Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea

by Sheila Miyoshi Jager

Overview

"The most balanced and comprehensive account of the Korean War." —The Economist

Sixty years after North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea, the Korean War has not yet ended. Sheila Miyoshi Jager presents the first comprehensive history of this misunderstood war, one that risks involving the world’s superpowers—again. Her sweeping narrative ranges from the middle of the Second World War—when Korean independence was fiercely debated between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill—to the present day, as North Korea, with China’s aid, stockpiles nuclear weapons while starving its people. At the center of this conflict is an ongoing struggle between North and South Korea for the mantle of Korean legitimacy, a "brother’s war," which continues to fuel tensions on the Korean peninsula and the region.

Drawing from newly available diplomatic archives in China, South Korea, and the former Soviet Union, Jager analyzes top-level military strategy. She brings to life the bitter struggles of the postwar period and shows how the conflict between the two Koreas has continued to evolve to the present, with important and tragic consequences for the region and the world. Her portraits of the many fascinating characters that populate this history—Truman, MacArthur, Kim Il Sung, Mao, Stalin, and Park Chung Hee—reveal the complexities of the Korean War and the repercussions this conflict has had on lives of many individuals, statesmen, soldiers, and ordinary people, including the millions of hungry North Koreans for whom daily existence continues to be a nightmarish struggle.

The most accessible, up-to date, and balanced account yet written, illustrated with dozens of astonishing photographs and maps, Brothers at War will become the definitive chronicle of the struggle’s origins and aftermath and its global impact for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393348859
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/23/2014
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	1,094,737
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Sheila Miyoshi Jager earned her PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary Korean politics and history and is the author and coeditor of two previous books on Korea and East Asia. She is an associate professor and director of the East Asian program at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she lives with her husband and children.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations Used in Text xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

Part I The War 11

1 Liberation and Division 15

End of Empire 16

Red Army in Korea 19

General Hodge Goes to Korea 27

2 Two Koreas 36

Failed Revolution 44

Yosu, Sunch'on, and Cheju-do 47

3 Momentous Decisions 55

War Drums 60

Endgame 63

4 War for the South 66

Desperate Days 73

War for the North 80

Savage War 85

5 Uncommon Coalition 98

Integrating an Army 100

Common Cause 108

6 Crossing the 38th Parallel 113

Lessons of History 116

Pilgrimage to Wake 117

"If War Is Inevitable, Let It Be Waged Now" 119

First Strike 124

7 An Entirely New War 129

"Defeat with Dignity and Good Grace" 139

December Massacres 148

"Revolt of the Primitives" 152

Wrong Way Ridgway 155

Lost Chances 165

8 Quest for Victory 172

The General and the Statesman 173

Spring Offensive 180

Magnificent Glosters 185

Victory Denied? 189

9 The Stalemate 193

Truce Talks 195

Voluntary Repatriation 201

10 "Let Them March Till They Die" 208

Death March 209

Valley Camp to Camp 5 212

Camp 10 217

Camp 12 220

Return of the Defeated 226

11 Propaganda Wars 237

Tunnel War 239

American Bugs 242

Koje-do 257

12 Armistice, at Last 266

"I Shall Go to Korea" 267

Death of a Dictator 273

Divided Nation 278

Part II Cold War 287

13 Lessons of Korea 293

Feminized Nation 294

The "Never Again Club" 300

The Geneva Conference 303

Eisenhower's Warning 306

14 Deepening the Revolution 311

The Tragic Demise of Peng Dehuai 318

Khrushchev, Korea, and Vietnam 321

15 Korea and Vietnam 328

Lyndon B. Johnson: Refighting the Korean War 330

Park Chung Hee's Crusade 337

Part III Local War 353

16 Legitimacy Wars 357

August Purge 359

Military Line 365

The Blue House Raid and the Pueblo Incident 371

Confessions 377

17 Old Allies, New Friends 383

Tensions between Allies 385

Opening to China 389

18 War for Peace 397

Withdrawal 401

Backlash 404

To Seoul 410

19 End of an Era 414

Kwangju Uprising 417

Students and the Politics of Legitimacy 419

Part IV After the Cold War 425

20 North Korea and the World 429

Showdown 434

Defueling Crisis 438

Accord 441

21 Winners and Losers 446

Triumph and Forgiveness 446

The North Korean Famine 450

Gulag Nation 456

Epilogue: China's Rise, War's End? 464

Appendix 481

Notes 487

Index 579

Editorial Reviews

"Jager . . . skillfully covers international affairs, politics, and society in a first-rate comprehensive presentation of all the big issues facing North and South Korea."

Ezra F. Vogel

"Superb… Elegant and balanced."

Mark Atwood Lawrence

"Brothers at War does an exceptionally good job of bringing the conflict to life, and in ways not always comfortable for today’s reader."

The Wall Street Journal - Eliot A. Cohen

"Ms Jager has written the most balanced and comprehensive account of the Korean war. Perhaps by chronicling the brutal deeds of this “forgotten war”, this book will help lay them to rest."

The Economist

"Written in lucid narrative prose with an eye for the telling detail and compelling human story."

Carter J. Eckert

"This book is the best one-volume study of the war in all its cultural, political, and military aspects."

