Korea: The Unknown War, by Halliday and Cumings

Korea: The Unknown War, by Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings
Pantheon Books, 1988
Oversize, 219 pages, acknowledgments, Index. Whole book chock-a-block with photos
Library: 951.9 HAL

Description
The conflict in Korea is the great unknown war of American history. It lies hidden in myths about its orginin, its course, and its consequences. Based on an extraordinary wealth of new materials and interviews from all sides-from China, Russia, the United States and both Koreas - Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings offer a depiction of the real war as startling as it is illuminating. They show how the conflict grew out of what was essentially a civil war with its roots in internal struggles, complicated by outside intervention.

Drawing on a rich collection of photographs, drawings, cartoons, paintings, and posters, they illustrate the savagery of the war in which over three million Koreans and fifty thousand US soldiers died.

The authors examine the threatened deployment of the atomic bomb, the question of germ warfare, and the nature of both the South Korean and North Korean regimes.

Halliday and Cumings have interviewed an unprecedented number of participants, including many who were in North Korea during the war, among them journalists, doctors, lawyers, scientists-and western visitors who met Kim Il Sung and Mao Zedong. They have also discussed the war with a number of contemporary politicians from many of the countries involved. The result is a fascinating portrait of a conflict whose significance is only now beginning to be appreciated.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Introduction
1. Outside Intervention and a Divided Korea
2. the War Begins
3. The War for the North
4. An Entirely New War
5. Talking While Fighting
6. Armistice Withot REunification
Photographic Acknowledgments
Index



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