The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 1 Translator's Preface (1)
In the middle of the 20th century, China, the United States, North Korea and South Korea fought fiercely on the Korean Peninsula for three years. Millions of lives were devastated and countless homes were destroyed, but the ceasefire line returned to the 38th parallel.Entering the 21st century, Northeast Asia is still shaken and dominated by the fierce war 60 years ago, and it is difficult to get rid of it.In contrast, other old enemies in the hot and cold wars of the 20th century have already made peace (with the possible exception of Japan).Only on the Korean peninsula, millions of troops are still eyeing each other, ready to fight against each other; although there is no war, there are constant frictions. A paper agreement in 1953 said it was a truce, but it was actually a truce, and it was also a resumption of war? !In this sense, the "little bitter war" that broke out 63 years ago can be regarded as a real battle across the century.

However, no matter what future generations comment on the gains and losses, victories and losses, crimes and punishments of that war, history has been rewritten when China, the United States and North Korea (except South Korea) signed the armistice agreement 60 years ago: it was the first war since the founding of the United States. The invincible battle is also China's first undefeated record in overseas wars since the Opium War in more than a hundred years.Relying on crude equipment, tenacious will, and flexible strategies and tactics, the soldiers of the Chinese Volunteers faced opponents with absolute technological advantages in land, sea and air, and forced the coalition forces approaching the Yalu River back to the 37th line.The ending of the Korean War was a pioneering move by the young republic, and it was also the first step in the historic rise of our troubled nation in the past century, and it was recorded in history as a turning point in Northeast Asian geopolitics.

The book "Korean War: The Unrevealed Truth", which was published in the United States 30 years ago, from the perspective of an American author, records this "limited war" that lasted three years and shocked the world. ".

[-]. The "collective forgetting" and "unrelenting" in the United States

Over the past 60 years, the views of the U.S. ruling and opposition parties on the Korean War (hereinafter referred to as the "Korean War") can be summed up as "collective amnesia" (national amnesia).The American publishing industry has a huge number of publications on the Vietnam War, but there are very few books on the Korean War, and most of them are "forgotten" (forgotten), "untold" (untold) and other themes.The famous writer David Halberstam became famous in 1972 with "The Best and Brightest" (The Best and Brightest) which exposed the wrong decision-making in the Vietnam War. The Corps' devastating tome, The Coldest Winter: The Korean War Through American Eyes, was not published until months after his death in 1.Publishing is aphasic, and Hollywood is amnesiac.The screens in the United States are full of scenes from World War II and the Vietnam War, but Korean War works are rare.Even the Korean War sculpture group in the capital Washington was completed in 2007, 42 years after the armistice, 1995 years later than the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall built in 1982, which was completed seven years after the end of the Vietnam War.It was not until the end of 12 that the US Congress passed a bill commemorating the Korean War.

The Korean War: The Unrevealed Truth, published in 1982 by the American political commentator Joseph Gulden, is an earlier comprehensive work that is rare among American writings on the Korean War.The "Freedom of Information Act" (Freedom of Information Act) promulgated by the US government in 1967 requires that the records and archives of the federal government be limited to 25, 50 and 75 years, and in principle be open to everyone.Gulden made full use of the U.S. government's archives on the Korean War that were declassified in the late 70s, and interviewed many people involved and insiders in the following four years to complete this "insider" work. The American public could be regarded as a dose of sobriety.

The United States has collectively lost its memory of the North Korean War for many years. There are at least three reasons.First, there have been many foreign wars in the history of the United States.The three-year Korean War, which was less than one-third the length of the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War, which was less glorious than several months, naturally has no place in the national memory.Second, the U.S. government minimized major events and defined the Korean War as a "police action" in order to bypass the "trouble" of congressional trial and declaration of war (coincidentally, after the "9" incident, the United States regarded what should have been a "police action" The definition of "anti-terrorism" as "war" in order to infinitely expand the power of the president to control the war).However, the Vietnam War was also defined as "police action". Why do Americans never forget it? !

