3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Revised edition needs further revision, September 17, 2008
This review is from: The Korean War: Volume 1 (Paperback)
The KIMH have undertaken a vast project in terms of revising a Cold War era official history of the war. Unfortunately the revision is insufficiently thorough-going, and the work retains serious deficiencies related to its status as official history. In addition, errors of type-setting and tabulation, and a conservatively type-set page style make this book harder than it should be.
Errors of interpretation broadly fall into two categories related to the work's status as an official ROK history:
1) Demonising of DPRK actions, which, when equivalent actions are taken by the ROK, they are praised. This is connected with elements of national mythology, such as rivers running red with blood, the division of Korea and the subsequent war being a "national tragedy." These errors can largely be read around; however, given the highly militarised nature of the ROK's government apparatus, a more open appraisal of the failures and successes of the ROK would be beneficial.
2) The presentation of the ROK as a unified and indivisible ideologically unified whole, which is particularly galling given the decent attention paid to the Police and Partisan phase of operations prior to 1950.
Errors in argument include:
1) Failing to have an argument regarding the collapse of the Southern defence of the 38th Parallel in the early days of the war. The book advances a mild argument that inadequate supply of war materiel from the US is the chief cause of defeat, but then explores comparative actions where trained and alert ROK forces, which withdrew to defensible positions on short fronts, were not rendered inoperable. Additionally, this argument fails to investigate why the US should have been obliged to supply materiel to the ROK. In comparison the work clearly outlines the close relationship between the DPRK, PRC and USSR.
However, along side these problems, there is a detailed account of engagements which is enthralling and honest as to the limits of command. The work provides an ROK perspective focused on the ROK, and is a healthy breath compared to US-centred histories of the Korean war. In particular the depth of response to particular engagements highlights that there is nothing extraordinarily good nor bad about ROK forces, except for their level of training, quality of orders, disposition on the field, and quality of command under pressure. Examples show success and failure.
With some limits, the work in not hostile towards the DPRK, but instead acknowledges the deep political divide, and the quality of DPRK military preparations. It is, perhaps, less detailed than desirable regarding the political / military nexus within the DPRK, but this is a ROK history from sources available to ROK historians.
I feel no concern about the accuracy of the narrative regarding dispositions and operations, and where the text is unable to say something directly for political reasons (which is rare), it provides sufficient evidence to allow the conclusions to be drawn directly. This could have been improved by the work having a thesis regarding the operations, rather than merely reporting them.
Finally, a word on the translation and type-setting. There are a number of unfortunate type-setting or spelling errors, including errors in numerical tabulation which U Nebraska press should have caught before publication. Additionally, some geographic features are named using European feature names, and sometimes Korean feature names, which is distracting but covered in a table opposite the table of contents. Awkward English usages with ambiguous and imprecise meaning, and anachronistic terminology are occasionally used ("see-saw battle" describing the ebb and flow of battle over a position, which is later used in the war as a term for a specific attrition battle). Finally, the work has been type-set in a mixture of Roman characters, half-width presentation forms, and occasional Asian-typeface Roman Numerals and punctuation (CJK area angle brackets and asterisks). This is distracting, and a sad commentary on U Nebraska Press' effort. Additionally the work is laid out with endnotes rather than footnotes, which is unfortunate in a historical work.
While I will be buying the other two volumes, I await the future date when KIMH historians have an opportunity to revise this revision with access to DPRK sources and with less of the need to produce national mythology. Hopefully this future edition will have an improved translation, and be type-set in predominantly Latin faces.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Korea from a Korean Viewpoint, November 27, 2009
This review is from: The Korean War: Volume 1 (Paperback)
These volumes complement Roy Appleman's work. They give a fuller picture, a fleshing out, of what we think happened, hence the sometimes difficult phraseology. A soldier in the American army has not the perspective of the native son, just out of Japanese domination, asked to defend his country. He was asked to master to very difficult skills, military operations and technology with which he is unfamiliar.
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