Allan R. Millett

"A stark reminder that… the Korean War is far from over… This gripping book at last gives the big picture and the full story of a tragic and terrible conflict."

Aidan Foster-Carter

This timely primer on the past, present, and possible future of the Korean Peninsula, by Jager, an associate professor of East Asian studies at Oberlin College, opens at the close of World War II. At the time, the United States was scrambling to draft a proposal that would secure itself a share in the beleaguered and communism-susceptible region, rather than allowing Stalin and the Soviets sole occupation. Hence, the 38th parallel, whose path was traced late at night on a National Geographic map to divide North and South Korea into separate occupied zones. When the North Koreans, under Soviet supervision, crossed the parallel in 1950, war erupted; less than six days later, the U.S. had committed troops. Initially dismissed as a mere “police action,” the war has now spanned six decades and is buffered only by a fragile armistice (which North Korea voided in early March 2013). Jager carefully examines how the war has evolved over time, and how this struggle for “Korean legitimacy” has influenced the global power order, from the U.S.’s turbulent diplomatic efforts (Bill Clinton once called the DMZ “the scariest place on earth”) to the rise of China. Insightful, in-depth, and much needed, this book is required reading for anyone who hopes to understand the situation in Korea. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"The author's judicious use of new material in several languages as well as her balanced way of presentation make this book an authoritative and accessible history of the Korean peninsula since the Second World War."

Akira Iriye

"Jager has produced an excellent, lucid and original contribution to the literature on the Korean peninsula based on extensive research in international archives and reference to a vast body of secondary literature. It is a must read for all who are interested in the topic."

China Quarterly - Zhihua Shen

"This gripping narrative is a superb study of how the battle fought between two nations, and the world’s three major superpowers, over the 38th parallel—on the Korean Peninsula—molded the zeitgeist for global politics in the latter half of the 20th century."

Toronto Star - J.P. O’Malley

"This is a magnificent book—deeply researched and written with real feeling and insight into the complex internal and external conditions that produced a brutal war and perpetuated Korea’s division to the present day."

William W. Stueck

"An important contribution to Cold War scholarship."

Literary Review - Paul French

"Sheila Miyoshi Jager has managed an astounding feat—an extremely readable yet rigorously objective and brilliantly researched history of the Korean War from all sides."

Rana Mitter

"The best single volume on the Korean War…If one has any curiosity about the Korean War as a formidable event in modern Asian history… Brothers at War is the book to read."

Allan R. Millet

"An important contribution to the literature on this conflict… highly recommended."

Military History Quarterly - William Donnelly

"Compelling [and] wonderfully researched."

New Internationalist

"An ambitious, engrossing, and often disturbing history of the conflict… Superbly researched… an essential tool in understanding the current crisis."

Booklist - Jay Freeman

"[A] magisterial history of the Korean War."

Foreign Affairs - Andrew Nathan

The Korean War is not over. The armistice signed in 1953 largely stopped the hostilities, but a peaceful settlement of the conflict has yet to be achieved. Jager (East Asian studies, Oberlin Coll.; Narratives of Nation Building in Korea) uses this reality to provide a long view of the war beginning with its origins in World War II and continuing to the funeral of leader Kim Jong-il in 2011. Readers will find not only a thorough account of the fighting, but also a description of the conflict's impact on the Cold War and beyond. The author reveals the war's long-term effects on the domestic politics and international relations of the Koreas, China, and the United States. Jager places current Korean issues in the context of the unending Korean War, and predicts in her epilog's final analysis that North Korea will be assimilated as another province of northeast China. VERDICT Essential reading for all students of recent North and South Korean history. Though scholarly and meticulously researched, the book is written in prose that is accessible to experts and novices alike. For a work that focuses exclusively on the active shooting war, see David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter.—Joshua Wallace, South Texas Coll. Lib., McAllen

Library Journal

A protracted chronicle of the north-south conflict in Korea and the ultimate yearning for peninsular peace. Jager (East Asian Studies/Oberlin Coll.; Narratives of Nation Building in Korea, 2003, etc.) provides a well-grounded understanding of the evolution of the paranoid, isolated North Korean state as it emerged from Soviet protection and attempted to enforce its legitimacy across the entire peninsula by waging war on the South. She posits the war as the galvanizer for American militarization during the Cold War and the tool for bolstering Mao Zedong's leadership in China and giving new impetus to the "resisting America" theme that would carry through the subsequent Vietnam War. The lessons of the Korean War were acute, if not always heeded, resulting in the lack of a clear victory, the militarization of American society in the forms of a large standing army and huge defense expenditures, and the newfound confidence of China, which spooked both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Despite the North's continued aggression and early economic supremacy in the 1960s, the impoverished South gained as a beneficiary of American aid, grew its military after the Korean War and contributed massive manpower to the U.S. during the Vietnam War, a fact that is not widely acknowledged. The South's rapprochement with Japan and America's with China also threatened the North and fueled the long-running competition between leaders Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee. Jager presents a thorough look at this deadly fraternal power struggle, the North's persistent pattern of provocation to tip the hand of the larger powers and the deep heartsickness the division has caused the Korean people. An authoritative record of the divided Korean peninsula to go alongside Victor Cha's The Impossible State (2012).

Kirkus Reviews