In the author's opinion, there seems to be a deeper reason for the "marginalization" of the Korean War in the memory of the American people.American political culture has a strong religious overtone, and is used to choosing between the enemy and us, black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, and victory or defeat. The records of World War I and World War II, which triumphed and reshaped the international system, are also different from the Vietnam War (1964-1975), when the U.S. military was exhausted and forced to withdraw.This is why the United States has been wandering between two extremes for many years in its concept of the Korean War: it is necessary to "forget", but it is difficult to let go; It is hard to give up the policy of hostility to the current North Korean regime. On the 2010th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War in 60, Obama suddenly declared that the United States had won the Korean War and did not accept the term "tie".Regardless of whether Obama is doing it for sensationalism or to appease people, the brilliant Harvard student and Nobel Peace Prize laureate violates both history and reality in his understanding of the outcome of the Korean War.According to American historian Walter LaFeber, "Americans always complain that 'America always wins wars but loses peace', neither of which is quite accurate. In fact, The Korean War was the first stalemate the United States was forced to accept, and America's defeat in the Vietnam War, which began a decade later, was even more certain."

Since the 19th century, American diplomacy has actually oscillated between the two extremes of isolationism and interventionism.It is almost impossible for the United States to coexist in a gray world where good and evil coexist, neither black nor white. The Bush Doctrine of "be with us or against us" after the "9" incident is the best proof.The U.S. has been relentless towards North Korea so far, and its policy toward North Korea remains in the past tense of hostility and sanctions. This is not only due to North Korea’s rigid policy, but also the extreme religious and ideological nature of U.S. foreign policy.When Bush Jr. came to power, he poured cold water on Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy", first labeling North Korea a "bastard country", and after "11", he classified North Korea as one of the "axis of evil" (axis of evil) List.After Obama took office, he changed the policy of actively engaging with North Korea in the last two years of the Bush administration, and positioned the US policy toward North Korea as the so-called "strategic patience", that is, "do nothing" with less contact and no negotiation with North Korea. " policy.Secretary of State Hillary took the lead in supporting and even connivating Japan to use the so-called "kidnapping" issue to interfere and delay the six-party talks, create excuses and provide space for Japan's right-wing constitutional revision and military expansion, and directly or indirectly intensify the confrontation between the North and the South, which greatly disturbed the peninsula. of stability.The Cheonan incident, the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and Kim Jong-un's brinkmanship policy after his succession are all related to the United States' distorted concept of North Korea.

[-]. Taking history as a mirror, American Style?

In fact, the "forgetting" of the US ruling and opposition parties about the Korean War is only a superficial phenomenon.When Gulden's "Korean War: The Unrevealed Truth" came out in the early 20s, it was also the time when the American historians began to reflect on the Korean War on a "large scale", and it was unacceptable.To this day, the orthodox, the revisionists, and the revisionists in the study of the Korean War in the United States hold their own opinions on the root, process, and outcome of the Korean War, and they refuse to give in to each other. In 80, the writer Alan Maylay declared that the "remembrance" of this "forgotten war" was "more than enough" (enough), and no longer needed time and effort.In this regard, the author calls it "Korean War Research Fatigue".

The “blossoming” and “excessive reflection” of the American military historians’ research on the Korean War seems to be in great contrast to the “collective amnesia” of the American people on the Korean War.Whoever is right, the war that ended 60 years ago is still pretty much a blank slate in the American national consciousness.However, it is the elite class that really dominates the U.S. policy toward North Korea. The reflection of the American military historians on the Korean War is still the focus of Chinese counterparts.

A simple and easy way for American historians to sort out the many schools of research on the Korean War is to classify all opinions and works critical of the United States into the so-called "historical revisionism".Bruce Cummings, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, wrote "The Roots of the Korean War, Volume I: The Restoration of Korea and the Formation of the Two Regime, 1981-1945" in 1947, explaining the US official explanation of the roots of the Korean War (that is, communism Expansion) questioned that during the occupation of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. military supported and fostered the puppet government and people in the military and police system during the Japanese colonial rule. One of the main causes of the outbreak of the Korean War.The first volume of Cummings' controversial "historical revisionist" work in the United States was only written until 1948, and the second volume, which dealt with the official outbreak of the Korean War (June 1950, 6), was not completed until 1947.During this period, Cummings, as the second author, published "The Unknown War: North Korea" with Jon Halliday.The above three books have laid the cornerstone of the "revisionists" in the study of the Korean War in the United States.

