> Cumings, Bruce, The origins of the Korean War : liberation and the
> emergence of separate regimes, 1945-1947. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton
> University Press, c1981.
>
> At this point, it really doesn't matter who started the Korean war. It's
> like the Hatfields & McCoys feud; both sides have been fighting each other
> for so long that the conflict has a momentum all its own. The grassroot
> organizations on both sides need to unite to get rid of both sets of
> corrupt ruling classes.
>
Response: IMHO history always matters. Revisionist histories serve
not only to ratify/legitimate the past, they serve to structure the
present and engineer preferred "futures". The 38th parallel was drawn
by an Army intelligence Colonel named Dean Rusk who went on to
participate in crimes against another people--the Vietnamese--where
another artificial line was drawn--at the 17th parallel. Bruce
Cumings' book is indeed well done and he is indeed a scholar on
Korean history. By the way, anyone who is a true scholar on Korea
must be fluent in Korean (I have been told by Koreans that my
Korean is fluent but I am not a scholar on Korea).
The same forces (different individuals) who divided Korea are still
alive and well. History always lives within and shapes the present.
Further, the Korean War continues and only the centers of gravity,
instruments/levels of warfare have changed; the myths and revisionist
histories surrounding the Korean War are used daily and effectively
in ongoing and sophisticated campaigns of social systems
engineering in Korea--nothing like "external" threats to forge
artificial forms and levels of internal "unity" and managed consent.
Jim Craven
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