Ever since Korea was first divided at the end of World War II, the tension between its northern and southern halves has riveted—and threatened to embroil—the rest of the world. In this landmark history, now thoroughly revised and updated in conjunction with Korea expert Robert Carlin, veteran journalist Don Oberdorfer grippingly describes how a historically homogenous people became locked in a perpetual struggle for supremacy—and how they might yet be reconciled.
In A Troubled Peace, Professor Chae-Jin Lee reviews the vicissitudes of U.S. policy toward South and North Korea since 1948 when rival regimes were installed on the Korean peninsula. He explains the continuously changing nature of U.S.-Korea relations by discussing the goals the United States has sought for Korea, the ways in which these goals have been articulated, and the methods used to implement them. Using a careful analysis of declassified diplomatic documents, primary materials in English, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, and extensive interviews with American and Korean officials, Lee draws attention to a number of factors that have affected U.S. policy: the functions of U.S. security policy in Korea, the role of the United States in South Korea's political democratization, President Clinton's policy of constructive engagement toward North Korea, President Bush's hegemonic policy toward North Korea, and the hexagonal linkages among the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and the two Koreas. Drawing on concepts of containment, deterrence, engagement, preemption, and appeasement, Lee's balanced and thoughtful approach reveals the frustrations of all players in their attempts to arrive at a modicum of coexistence. His objective, comprehensive, and definitive study reveals a dynamic—and incredibly complex—series of relationships underpinning a troubled and tenuous peace.
"Korea is one of the last divided countries in the world. Twins born of the Cold War, one is vilified as an isolated, impoverished, time-warped state with an abysmal human rights record and a reclusive leader who perennially threatens global security with his clandestine nuclear weapons program. The other is lauded as a thriving democratic and capitalist state with the thirteenth largest economy in the world and a model that developing countries should emulate. In The Koreas, Theodore Jun Yoo provides a ... gateway to understanding the divergent developments of contemporary North and South Korea. In contrast to standard histories, Yoo examines the unique qualities of the Korean diaspora experience, which has challenged the master narratives of national culture, homogeneity, belongingness, and identity"--
This book contends that the long history of America’s interaction with Korea started with the signing of the Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce, and Navigation in 1882, and with the establishment of the Seward-Shufeldt Line. William Seward and Robert Shufeldt shared the same vision of achieving their American goal by opening Korea and extending the Seward-Shufeldt Line from Alaska to link it with the Philippines and the Samoan Islands, thus completing a perfect perimeter for the American era of the Pacific and for its dominance in the Asian market. Initiating diplomatic and trading relations with Korea was Commodore Shufeldt’s finishing touch on the plan for achieving American hegemony in the coming 20th century. In turn, the decline of Chinese sphere of influence over the Korean Peninsula and the fall of Russian power in the region, with the consequential rise of Japanese power there, which led to a change from the SS Line to the Roosevelts’ Theodore-Franklin Line, the colonization of Korea, the division of Korea, the Korean War, and has brought America back nearly full circle to that first encounter in Pyeongyang; the regrettable General Sherman Incident in 1866. This book argues that the United States must uphold its early commitment to peace and amity by now normalizing relations with North Korea in order to bring closure to the “Korean Question.”
Despite American success in preventing the conquest of South Korea by communist North Korea, the Korean War of 1950-1953 did not satisfy Americans who expected the kind of total victory they had experienced in WW II. In Korea, the U.S. limited itself to conventional weapons. Even after communist China entered the war, Americans put China off-limits to conventional bombing as well as nuclear bombing. Operating within these limits, the U.S. Air Force helped to repel 2 invasions of South Korea while securing control of the skies so decisively that other U.N. forces could fight without fear of air attack.
"Among the scholars who have built the field of Korean studies are former Peace Corps volunteers who served in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s before pursuing advanced degrees in anthropology, history, and literature. These scholars, who formed the core of the second generation of Korean Studies scholars in the US, reflect in this volume on their personal experience of serving during Korea's period of military dictatorship, on issues of gender and the Peace Corps experience, and on how random assignment to Korea sparked fascination and led to lifelong professional involvement with the country. Two chapters by Korean studies scholars who were not Peace Corps volunteers (one American and one Korean) assess how Peace Corps volunteers have influenced development of the field"--
Presents revised and updated papers from a March 1997 conference held at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Papers investigate the new relationships emerging among Washington, Seoul, and Pyongyang in which political, military, and economic variables interact in a new way. Subjects include South Korea's nuclear option, US-North Korea economic relations, US public opinion of the two Koreas, and Japan and China's responses to changing developments in Korea. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This Task Force report comprehensively reviews the situation on the peninsula as well as the options for U.S. policy. It provides a valuable ranking of U.S. interests, and calls for a firm commitment from the Obama administration to seek denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, backed by a combination of sanctions, incentives, and sustained political pressure, in addition to increased efforts to contain proliferation. It notes that China's participation in this effort is vital. Indeed, the report makes clear that any hope of North Korea's dismantling its nuclear program rests on China's willingness to take a strong stance. For denuclearization to proceed, China must acknowledge that the long-term hazard of a nuclear Korea is more perilous to it and the region than the short-term risk of instability. The report also recognizes that robust relations between Washington and its allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, must underpin any efforts to deal with the North Korean problem. It looks as well at regime change and scenarios that could lead to reunification of the peninsula. At the same time that the Task Force emphasizes the danger and urgency of North Korea's behavior, it recognizes and applauds the beneficial U.S. relationship with South Korea, which has proved to be a valuable economic and strategic partner. In this vein, the Task Force advocates continued close coordination with Seoul and urges prompt congressional passage of the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement.
Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean peninsula. But The interrogation rooms of the Korean War presents an entirely new narrative, shifting the perspective from the boundaries of the battlefield to inside the interrogation room. Upending conventional notions of what we think of as geographies of military conflict, Monica Kim demonstrates how the Korean War evolved from a fight over territory to one over human interiority and the individual human subject, forging the template for the U.S. wars of intervention that would predominate during the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. Kim looks at how, during the armistice negotiations, the United States and their allies proposed a new kind of interrogation room: one in which POWs could exercise their "free will" and choose which country they would go to after the ceasefire. The global controversy that erupted exposed how interrogation rooms had become a flashpoint for the struggles between the ambitions of empire and the demands for decolonization, as the aim of interrogation was to produce subjects who attested to a nation's right to govern. The complex web of interrogators and prisoners -- Japanese-American interrogators, Indian military personnel, Korean POWs and interrogators, and American POWs -- that Kim uncovers contradicts the simple story in U.S. popular memory of "brainwashing" during the Korean War
Far from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in the Third World shaped the worldview of many North Koreans and helped them imagine a unified anti-imperialist front that stretched from the boulevards of Pyongyang to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the beaches of Cuba. This book tells the story of North Korea's transformation in the Third World from model developmental state to reckless terrorist nation, and how Pyongyang's actions, both in the Third World and on the Korean peninsula, ultimately backfired against the Kim family regime's foreign policy goals. Based on multinational and multi-archival research, this book examines the intersection of North Korea's domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea's developmental model appealed to the decolonizing world.