In fact, American historians have never stopped reflecting on the Korean War. Even when the Korean War was still going on, the American writer Stone published the famous "Behind the Scenes History of the Korean War: 1950-1951".Fehrenbach's 1963 book Such a War: The United States Was Unprepared, and Bevin Alexander's 1986 book North Korea: Our First Defeat mainly sharply criticized the wartime operations of the U.S. military from a military perspective.However, the strength of the above-mentioned revisionist works is not as strong as Cummings' "three axes".

Some American historians include Joseph Gulden's "Korean War: The Unrevealed Truth" as a "revisionist", and I do not agree with this.First of all, although Gulden's book is critical of official U.S. policies, it is not as sharply political as Stone's book, so that it is suspected of "personal attack" on President Truman.Gulden's vision is the panorama of war decision-making and conduct, not the role of individual decision-makers.The use of historical materials in this book also far exceeds that of Stone and Fehrenbach.Although the book criticizes high-level decision makers such as Truman and Acheson as well as MacArthur, it still maintains a high degree of unity with the US government and military on a series of major issues (such as prisoners of war, germ warfare, etc.); In the description of the Chinese and North Korean characters, the author can't help but slip into "incomprehension" and even contempt for the Orientals.It is obviously far-fetched to say that Gulden is "unpatriotic".

The opposite of the "revisionists" is of course the orthodox school, whose main masterpieces include Clay Blair's "The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953", John Tolan's "Desperate Battle: North Korea 1950 —1953", Alan Maylay, The Fight for Korea: 1950-1951, The War Comes from the North.

The vast majority of American writings on the Korean War are "professional" studies on specific military issues, such as the causes of the war, the performance of the South Korean military, the role of allies, the assessment of the various services, logistics, and coordinated operations.Ashgate Publishing House of the United Kingdom will soon publish a collection of 32 chapters on the Korean War, which covers almost all aspects of the Korean War, including the situation before the war, the role of the participating parties (the United States, China, Soviet Union, Britain, South Korea and the United Nations), and the various American military forces. Arms performance, nuclear/chemical/bacteriological weapons issues, logistics, amphibious operations, intelligence, special warfare, Battle of Pusan, mobile warfare, positional warfare, post-war arrangements, etc.

[-]. West/Americanism and "Orientalism"

In my opinion, the most common phenomenon in the study of Korean War history in the West and the United States is West/American-centralism, that is, from the perspective of the West and the United States, using Western/American materials to draw a Western-style / American conclusion.This observation is not intended to deny the lasting influence of Cummings and other "revisionists" and Whiting's realism on Western and American academic circles.What I want to explain here is that the views of these "revisionist schools" have been basically marginalized after more than 20 years of "counterattack and reckoning" by the "mainstream schools".

The Western-centric school, that is, the research object and focus of the mainstream school, is the performance of the West, especially the U.S. military, in the specific combat tactical environment in the Korean War, while other non-American and non-Western (or non-white) The experience, fate and consequences of the tragic war recorded in the book are basically used as auxiliary and supporting roles, and are rarely even mentioned.However, when the "mainstream" looked at the war that forced the United States to accept the "stalemate" ending 60 years ago, it emphasized more than ever the legitimacy of the United States' involvement in the Korean War, the heroic dedication of American soldiers, and The legitimacy of South Korea's Syngman Rhee regime's policy towards North Korea, etc.The representative works of mainstream schools mentioned above, such as "The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953" by Clay Blair, and "The Desperate War: Korea 1950-1953" by John Toland, etc., all belong to this category. .

(End of this chapter)