who was also an international news agency reporter with an exceptionally adroit ability to scoop stories before anyone else (hence, a nickname, Scoop Shinn) and with opportunities to access several most highly positioned Korean and non-Korean military and civilian personnel. This unusual combination of circumstances enabled Shinn to share with the reader a few first-person accounts that previously have not been widely known.
...As a Korean-born reporter, [Shinn] does not forget to include points that are important to South Korean sensibilities and thus bring balance to the account of the war: the South Korean army s roles at several critical junctures of the war, such as the Inch on landing (p. 113); the jubilant gathering at the capture of Pyongyang; the Korean chagrin for a lost opportunity for reunification when the northward march was abandoned and MacArthur was relieved of his command; the anguish for the stalemated, on-again and off-again peace talks; and the South Korean sense of betrayal at the secret U.N. proposal regarding the anti-Communist prisoners. Shinn s account of the last of these, the U.S. compromise on the POW issues, is the first in the Korean-War literature. No one other than someone in Shinn s position could have revealed the background of one of the most controversial events of the Korean-War period, President Syngman Rhee s unilateral release of 27,000 anti-Communist POWs on June 18, 1953. Scoop Shinn discloses the scoop that was obtained from a young Korean press officer under the U.N. Command. In an attempt to achieve armistice as soon as possible, the U.N. Command submitted a secret proposal to the Communists that contained further concessions to the Communist demands and the provisions more disadvantageous to anti-Communist POWs than previous recommendations. Certain of South Korean objection, the U.S.-led U.N. Command withheld the plan to yield to the communists demands from Major General Choi Duk-shin, the highest-ranking South Korean attending the Panmunjom talks, until one hour before the meeting. General Choi boycotted the meeting, but the U.N. Command and the Communists proceeded to sign an agreement, which among others, extended the released POWs period of explanation (a waiting period before returning home) from sixty to ninety days, on the repatriation of prisoners of war on June 8, 1953.
Shinn s dispatch to the Associate Press on the secret U.N. proposal made headline news in South Korean newspapers and led to the South Korean National Assembly s unanimous resolution to oppose the proposed truce terms and to anti-armistice demonstrations throughout South Korea. This news was the last straw to South Korean President Syngman Rhee, who had vociferously opposed the truce without unification from the beginning of the talks and who had made the disposition of anti-Communist prisoners his personal crusade. Rhee, who had felt betrayed, resolved to take action: just after 2 A.M., on June 18, he ordered South Korean guards to open the anti-Communist POW camp gates in Pusan, Kwangju, Nonsan, Masan, and Taegu, and a total of 27,000 anti-Communist POWs were released and disappeared into the general population (pp.217-24). Shinn believes that the world community misplaced diatribes not at the U.S., for presenting a secret proposal to the Communists, but at Rhee, who was severely criticized for his impetuous action and was called ungrateful and treacherous....
--Bonnie B. C. Oh, The Journal of Asian Studies, 57:1 (February 1998): 156-160
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vividly and with intensity about the Korean War,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Forgotten War Remembered, Korea: 1950-1953: A War Correspondent's Notebook & Today's Danger in Korea (Hardcover)
Shinn's book tells it like it was in the fighting for Seoul, the anxieties at the Pusan Perimeter, the Inchon landing (the startegic masterstroke by General Douglas MacArthur which turned out to be a Shinn 'scoop'), and the communist duplicity in negotiations at Panmunjom. No amount of research can recreate the good, the bad and the ugly of wars like the Korean War. This man Shinn was there and has written about it vividly and with intensity." Ed Nellan, a Tokyo-based columnist
5.0 out of 5 stars
The worst war, the Korean War,
By Tiger Wald (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Forgotten War Remembered, Korea: 1950-1953: A War Correspondent's Notebook & Today's Danger in Korea (Hardcover)
The author, Bill Shinn was born in North Korea and witnessed the tragic history of Korea, particularly how the commists of the North started the waf. He was a war correspondent of AP and recorded all the details of the actual war scenes as vividly as accurately such as defence of Pusan perimeter, Inchon Landing, the rollback operation, Chinese intervention and Seoul retaken for the last time.
A Korean war veteran recommended me this book to read. He said he could not read it without tears remembering the worst war in the history of the world. The author also provides his historical and political views of the future of the Korean Penninsula. This book is recommended not just for the Korean war veterans but slso those who are interested in the fate of Korean penninsula. It is certainly a tragedy that the penninsula is still devided in two, the North and the South.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Korea through the eyes of a Korean,
By
This review is from: The Forgotten War Remembered, Korea: 1950-1953: A War Correspondent's Notebook & Today's Danger in Korea (Hardcover)
Good book. Shinn is a solid writer, not aurprising since he was a news reporter in the Korean War era. But this book is about the war, and the soldiers, NOT about Shinn himself, which makes it a refreshing relief from most 'by journalist' accounts of the war. Journalists tend to be a clannish lot, repulsive at worst and tolerable at best, and Korean war journalists seem unable to avoid the mutual admiration society syndrome, especially when it comes to Marguerite Higgins. Sure, Shinn falls a bit for that; but his experiences in Korea, Japan, and America in the post WWII period make thrilling reading. We forget how people such as Shinn had to live by their wits and their pluck, in this era. Compare this with todays' journalists who gaggle constantly about restrictions on press freedom at the same time they are protected by the military as embedded writers. I always thought that if the UPI/AP wire networks had to finance their own protection in the field---IMAGINE THAT!, a company of reporter-commandos---their attitude toward war might be just a tad more balanced. Heaven knows with a few journalists losing their heads in Iraq in recent years, we now hear a lot less about 'oppressed muslims' than we did after Sept. 11th.
But i digress! Shinn's book is kind of 3 books in one. There is his personal story of how he came to be a journalist on NE asian affairs in the post WWII period. These stories are captivating and uniquely personal, and are the most enjoyable part of the book. In contrast, his renditions of the war itself...the early rout, pusan perimeter, etc, are fairly stale. BUT..as a Korean, M. Shinn does do a great service in pointing out the successes of (south) Korean regiments, even in the wars' earliest and darkest days. The part about todays' danger, written in the middle 1990s, seems somewhat stale and archaic now. That is one problem with writing on a 'current event.' The writing is out of date almost by the time the print dries. Nor is their anything new in these sections. One interesting style that makes Shinn's book a unique text is that many of the articles seem drawn directly from, if not outright renditions of, the notes he collected in the field as a writer. There is a lack of polish, a spontaneity, a disjointed nature to the text, which gives it an appeal. Overall a good book.
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