The American Spectator : A Revisionist's Korean War

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A Revisionist's Korean War

By Doug Bandow on 11.1.10 @ 6:04AM

How persuasive is historian Bruce Cumings?

The Korean War: A History
By Bruce Cumings,
(Modern Library, 288 pages, $24)

Six decades ago the Korean peninsula was ablaze. North Korea had invaded the South. U.S. and allied forces counterattacked and retook Seoul. But expectations that the war would end by Christmas were dashed when the People's Republic of China intervened. The conflict continued for another two and a half bloody years.

Much has been written about the "forgotten war." There wouldn't seem to be much to add, but Bruce Cumings, whose revisionist perspective has engendered much controversy over the years, manages to do so.

The ROK is now a major player on the world stage with a population of 50 million and a large, innovative, export-oriented economy. South Korea also has made the difficult political transition from military dictatorship to stable democracy. The legacy of the war lives on, however.

The Korean peninsula has a long history, but, notes Cumings, "Korea was at its modern nadir during the war… where most of the millions of Americans who served in Korea got their impression." The view was unfortunately negative.

Cumings' perspective is sui generis: "here was the Vietnam War we came to know before Vietnam -- gooks, napalm, rapes, whores, an unreliable ally, a cunning enemy, fundamentally untrained GIs fighting a war their top generals barely understood, fragging of officers, contempt for the know-nothing civilians back home, devilish battles indescribable even to loved ones, press handouts from Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters apparently scripted by comedians or lunatics, an ostensible vision of bringing freedom and liberty to a sordid dictatorship run by servants of Japanese imperialism."

The war began with a North Korea invasion on June 24, 1950, but this is not the complete story. Cumings long has detailed how Syngman Rhee, America's obstreperous ally, staged border provocations and threatened war.

As a result, Washington refused to fully arm South Korea beforehand lest the latter start a war. Cumings nicely sets the context of the Korean War. This was not another German invasion of Poland. Rather, he argues, the Korean War "was a civil war, a war fought primarily by Koreans from conflicting social systems, for Korean goals. It did not last three years, but had a beginning in 1932, and has never ended."

This helps explain why the North has been so resistant to Seoul's entreaties and subsidies. There are two systems, but only one people.

Interesting but less convincing is Cumings' attempt to tie DPRK policy today to Kim Il-sung's anti-Japanese guerrilla days. The North Koreans, he writes, "essentially saw the war in 1950 as a way to settle the hash of the top command of the South Korean army, nearly all of whom had served the Japanese."

That may be true, but Rhee also was a rabid nationalist who had no affection for Korea's former colonial overlord. ROK President Park Chung-hee served in the military under Japan, but he was no toady to Tokyo and built a far stronger nation state than that developed by Kim. Popular antagonism towards Japan remains pervasive in South Korea even today. A ruthless will to power and an ideological commitment to communism are better explanations than anti-Japanese sentiments for Kim Il-sung's continuing brutal policies.

Cumings also posits that many aging North Korean officials believe that their anti-Japanese service decades ago "bequeathed their right to rule." Even if true in 1945 or 1950, that time is over. Not only has Japan lost its influence over the peninsula, but the North's government is now controlled by the antithesis of the austere guerrilla: a licentious, sybaritic child (Kim Jong-il), given every luxury possible before being handed power, who is attempting to similarly pass power on to his child (Kim Jong-un).

Cumings does, however, provide an important service by reminding us of Rhee's bloody rule. During the war ROK forces massacred political prisoners and communist sympathizers.

Indeed, after noting that "The North and South of today are vastly different than they were sixty years ago," Cumings argues that "We do not have evidence that the North Koreans ever killed their enemies in such large numbers." Pyongyang's forces murdered, he says, but not as promiscuously as did those of the ROK. "We are left with the conundrum that the DPRK, widely thought to be the worst of Communist states, conducted itself better than did the American ally in Seoul."

Perhaps, though Cumings unnecessarily downplays the North's uniquely bizarre and horrific government, calling it "an unusual but predictable combination of monarchy, nationalism, and Korean political culture." He writes: "there is no evidence in the North Korean experience of the mass violence against whole classes of people or the wholesale 'purge' that so clearly characterized Stalinism, and that was particularly noteworthy in the scale of deaths in the land reform campaigns in China and North Vietnam and the purges of the Cultural Revolution."

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About the Author

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).

Letter to the Editor View all comments (17) | Leave a comment

Cris Worth| 11.1.10 @ 9:26AM

Truman's mistake was when he decided to intervene he did not go to Congress and receive a declaration of war instead he declared a police action receiving UN help. With a declaration of war maximum force including dropping nuclear bombs on Pyongyang killing the NK dictator leaving MacArthur the mopping up roll of NK forces in the South. Truman dropped nuclear bombs before with success why the change? Now we are faced with a lunatic offspring and his offspring fully armed with nuclear bombs ready to use against us. That is the legacy of the Korean War.

