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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This blog is updated every Tuesday and Friday

At War in Korea, by George Forty

At War in Korea, by George Forty
Bonanza Books, 1982
An oversize book, with b&w photoo(s) illustrating every page.
158 pages plus bibliography, no index

Description
To the majority of the world, the end of World War II meant the end of six years of conflict-a time for rebuilding and healing the scars of war. But the immediate postwar years were destined not to be the peaceful era people might have anticipated-the Cold War had arrived, with the Allies of World War II polarizing into Eastern and Western blocs.

At War in Korea takes a candid look at this three-year confrontation between North and South Korea. Author George Forty served as a young subaltern durung the Korean WAr. Here he gives a graphic impression of the reality behind the camera through a blend of personal reminiscences and photographs. This unique collection of more than 220 b&w photos provides the reader with an in-depth look at life in the trenches, the weaponry used for combat, and the soldiers on both sides of the 38th parallel.

Korea was to be the place that the Cold War got hot. A rugged, impoverished and divided country, Korea became the scene of another world war as the United Nations forces struggled to maintain the freedom of South Korea. In 1948, the communist North Koreans invaded the south and rapidly pushed the defending forces back to a small perimeter in the southeast section of the peninsula. In the course of the war that followed-the breakout from the Pusan perimetr, the landings at Inchon, the advent of the Chinese into battle and the long negotiations for peace-contingents from many nations fought a protracted struggle that returned to the public eye via the highly successful television program, M*A*S*H.

At War in Korea attemts to present the reader with both a historical and personal account of the conflict. The book includes maps illustrating the specific battles and other attack offensives mounted by the two combating forces. President Harry Truman's decision to replace General Douglas MacArthur as head of the American armed forces is discussed, as is the use of the helicopter as the latest and most successful method for casualty evacuation.

The author leads the reader through the three-year battle up to signing of the armistice on July 27, 1953. THe cease fire ended 37 months of hostilities in the course of which, it has been estimated, some 72,500 UN forces were killed and more than 250,000 wounded. THe NOrth Koreans and Chinese suffered the loss of approximately 1,350,000 dead and wounded soldiers.

As a forerunner of the longer, more recent conflict in Vietnam, the Korean War is of great significance to modern military enthusiasts and historians, and At War in Korea pays fitting tribute to the men of all nations who fought in it.

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The land and the people
2. How it all began
3. Brief description of the Korean War
4. The opposing armies
5. Withdrawal action
6. Defense of the Pusan Perimeter
7. To the Yalu!
8. Helicopters in Korea
9. The Chinese attack
10. Presidential citations
11. The Chinese spring offensive
12. Stabilizing the front
13. The static war
-propaganda
-Life in the line
-Patrolling
MASH
-The PX and the NAAFI
-R&R and living in Korea
-The Bloody Hook
14. Prisoners of war
15. The armistice signed
Bibliography




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This blog is updated every Tuesday and Thursday

The Korean War, by Brian Catchpole

The Korean War, by Brian Catchpole
Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000
347 pages plus 16 pages b&w photos, Endnotes, Appendices, Bibliography, Index
Library: 951.9 CAT

Description
June 1950: the North Koreans invade South Korea. Truman is reluctant to intervene, but two weeks later a UN resolution is passed setting up a unified command. General MacArthur's amphibious assault at Inchon liberates South Korea, and the momentous decision is made to strike north across the 38th Parallel towards the Manchurian border. Quite unexpectedly, a 'new kind of war' erupts, as 1.3 million Chinese troops pour into North Korea, swamping UN positions.

Thus began the struggle that would not end until the armistice in 1953 and which saw the world teeter on the brink of a Third World War. Now, fifty years on, Brian Catchpole's account of the first and only war fought by the UN against a communist aggressor nation provides a clear view of a conflict in a faraway peninsula where young men battled and often died for principles they barely understood.

Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Outbreak of War
2. The Defense of the Pusan Perimeter, 1950
3. The Hammer and the Anvil: Inchon and Beyond
4. the Invasion of North Korea
5. China Defeats the United Nations
6. The Chinese Winter Offenses and the UN response, January-April 1951
7. The Chinese Offenses, April-May 1951
8. Talking and Fighting, May-November 1951
9. Life and Death on the Line, 1951-2
10. Naval and Air Operations in the Korean Theatre, 1950-1
11. Prisoners of War
12. Naval Warfare, 1952-3
13. The Air War, 1952-3
14. Propaganda and Public Opinion
15. Canad, New Zeeland, and Australia: Their Special Contribution
16. The Battles of the Hook and Pork Chop, 1952-3
17. Partisans and Guerillas: the Covert War in Korea
18. The Armistice and After
19. Perspecticves on the Korean WAr
Notes and REferences
Appendidices 1 - III
Bibliography
Index







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This blog is updated on Tuesdays and Thursdays

Korea's Place in the Sun, by Bruce Cumings

Wikipedia's bio of Cumings is instructive. After you read Cumings chapter on North Korea in this book, you might want to check out the bio which states that Cumings has a pro-North Korean stance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Cumings

Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History, by Bruce Cumings
WW Norton and Company, 1997
495 pages, plus bibliography, index and a few photos scattered throughout the text, plus 8 pages of color photos of Korean artwork
Library: 951.9 CUM

Description
Over the past one hundred fifty years Korea has traced a remarkably steep trajectory from an isolated, traditional country to a modern society with a robust, global economy and an increasingly democrat politics. But the survival of the political division between north and south shows that this path has been far from smooth and continuous.

Bruce Cumings' rich narrative focuses on Korea's fractured shattered, twentieth century history. In 1910 Korea lost its centuries-old independence, and it remained an exploited colony of Japan until 1945. Then came national division, political turmoil, a devastating war, and the death and dislocation of millions, all of which left Korea still divided and in desperate poverty. Its recovery and spectacular growth over the next generation is one of this century's most remarkable achievements. Cumings provides a compelling account of Korea's travails and triumphs in the modern period.

Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
1. The Virtues
2. The Interests, 1860-1904
3. Eclipse, 1905-1945
4. The Passions, 1945-1948
5. Collision, 1948-1953
6. Korean Sun Rising: Industrialization, 1953-1996
7. The Virtues II: The Democratic Movement: 1960-1996
8. Nation of the Sun King: North Korea, 1956-1996
9. America's Koreans
10. Korea's Place in the World
Bibliography
Index

Maps
Map of Korea after end of Korean War
The Three Kingdoms
Korea in early 20th century, with provincial boundaries
Shifting tide of battle in the Korean war

Photos
--Unidentifiable Korean women in kimonos onn the streets of Seoul, circa 1900
--Wall near Suwon built in 1780
--The Taewon'gun
--Unidentified foreign diplomat in sedan chair with 5 unidentified Korean bearers, circa 1900
--First trolley car in Seoul
--King Kojong and his son, circa 1903
--Unnamedc Japanese governor-general, unidentified Japanese officials
--Seoul railway station
--Bank of Korea
--Port of Chongjin in the 1930s
--Korean schoolgirls (6 unidentified) sent to Nagoya as comfort woman. Also unidentified Japanese official.
--Shinto Shrine on South Mountain in Seoul
--American soldiers marching away from Government-General Building in Seoul, Sept 9, 1945. Unidentified
--Korean village circa 1952
--Syngman Rhee at Chang Tok-su's funeral in late 1947, with Francesca, Kim Song-su, and several other unidentified Korean's
--General Douglas Macarthur lighting pipe, Nov 24, 1950
--General Chang Pyong-san and 4 unidentified Chinese members of negotiating team
--Park Chung Hee, General George H Decker and an unidentified American admiral
--Chun Doo Hwan and wife visit Ronald and Nancy Reagan
--Kim Jong Il and 4 unidentified Noprth korean peasants on collective farm, circa 1970
--Unidentified children at play in North Korea in the late 1950s

Color photos
blue dragon fresco on wall of a Koguryo tob
Sakyamuni Budda
old homes along river bank in Kaesoing
Koryo celadon vase
folk painting of tiger
Hahoe masks
A screen which stood behind Korean throne
Confucian scholar Yi Chae
Looking toward Revolutionary Museum from Taedong River, present day Pyongyang