James I. Matray

Captive of the Cold War: The Decision to Divide Korea at the 38th Parallel

SOVIET-AMERICAN partition of Korea in 1945 was among the most unfortunate outgrowths of World War II. After dividing the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel, Washington and Moscow implemented unilateral policies of zonal reconstruction that totally disregarded the interests of the other major power. Each nations approach was a reflection of its own political, economic, and social system; both American and Soviet leaders wanted Korea to emulate its model for national de-

Containing the Cold War in East Asia: British Policies towards Japan, China and Korea, 1948–53 . By Peter Lowe. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. xii, 288 pp.

Part 1 Japan: Britain, MacArthur and the occupation the road to a Japanese peace treaty Dulles visits London - the climax to Anglo-American negotiations the San Francisco conference and the end of the occupation. Part 2 China: the fall of the Kuomintang recognition of the communist government and the fate of Taiwan economic sanctions and trade Taiwan, aircraft and the future prospects. Part 3 Korea: Britain and the emergence of two, Koreas rollback the repercussions of Chinese intervention and the dismissal of MacArthur negotiations to end the Korean War.

79.95 (cloth).

Preface Acronyms Maps The Dictionary Appendix A: Statistical Information Appendix B: Summary of Personnel Changes Appendix C: Chronology of the Korean War Selective Bibliography Index

Historical dictionary of the Korean War

This article provides a summary of current literature addressing the Korean conflict, from World War II until July 1953. It describes not only the content of major books and articles, but also key areas of interpretive disagreement. Topics cover both political and military affairs.

Korea's war at 60: A survey of the literature

Anti-Americanism never should have emerged as a major force in South Korea. After all, Washington was responsible for the creation of the Republic of Korea in August 1948 and provided major support against North Korea during and after the Korean War. After 9/11, however, American failure to balance means and ends in the pursuit of realistic goals caused anti-Americanism to reach a crescendo because it revived with a new ferocity at least four historical factors: (1) American disregard for Korea and Korean incomprehension of American priorities; (2) American support for Korean military dictatorship; (3) United States military presence in Korea and refusal to deal with incidents of military misconduct in ways that appeared just to Koreans; and (4) American racism. Koreans, however, also do not understand that their nation is not the center of American priorities and expect more from the relationship than Americans are likely to provide. This article traces the development of these factors through the postwar period and the impact of Bush administration unilateralism.

Irreconcilable Differences? Realism and Idealism in Cold War Korean-American Relations

Scholarly debate about the reasons for Korea’s division at the 38th parallel in August 1945 has not been particularly intense. Early historical accounts accepted the U.S. government’s claim that the United States and the Soviet Union made a hasty decision to partition the country as a matter of military convenience to coordinate the acceptance of the surrender of Japanese forces at the end of World War II . By the early 1980s, however, new research had established that President Harry S. Truman planned to occupy all of Korea after using the atomic bomb, which was designed to force Japan’s surrender before the Soviet Union entered the Pacific War. But when Premier Joseph Stalin sent the Red Army into Korea, Truman proposed dividing Korea to prevent the Soviets from imposing Communist rule on the entire nation. Recently, some South Korean scholars have challenged this interpretation. Relying on new research, they contend that during the Potsdam Conference, U.S. and Soviet officials negotiated a secret agreement to divide Korea at the 38th parallel. This research note examines Won Bom Lee’s article making this argument, showing how it lacks evidentiary support to overturn the standard explanation for Korea’s division.

“Potsdam Revisited: Prelude to a Divided Korea”

book, the latest of many significant works written by David Arnold, a professor of history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, takes the first half of nineteenth-century India, as its chronological and substantive focus. Three organizing ideas shape this important study. The first is the traveling gaze, those processes through which India was observed and understood via scientific accounts based on travel, and presented as accounts of journeys. Here, the chronological focus is important because, as the author repeatedly notes, travel in India changed considerably following the introduction of railroads in the 1850s. Moreover, as Arnold demonstrates, neglected but significant influences such as Romanticism were present that shaped the evolving understandings of Indian landscapes, and contributed to the processes of the colonial appropriation of India. The second idea concerns the ways in which travelers increasingly situated India within the tropical world: a category rich in meanings that emphasized the differences, the otherness, of India as compared to temperate Europe and its settler offshoots. The tropics to Europeans were fascinatingly alien and exotic but also dangerous, especially to their health and safety. The tropics, too, were perceived to be full of commercial possibilities, but also seen as undeveloped and in need of European-directed improvement. These two ideas are brought together in Arnold’s third organizing idea, through which he explores the roles the natural sciences, particularly botany, played in the formation of colonial knowledge about India. A fascinating cast of travelers, scientists, and others populate Arnold’s account, but, appropriately, it is botanists and their accounts that predominate. Among them, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) and his father receive the most attention. Arnold’s discussion of Joseph Hooker’s journeys in eastern India and the Himalayas, 1848–51, is most engaging. The father, William Jackson Hooker, was the director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew from 1841 to 1865, a position Joseph assumed in 1865. The two Hookers enable Arnold to introduce a galaxy of scientists, and to discuss their networks of communication and influence in the interrelated spheres of metropolitan and colonial science. The book is well written and well researched. It addresses important conceptual issues and provides an entertaining account full of specific insights and fascinating characters. Anyone interested in the cultural dimensions of the constructions of power and knowledge in colonial settings will find the book worthwhile. Required reading for students of South Asia history.

ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army: Brigham, Robert K.: Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 178 pp., Publication Date: April 2006

tween small farmers, state discipline, and growth is warranted. The Economic Planning Board, one of the key institutions in the state’s development effort, is not even mentioned. Distortions of fact shake the reader’s confidence in the author’s story. For example, page 153 states that Park was assassinated in a “military coup planned by fellow generals” (but cia Director Kim Jae-kyu shot him and generals loyal to Park took over later). In an appendix, the author warns of possible shortcomings resulting from the “dearth of sources” on South Korean political economy (p. 362). Readers of this journal might take exception to this assertion. The claim that “there is surprisingly little in any language that delves deeply into the 1950s and 1960s” (p. 362) is surprisingly strange given that no Korean sources are cited. The vast majority of references in the Korea chapter are to secondary sources, mostly books published outside of Korea, while numerous English-language materials— including research institute reports, theses, and newspapers—are ignored. Discipline and Development is one in a growing set of books that seek to explain varying levels of state success in promoting economic development and that use South Korea as a benchmark case against which other countries are compared. Like Peter Evans’ Embedded Autonomy and Atul Kohli’s State-directed Development, this book is intended primarily for comparative political scientists, not for Koreanists. But Korea is at the heart of the argument—and of emerging understandings of political economy—and students of contemporary Korean society are recommended to read this book, even if only to share their responses with specialists in other regions.

Flash Point North Korea: The Pueblo and EC-121 Crises (review)

of the period. One caveat the reader will want to ponder in the informants’ stories is whether their current residence in the United States made their memories of Japanese policies and Japanese people less negative. Kang hints at this in her preface when she writes that ‘‘the stories might take on a di¤erent tone if . . . they had been gathered from among Koreans who had stayed in Korea.’’ This presumption gains force when confirmed by others doing similar research. For example, a Japanese researcher interviewing the same population of elderly Koreans in the Bay Area in Japanese at around the same time stated explicitly: ‘‘The open-minded mentality acquired through contact with and tolerance of American liberalism and diversity also seemed to support the subjects’ connection with Japan. Mr. G said: ‘When I was in Korea, I wouldn’t talk to Japanese people let along speak to them in Japanese, even though they were near me. But, if it’s here, that’s another story. You’ve got to be open-minded.’ ’’1 In sum, this book represents a most engaging account of the colonial period at the individual level. It helps to revise our understanding of that period and the Korean and the Japanese reaction to it, portraying it as more complex than it had earlier been represented, with a modicum of space for Korean colonial subjects to have at least a chance to get an education, land a decent job, and live a fairly normal life.

Korea in the Cross Currents: A Century of Struggle and the Crisis of Reunification (review)

On 9 September 1945, U.S. military forces landed at Inchon to begin American occupation of southern Korea. For almost three years thereafter, a U.S. military government under the command of Lieutenant General John R. Hodge was responsible for civil affairs south of the 38th parallel. Its policies resulted in delaying Koreas economic development. Early in World War II, the U.S. government had begun preparations for the postwar administration of military government and civil affairs. At first, the focus was on Germany and its occupied territories, but during 1944, training began for 1,500 army and navy officers to serve in occupied Japan. The program ignored Korea, with the exception of a one-hour lecture in some classes near the end of the war. Plans to prepare civil affairs handbooks summarizing conditions in target areas for over thirty nations did not include Korea. Not surprisingly, many civil affairs officers who served in postwar Korea had trained for duty in Japan. They knew nothing about the country they were to govern and of course did not speak the language. Historians have argued that this lack of preparation was largely responsible for the failures of the American occupation. But other factors were more important in explaining the lack,