Alan Brooks| 11.1.10 @ 8:58PM

The legacy of the war was Alan Alda making a stream of unending drinky/horny jokeys.

HAWKEYE: "[snicker] Frank! you and [blonde mistressy] are drunk as skunks... Radar, fer crissakes, don't spill the martinis!"

COLONEL POTTER: "Suffering sheepdip!"

HAWKEYE: '[snicker, snicker] slurp. T & A.
slurp slurp. refwill my class, Radar, you wittle wimpie. Hee Hee! Oh, Hi, nursie-poo! What big tatas you have! Ho Ho. Slurp. HaHa.
slurp, slurp [snicker]..."

Alan Brooks| 11.1.10 @ 9:07PM

...Klinger The Transvestite From Toledo Makes Yet Another Crack About The Latest Dress That Inexplicably Might Help Him Get An Honorable Discharge [cue in Laff Trak].

Slurp, (Nurse-sex-joke #381)

Jacobite| 11.5.10 @ 8:28PM

Whatever you think about Joe McCarthy, Truman's govt was overflowing with Soviet agents-of-influence. Harry was an uneducated political hack, but they couldn't just convince him to become an ally of Good Old Joe. But they sure managed to short-circuit every serious move that ran counter to the USSR's interests. Sure, we could have a Berlin Airlift, but why didn't we air- lift some nukes to East Germany? Or send a B-52 to turn Peking into Chop Suey when China invaded Korea? It's a great lesson in the fact that 'moderate' policies are seen as non-threatening by our enemies, and by our enemies' fifth-columnists in the USA, who advocate them.

canuckistani| 11.1.10 @ 10:30AM

My only issue with ROK is the continued hegemony of the family oligarchs: notably Samsung, Hyundai and LG. They possess enormous influence on the conduct of affairs in the country, and have ostensibly affected the affairs of US interests.
Our naivete stems from the expectation that corporate oligarchs are bounded by simple commercial endeavor, not true.
We would be smart to continue to exploit the Korean business and be patient with the North's transitions. The South knows it is a difficult road ahead, and we should let them lead the march.

Charie| 11.4.10 @ 4:26PM

We have diplomats there and have an embassy just to prevent us from being naive about the motives of NK. Do you really think these diplomats don't know about the corporate oligarchs? If they don't, they should be hauled home and a new batch of more canny diplomats sent there. And perhaps a few more spies would do the trick.

WilliamInWien| 11.1.10 @ 12:56PM

Some thing I keep in mind: One of my history professor s used to write on the chalk board...."History books that contain no lies are extremely tedious".

Bruce| 11.1.10 @ 1:17PM

All I know is that after winning 4 man to man gunfights, receiving 27 medals as a police officer & fighting off gay sexual temptations my whole life, that I should be in charge.

Seek| 11.1.10 @ 4:34PM

This is fascinating. Really. It takes guts to do this and come out alive. You may be "Dirty Harry" in real life.

Tim*| 11.1.10 @ 6:21PM

Uh Oh !The Recovering Village People Dude is over here now.

Bert| 11.1.10 @ 3:49PM

Bruce Cumings and his writings demonstrate heis a sycophantic toady for the North Korean regime. He should move to Pyongyang and become the regime's Goebbels.

CalMark| 11.1.10 @ 8:43PM

All the learned types grant moral equivalence to massacring "communist sympathizers" and "other opposition."

Destroying Communist sympathizers may not be pretty, but it's the only thing that works. Look at Eastern Europe, where everyone played nicely with the Old Commies. Now they're in charge again, under a "new" system.

Communists are terrorists and must be destroyed. If the only thing that works is massacre--so be it.

Anthony| 11.1.10 @ 9:04PM

North Korea is not a country, it is a prison camp, its people tortured, raped and beaten continuously. It is a disgrace that the wardens of this territory are allowed to continue their terrorism. Truman's decision to fire MacArthur and fight a limited war is one of the biggest blunders in American military history.

Humphrey Dumfries| 11.4.10 @ 3:12PM

ob·strep·er·ous /əbˈstrepərəs/
Adjective: Noisy and difficult to control

Strider| 11.7.10 @ 2:35AM

Why is Bandow so skeptical of the notion that Stalin allowed the UN to intervene in order to weaken the US? It's a perfectly logical, if Machiavellian, tactic -- if your enemy wants to cripple himself, step aside and let him. I made the same point awhile back at Antiwar.com and got several agreements.

Nor is it strange that the USSR stayed out of the war. The nation had been ravaged in WW2, with millions of people killed, and was therefore in no condition to help NK. Staying neutral and rebuilding while one's adversaries squandered blood and treasure was both clever and logical. Again, Machiavelli would have approved.

uchu| 11.10.10 @ 9:15PM

History books that contain no lies are extremely tedious

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