Customer Reviews

Hidden History of the Korean War

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book, written in 1952, is still worth reading, especially as a companion to more recent histories including Halbertam's The Coldest Winter. Journalist I.F. Stone enjoyed a long career covering foreign and domestic policy, in particular exposing government half truths and propaganda. Stone wrote this book in the early years of the Korean War, and his research stands up well to the test of time and subsequent publications such as Halberstam's book.

Hoping to gain legitimacy for his Korean war analysis, Stone relied on major newspaper accounts, published interviews, and government documents -- no off the record or deep background interviews. He continued this reportorial style throughout his career.

Stone situates the Korean War in the larger context of the emerging cold war and of McCarthyism, and of the resulting constraints faced by the Truman administration in maintaining its credibility with growing anti-Communist political opinion for its containment and rearmament policy toward the Soviet Union. Thus the early chapters of Stone's book are some of the best. Stone views Truman somewhat sympathetically, but overall Truman does not come off well in Stone's account in large part because of his dithering over how to handle MacArthur.

In Stone's account, MacArthur is depicted -- I think correctly -- as playing a conscious role in minimizing the pre-war threat posed by North Korea. Stone convincingly describes how intelligence readily available to MacArthur painted a picture of a likely North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, and how MacArthur likely downplayed this intelligence in order to permit a foreign policy crisis in Korea that would serve his larger motives. This is not to say that MacArthur forsaw the early disastrous results of the North Korean invasion, but simply that he believed a crisis could be used for larger purposes. In this, MacArthur was assisted by John Foster Dulles, a Truman appointee and envoy who shared much of MacArthur's world view. Even if this interpretation is not correct, MacArthur's failure to anticipate the invasion was a major blunder, among many others to come.

Essentially, according to Stone, MacArthur sought with the Korean situation to force a more aggressive policy against Communist China, to the point of perhaps provoking a war with the Chinese Communists, and the Soviet Union, that would end the Communist menace (as opposed to containing it) and not coincidentally supporting Chiang Kai Shek in his efforts to return to the mainland.

Thus, every time that an early end to the conflict appeared possible, in Stone's account MacArthur did everything possible to avoid peace. And MacArthur pushed his forces to the Chinese border, hoping to instigate a general war but instead provoking large scale Chinese intervention that drove U.N. (American) forces back decisively while Truman declined the opportunity for World War III.

David Halberstam's much later analysis of the war, The Coldest Winter, paints MacArthur as incompetent, and there is much evidence of this to be sure. But Stone's account seems equally on the mark in highlighting MacArthur's wider political aims and his apparently conscious policy of using the war as a means of pursuing his wider aims.

Finally, Stone's critical eye for military and civilian propaganda make the entire book worth reading, as his accounts clearly show the machinations of MacArthur's p.r. corps and the general misinformation supplied by the military to the media about the state of and progress of the war, and about the on again, off again peace talks. In this, Stone's Korean reporting anticipated much of his later fine work on Vietnam.

Though not very thick, this book will get you to think about whether you should accept the common understanding in the West and in South Korea that it was the North that started the war. It might even get you to thinking about the reason why North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong-do during the recent joint U.S.-R.o.K. maritime military exercises, especially if you look at a map to see where this island is located in relation to North Korean territory and note how close the Northern Limit Line (an unnegotiated maritime boundary, unlike the DMZ on land) is to North Korean land territory.

I give four stars instead of five, because I wish I.F. Stone were still around to write an update edition based on subsequent follow-up research, which would probably earn five from me.

The previous reviewer's reference to soybeans and what-not is not actually part of I.F. Stone's work, but from the introduction written by Bruce Cumings. Cumings was trying to make the case that the South and the Americans had actually started the war (which he later had to acknowledge was false), and I think it is unfortunate that such an agenda-driven piece was attached to Stone's book.

It's been several years since I read Hidden History, but I do remember it as a book that made the case that a lot of the information coming out of the US military command was trumped up or false. If anything, Stone makes the case that the US-led UN forces unnecessarily retreated in the face of what was, at first, a phantom menace trumped up by MacArthur as a pretext for removing the communists from China as well. I don't recall that Stone was making the case that the US or South Korea's military efforts were unjustified.

For anyone interested in the Korean War, Hidden History would be a worthwhile read, if for no other reason than to see a certain view of the war (whether correct or incorrect) at the time the war was being fought.

In this the author claims that the South Koreans and their American allies started the Korean War. South Korean leader Syngman Rhee lost elections in May and so (the theory claims) caused the war through a number of border incursions.

Add in an attempt to corner the soybean market and preempt a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and you have all the makings of some real tinfoil hat stuff.

Published in 1952, this theory has been refuted and ignored by mainstream historians. Of course it has not been disproved. How could it be? This was a conspiracy so vast, so devious that the fact there is no evidence is all the proof an open mind needs.