Customer Reviews

Formidable Enemies

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The book is short and easy to read but lacks depth and numerical data. Mr Mahoney has tried to keep a balance between the North Koreans and the Chinese troops and has succeeded well but although he recounts many small actions and their tactical aspects he has no grasp of the statistics and the data of the Korean War and his story is weak regarding the strategic and operational level of the war. He has managed to prove that the communist soldiers were indeed formidable enemies (although most of them were illiterate) and fought with tenacity and cleverness, unlike the chaotic banzai charges of the Japanese troops in World War II. They accepted grevious losses to achieve their aims and finally forestalled the UN forces along a static front. And all of these while lacking armor, air power and modern weaponry. Two maps are included, one of the whole Korean theater of war and the other of the final frontline of 1953. At the end of the book there is a useful appendix with short battle histories of all the North Korean divisions and the Chinese armies that saw action in Korea. There is also a middle section of 36 black and white photographs.

This is a fascinating, well-written, well-organized, and apparently objective look at the two armies, covering offensive and defensive tactics, as well as matters of recruitment,psychology, training, medicine, etc. As the preface says, the book reveals how North Korean and Chinese soldiers lived and fought. Kevin Mahoney clearly has a great deal of respect for both armies and for their ways of coping with the war's exigencies. Presidio Press does not publish uninteresting books.

This book is an authoritative and handy reference on the soldiers of the North Korean People's Army and the Chinese People's Volunteers in the Korean War.

On June 25, 1950 135,000 men of the the North Korean People's Army and Border Constabulary invaded South Korea. Consisting of seven assault infantry divisions, an armor brigade of Soviet T-34 tanks, an independent infantry regiment, a motorcycle regiment, three reserve divisions, and five border constabulary brigades, the North Koreans quickly overran most of South Korea.

The North Korean invasion triggered American military support to the government of South Korea and by the end of September 1950, following the American landing at Inchon and the breakout of the Eighth Army at Pusan, what remained of the North Korean Army was in full retreat.

The American invasion of North Korea in turn triggered a Chinese military intervention on a huge scale. But just as they had underestimated the North Korean Army earlier in the war, the Americans also underestimated the soldiers of the Chinese Communist Forces. Surprised and badly beaten, it was the turn of the American and United Nations' forces in October to retreat. And so began the ebb and flow between U.S. and U.N forces on the one side and North Korean and Chinese forces on the other that lasted for another three years.

By the end of the war in July 1953 the North Korean Army had been totally rebuilt into a formidable fighting machine, numbering 260,000 men and women, by the Soviets and Chinese. And the Chinese had committed some 3 million soldiers to the war in North Korea, including twenty-five infantry armies, sixteen artillery divisions, ten armored divisions, twelve air force divisions (consisting of 672 pilots and more than 59,000 ground service personnel) and six security guard divisions.

Based on intelligence and after-action reports, Kevin Mahoney has compiled an insightful and much needed reference on the North Korean and Chinese soldier. By the end of the war, both had won the respect of their American Army and Marine counterparts.

A reader needs to start some where Formidable Enemies is a great "survey" book overview of the Oposition Forces

in the Korean Conflict. There is so little written and mostly by obscure publshers "vanity press" that a person

interested in the Korean Conflict would be hard pressed to fill a room of titles on the topic. Vietnam conflict,

sure, a lot of Korean War veterans were looked down on by the younger Vietnam era ones they never understood

because there was nothing written on the conflict. I have to say buy it borrow it but read it so you understand

better what the Korean War Veteran had experienced. I think the military and government did not want

these veterans talking or writing about their experiences because of the Cold War mentality. I think anyone

at the college level needs to use this book as a text book when teaching a course on the topic its easy to

read, all the statistical non sense and strategic stuff should be taught in a different course.

