The Korean War

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One of the problems I had while choosing to read a particular history of the Korean War was this. Most history books which are available in English today are written by American or British historians. Occasionally, we might find a French or German book in English translation, but otherwise this is it. (There are lots of books on Indian history in English by Indian historians and writers, but that is a unique case, and so I'm going to ignore that for the purposes of our discussion.) So, because of this, a typical history book in English is going to have a British or American bias. Of course, historians try to be neutral, and try to provide the relevant facts, with objective analysis, but the bias always creeps in. For example, a typical British or American version of the Korean War could go like this – "The army of the evil Chinese empire, joined together with the North Koreans and tried to take over the whole of Korea. The heroic American army intervened with the help of friends and helped the South Korean people. In a furious war waged between the armies of the free world and of the communist totalitarians, the noble armies of the free world triumphed. That is why we have a democratic, free South Korea today, which is one of the biggest Asian economies, while totalitarian North Korea is poor and primitive." This is the kind of history which is peddled by the international press, and media, and this is the history which most of us are aware of. So I was worried that a history of the war by an American or British historian would be a version of this. Maybe a sophisticated version, but still very similar to this.

I begin listening to this book while on the plane from California to Seoul on my first trip to the Land of the Morning Calm. The book gave me such a detailed overview of the entire war that I was able to discuss the events with locals and feel like an informed person. Most illuminating – and most heartbreaking – is Hastings examination of the many mistakes made in Korea and his assessment that little was learned by them; they were repeated in Vietnam. Interestingly, the author does not hide his anti-communist streak, and he's also fiercely patriotic, giving a more-than-proportional share of attention to the British troops in Korea, but then, he does not try to hide his own message among facts, which is rather cool. This is atypical for nonfiction. Moreover, he also goes emotional here and there, and it's obvious that he does have some disdain for certain figures (politicians and top generals mostly), as well as a generally negative attitude toward China and north Korea. Who would have thought how relevant this book would some seventy years later? Hastings argues that China’s intervention in the war was, to a large degree, motivated by a sense of patriotism, rather than a reflexive pro-Communist ideology. The Americans had, of course, committed naval forces to Formosa, which the Chinese viewed as a threat to their sovereignty; crucially, they also thought the defeat of US forces in Korea could resolve the Formosa issue. Hastings also argues that the chief aim of the Soviet Union’s Korean policy was to avoid a direct confrontation with the US, and that the Chinese acted unilaterally (more recent research into the issue has largely reached the same conclusion). Although Soviet-North Korean relations cooled as the war ground on, Soviet diplomatic and military support had, in a very real sense, made North Korea’s aggression possible. Hastings achieved his first major literary success with BOMBER COMMAND, published in 1979, which established his trademark style of combining top-down analysis of the ‘big picture’ with human stories from the bottom up. Beyond archive research, he interviewed more than 70 personnel of the RAF’s 1939-45 Bomber Command, from its C-in-C Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris to aircrew and staff officers. On the book’s publication it prompted outrage from some RAF veterans, including Harris, and fierce print controversy including harsh comment from airmen. Many reviewers nonetheless praised the work. C.M.Woodhouse, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, called the book ‘a brilliant tour de force for a man born after the events he describes’. C.P.Snow wrote in the Financial Times: ‘Max Hastings joins Len Deighton as one of the best interpreters of the last war’. The Economist said: ‘This is the most critical book yet written about Bomber Command … it is also far and away the best’. The book was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, and has remained in print for more than 40 years.

In this readable,insightful, and well-written volume, Hastings aims to paint a “portrait” of the war and does not claim to provide anything resembling a comprehensive history, although in the end the book is a fine balance of both for the most part. The book is also mostly focused on military actions.

