Liberation and the Korean War
 History of Korea
Suggested Readings
- Clough, Ralph N. EMBATTLED KOREA Boulder and London,
Westview Press, 1987. Mr. Clough has had a long career in the American
foreign service. He served as the director of the Office of Chinese Affairs
in the State Department for thirteen years and he has distinguished himself as
a senior fellow and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. Clough brings
to the pages of his book a wealth of experience that only a longtime foreign
serviceman could bring. This book is a comprehensive study on the division of
Korea and its consequences. Clough describes Korea as an early "victim of the Cold War".
- Cumings, Bruce. THE ORIGINS OF THE KOREAN WAR Vol. 1 & 2. Princeton,
N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1981 and 1990 respectively. The
first volume, Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes 1945-1947,
which won the American Historical Association's John King Fairbank Prize and
the mammoth volume two are both written in an intelligent style that keeps
the reader engrossed in the author's thesis that the Korean War was much more
civil and revolutionary than conventionally believed. Cumings sees the origins
of the Korean War in 1945 and not 1948, the year that two separate states emerged
on the Korean peninsula and goes to explain why in great detail.
- Han
Sung-joo. THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH KOREA. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974. Han Sung-joo, I am proud to say, was a Ph. D alumni
of Berkeley in 1970 (I think). He went from teaching to becoming the Foreign Minister
of ROK under Kim Young Sam back to teaching again at Koryo University (Je pense).
Han's book touches upon the roots of Rhee's dictatorship in the years prior to the War.
This book is a very good read, loaded with analysis and insight.
- Henderson, Gregory.
KOREA: THE POLITICS OF THE VORTEX. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.
Another excellent book that is written extremely well. Henderson delves into the nature
of Korean society and politics from the late Yi Dynasty to Park Chung Hee's Third Republic.
This is one of my favorite books on modern Korean history and politics. From what I hear,
"The Politics of the Vortex" is a must for every student of 20th century Korean history.
- Wagner, Edward W. KOREA - OLD and NEW - A HISTORY. Ilchokak Publishers, 1990.
Adding upon Ki-baik Lee's classic "A New History of Korea", the editor and contributor,
Edward Wagner, a pioneer in Korean studies in the United States, assembled some of
this country's best Korean scholars to write a textbook that chronicle Korea's history
from Paleolithic times to the late 1980's. Considering that this book really is a
"textbook", I only recommend this book as a source for general history.
- Baldwin, Frank, ed. WITHOUT PARALLEL: THE KOREAN-AMERICAN RELATIONSHIP
SINCE 1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1973. This book examines the Korean-American
relationship with a magnifying glass. This book is recommended if you want to learn
more about the special relationship between Korea and The United States that was
"forged" by the Cold War.
- Scalipino, Robert A., and Chong Sik Lee. COMMUNISM IN KOREA vol. 1 & 2.
Berkeley: University of California Press. 1972. I have only read a small fraction
of this work due to the immense size of its volumes. What I have read was impressive.
Scalipino and Lee seemed to have dug up every little grave, turned over ever tiny stone
to uncover the origins of communism in Korea.
- Stone, I.F. THE HIDDEN HISTORY
OF THE KOREAN WAR. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1952. To say that this book
is a leftist interpretation of Korea's liberation and its plummet to War would be
an understatement. I.F. Stone does have a flair for writing as his years of
brilliant journalism have proved.
Liberation and the Korean War
|