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Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 2: The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947-1950

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This is a popular edition of the causes of the Korean War by the author of the most exhaustive and well-researched analyses of the causes of that "conflict," which in the American psyche, mistakenly begins in June, 1950. The dynamics of the origins of this war are rationally explained within the context of the Korean people's strivings for independence before and after liberation from overt Japanese military and colonial rule in 1945. This book includes important mention of an issue of very great concern in Korea these days of the secrets of the American military occupation from 1945 to 1950 during which time the U.S. military forces (according to recently declassified information) oversaw the operations of the right-wing death squads of the Northwest Youth and the Korean National Police. The most egregious of these incidences was a massacre on Cheju Island of suspected communists which amounted to massive firing squads of tens of thousands of village men, women, children and the elderly, an incident referred to universally as Sa-sam-sa-t'ae (the April 3rd massacre), which took place in the first weeks of April, 1948. It is an issue which Americans will be hearing much more about in coming days... That was before the entire country was destroyed and as many as 4 million Koreans killed in blanket bombing operations , while subjected to the first massive military application of Agent Orange, and suspected employment of experimental biological warfare methods, all in a backwards military stratagem of making the country safe for democracy by making it entirely useless and unlivable for anyone... Korea's Place in the Sun offers a detailed overview of the dynamics of that period from a diplomatic and economic perspective, while choosing to omit any discussion of popular political opposition to the war in the U.S. and internationally. The peace movement had been co-opted by Dean Acheson who cleverly named it a "peace offensive" by the Soviet Union. Having said this, the U.S. refused all offers to peacefully resolve the Korean conflict that were made by the Soviet Union as some devious Comintern-inspired plot. American international peace efforts are best remembered in Paul Robeson's remark at the Paris Peace Conference in 1949 that Black U.S. workers would not fight in a war against other working people, even if they were Russians and they were supposed to be our `enemy.' For this statement, he was nearly tried for treason, but it gets no mention in Cumings' history. As with many a history involving Black Americans, it is categorized `only' as "African-American history." The author contends that the scope of this book is sufficient as a treatment of `good' and `bad' liberals and cold war warriors of that period; yet there is a superficial attempt to cover opposition to the war on the left in another volume, Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 2, in one brief reference to a relatively obscure independent socialist named Scott Nearing, as being the `only one' who knew about Acheson's "spring offensive." Nearing was better known for his philosophy of "living simply in the woods," and for books by he and his wife on their owner-builder housebuilding experiences. There is no mention of the mainstays of the left, as in Henry Wallace's campaign for president on the Progressive ticket in 1948, based entirely on calls for no war. Neither is there any reference to W.E.B. DuBois' formation of the Peace Information Center and subsequent arrest or the campaign for circulation of the Stockholm Peace Petition by DuBois, Albert Einstein, and other notables to ban the use and manufacture of nuclear weapons of mass destruction internationally. Since democracies are not based merely on diplomatic and economic considerations, but also on the forces of public opinion, I considered the omission of that perspective to take away from what might otherwise be considered a very complete history. Public opinion and propaganda were forces which U.S. policymakers did not overlook in defining any and all criticism as being tantamount to disturbing the stability of government and society, thus providing a rationale for censorship and criminalization of dissent. This book further exemplifies how none are willing to tackle the difficult task of criticizing Stalinism and those who supported his policies while leaving room to appreciate many of the same who had the personal and intellectual fortitude to make a moral stance in an atmosphere of terrifying political `purification' here at home in the Smith-McCarran Act and HUAC hearings. These hearings mirrored the Stalinist purges with the destruction of lives and careers for no good reason, and culminated in the summary execution of the Rosenbergs. Cumings' latest work comparatively illustrates how Korea developed as a world industrial economy, and how that development was skewed by colonial structures as well as benefited by infrastructure development through Japanese investment in this outer `frontier.' From conversations and correspondence with various Korean scholars and journalists, I have learned that many feel repelled by this argument due to patriotic sensibilities every bit as much as from the very suggestion that such a cruel and racist military occupation could be credited for benefiting the Korean nation overall. Cumings would not, however, be the first to make this assertion, as a visiting Korean history professor from Humboldt University in Berlin who was on fellowship to Berkeley in 1989-90 named Ingeborg Goethel made the same point in her lectures. Although a very good case is made for understanding Korea as a civil war waiting to happen from internal healing processes and age-old land tenure and taxation struggles, there is a failure to put it in the context of worldwide similar emergence of many countries on various continents who also found themselves suddenly released from colonial subservience and for whom DuBois and other peace activists urged that we had a moral obligation to support their individual struggles for national independence and their pursuit of their own cultural destinies, according to arguments he presented as a delegate to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco.

In volume one we have nothing but crap from Cumings, and the book reads like socio-cultural and statistical study of Korea after the Japanese surrender, a lot of boring, dry facts.
But in volume 2 Cumings did a much better job on the politics of the war, though I find his distinction between rollback and containment a bit too forced.

You can forget about volume one, just buy volume 2 to get to one version of the causes, and consequences of the Korean War from a revisionist perspective, with which Cumings points out that the ROK was a puppet regime run by Japanese colonization era collaborationists and war time traitors (ethnic Korean police and Imperial Japanese Army memebrs), who were contantly raiding North Korea to provoke a war of unification, while the DPRK was run by communist partisans who were the only ones fighting the Japs (as well as the Chinese Nationalists in China), whose desire to unify Korea under her own brand of Stalinist communism, led her to respond to the constant provocations, raids and incursios by the ROKA across the 38th Parallel with a massve counterattack once her volunteers returned from China, and that the unexpected collapse of the ROKA in turn led to a full scale invasion on her own initiative. There are food for thought in Volume 2 about the duplicity, complicity and treachery of the ROK, the Chinese natioalist, McArthur and the US Army and CIT in enlisting the defeated Japs to re-invade China and Korea, all in the name of democracy!

Cumings is curious because not only does he virulently advocate an anti-Western position, but he also enjoys the use of sources closed to most others...those of the North Koreans. Unfortunately, this unbalanced revision does not meet the criteria most solid academic historians require within their writing.

The Author makes many factual errors in his attempt to portray the North Koreans as the wounded party. It's too bad. He has a talent for writing that is undeniable.

However, as the author of an historical book about a recent tragedy, he should have been careful to make certain he was telling the truth.

I do agree with him about the characterizations of some US leaders. But, there is enough of the patently false propoganda from Pyongyang in his accounts to make me wonder if I may have been mistaken in those beliefs.

Don't buy this book. Don't waste your time reading it.