Kap Chong Chi, a landowner's son and another university student, felt far better disposed toward the Americans, and toward his own government, than Minh. But even as an unusually sophisticated and educated Korean, he shared the general ignorance and uncertainty about the politics of his own country: "In those days, we did not know what democracy was. For a long time after the Americans came, we did not know what the Communists were, or who Syngman Rhee was. So many of the students from the countryside, farmers' children, called themselves Communists. There was so much political passion among them, but also so much ignorance." Korean society was struggling to come to terms with a political system, when it had possessed none for almost half a century. Not surprisingly, the tensions and hostilities became simplistic: between haves and have-nots; between those who shared the privileges of power and those who did not; between landlord and peasant, intellectual and pragmatist. The luxury of civilized political debate was denied to South Korea, as it was to the North. urn:lcp:koreanwar00hast:epub:3ae4067f-6aed-44c7-a949-4ffab90169ab Extramarc The Indiana University Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier koreanwar00hast Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1vd7rp0p Isbn 0671528238 In this readable,insightful, and well-written volume, Hastings aims to paint a “portrait” of the war and does not claim to provide anything resembling a comprehensive history, although in the end the book is a fine baDuring the 16 years that Hastings served as a newspaper editor, he published no further histories, only three collections of writings about the countryside, and a 2000 memoir of his youthful experiences as a war correspondent, GOING TO THE WARS. On quitting newspapers, he also wrote EDITOR, (2003), a memoir of almost a decade at the Telegraph. There's something rather "dirty" about the Korean War. It wasn't linear, it wasn't logical, and it doesn't have closure. It started as a panic ping-pong between the north and the south, became a major conflagration between the US and China, and ended up as a WWI trench warfare slog that simply ended because the big powers have had just the right amount of posturing.

In 2019 he received the Bronze Medal for the US Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Award for VIETNAM: An Epic History of a Tragic War.Prison camps. Largely Chinese prisons as North Koreans just killed prisoners. The prisons were extremely poor and many Westerners died. But later China tried to improve their image by giving the prisoners a bit basic healthcare. They tried to make the prisoners communists, but they used terrible tactics. It was another group, which could call upon only a fraction of the KPR's likely political support, that seemed infinitely more congenial to Hodge and his advisers: "...the so-called democratic or conservative group, which numbers among its members many of the professional and educational leaders who were educated in the United States or in American missionary institutions in Korea. In their aims and policies they demonstrate a desire to follow the western democracies, and they almost unanimously desire the early return of Dr. Syngman Rhee and the 'Provisional Government' at Chungking." Barely three weeks after the American landings in Korea, official thinking in Seoul was already focusing upon the creation of a new government for the South around the person of one of the nation's most prominent exiles. urn:oclc:472742150 Republisher_date 20120504182122 Republisher_operator [email protected];[email protected] Scandate 20120503214312 Scanner scribe12.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source

Max Hastings draws on first-hand accounts of those who fought on both sides to produce this vivid and incisive reassessment of the Korean War, bringing the military and human dimensions into sharp focus. Critically acclaimed on publication, republished with an introduction from the author, The Korean War remains the best narrative history of this conflict. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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The other point is his conclusion, which he states was a defeat to America. Though he points out that there are others who see as keeping safe South Korea from Communist domination, he seems to fall on the failure hypothesis. For this reader, the evidence he supports shows more as a draw, with both sides winning a piece of the pie. This is in spite of the opinions between American military and politicians. I find it hard pressed to not see the "glass half full" argument being employed here, or at least to suggest that there might, in the end and at the time of it's publication, 37 years after the fact, some ambiguity as to the success and/or failure of such an undertaking. He has presented many TV documentaries. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, London, he has also received honorary degrees from Leicester and Nottingham universities.He was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England 2002-2007, and a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery 1995-2004. He was knighted in 2002 for services to journalism. Now 76, he has two grown-up children, Charlotte who works for a London public relations company, and Harry who runs PlanSouthAmerica, ‘a thriving travel business that span the continent’.Max lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.Max’s niece Calypso Rose runs The Indytute ‘brilliantly inspired lessons’.