Don't let the thickness of the binding fool you; the excruiciatingly brief manuscript measures at an inexplicably thin 143 pages of large print, with the balance encumbered by a comparable length of footnotes and bibliographical references.
Granted, one cannot but appreciate the inherent difficulty presented with documentating of the topic in question. However, any reonsible author is compelled to weigh the absence of available information against the decision to author the manuscript on the basis thereof, in the first place. In fact, virtually all of the documentation cosulted for this title is confined to a host of U.S. interrogation and intellgence reports obtained from the U.S. National Archives , although, suspiciously, recently declassified reports from the former-Soviet Union were never consulted. So at best, such limitations restrict the potential of this evaluation to simply a more-sizable-than-normal Western impression of the North Korean and Chinese soldier. But, beyond the sparcity of data is the thorough ineptitude of its presentation.
Indeed, one need not delve too far into the manuscript in order to assess the readily apparent inability of the author to successfully evaluate his way out of a paper bag, to say nothing about the subject matter that he purports to discuss. No doubt, any military historian is bound to be thrown off by the almost uniform absence of specifics with relation to numbers, names and locations, in addition to a prevalence of completely subjective terminology, as the so-caled assessment is relayed via a myriad of ,"some 'this'", "many "that'", "a few "this"", and so forth.
Nothing is mentioned of the untimely capture of Kim Sam Yong and Yi Chu Ha, the apprehension of whom severely inhibited the ability of South Korean-based Communist guerillas to coordinate their activities in conjunction with the North Korean invasion. In fact, the only proper name on the North Korean side to be subject to any mention at all is that of Kim Il Sung.
Furthermore, the author's selective analysis of the background circumstances reflects a blatant ignorance of the political and social context within which the subject is relayed. The only mention of the Japanese occupation is confined to the infuriating insinuation that the annexation itself implemented positive social change within the Korean family and social structure. No references whatsover are devoted to the oppressive and frequently brutal subjucation that drove many a Korean, regardless of political affiliation, to pledge their devotion to the People's Liberartion movement in particular, and the Communist ideology in general, to say nothing about the fact that post-war mismanagement by American General Hodge had driven many Koreans to associate pro-Western ideology with pro-Japanese sentiments, which proved further conduvcive in building the numbers of impressionable comrades with which to swear allegience to Kim Il Sung.
On a lighter note, the blatantly pretentious manner in which the author attempts to concoct a fanciful dressing for the most typical forms of military statistics suffices as a invaluable source of inadvertent humor, from time to time. Most notably, Mahoney's lauaghably idiotic manner of phrasing his projected estimates for North Korean military casualties as, "A range of 100,000 to 200,000 North Korean dead seems most likely to be eventually proven accurate," left me rolling on the floor.
To add insult to injury, the writing style itself is quick to betray the authior's blatantly obvious unfamiliarity not, only with the subject matter at hand, but the entire spectrum of military history and tactics, a incompatence further reflected by the thorough permetation of the manuscript with gross understatements. Case in point, the opening of Chapter 4 reflects the author's laughably idiotic sense of urgency to inform the reader that, "Information about the enemy is vital in combat, and both the North Korean and Communist Chinese armies used so-called reconnaissance troops to gather the intelligence required." No kidding!!
Predictably, Mahoney's brief and generic assessment of the North Korean offensive reflects the conventional wisdom that the invasion had been launched without provocation, despite recent revisions in scholarly research that reveal that the South Korean's may have fired the first shot.
Foreseeably, Mahoney proceeds to acknowledge with some level of "shock" that, yes, even the the Korean War bore its share of atrocities. Curiously enough, the most notorious incidents are completely ommitted, to say nothing about the long-since well-documented fact that the ROK and U.S. forces were themselves guilty of comparable excesses.
Delving into the Glossary, the fact the author somehow feels compelled to extend an explanation for such trivial terminology as "conscription", "ïnfantry", and "offensive" raises serious speculation not only as to the supposed age-group of Mahoney's anticipated target audience, but of the projected IQ-rating thereof.
With less than 45 minutes-worth of reading time to behold, the only significant information to be derived from this book is the fact that its overly prententious, military historian-wannabe of an author will never be ready to play with the big boys.
Under the circumstances, I feel urgently compelled to advise, not just military historians, but any homosapien capable of registering positive integers ion an IQ scale to avoid this book at all costs. And don't say I didn't warn you!