Home  >  Diplomacy / U.S. & Korea

Maybe He Needed Instructions.

President Roh Moo-hyun said Thursday that South Korea had sounded Pyongyang out on the joint comprehensive approach to the stalled six-party talks prior to his recent summit with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington.

Really, I don’t quibble with him floating his trial balloon to the North Koreans.  It’s the sequence of it that speaks volumes.  While we’re dumping on the South Korean government, don’t miss another fairly shocking example that Jeffery turned up:

In the early stage of the Korean War, the Korean Peninsula was nearly unified by the North Korea-China-Russia alliance. But the U.N. forces, led by the United States, which knew that the security of Japan could not be secured within U.S. domain, took part in the war and hindered the unification.

One thing I don’t do is to make an epithet of the word “liberal,” which I like to define as a philosphy that seeks a more open and tolerant society.  There’s nothing liberal about pining for unification under tyranny, and if  Kang Man-Kil  envies that, he can always just defect without bringing 50 million other South Koreans along.  It’s astonishing — even to me — how quickly the Kang Jeong-Koo world view is gaining currency with some South Koreans, even those  charged with setting up  South Korea’s own songbun system.

0Shares

7 Responses

  2. Just crack any SK history book in 20 years. They will all say that the US hindered unification of the Korean peninsula to secure Japan. As I’ve said previously, I’ve received the enlightened view of a Korean professor from Kyunghee Univ on why Japan is prosperous today…it’s because they rebuilt their industry supplying weapons and supplies during the Korean War (according to him…he was quite sure!).

    Koreans are great at revising history. Just look at how the NK view on Korean liberation from Japan morphed into some Kim Il Sung superhero crap. First, the NK text books started out saying that the Allies (US and Soviet Union) liberated Korea from the Japanese, then just the Soviet Union, then the Soviet Union with Kim Il Sung’s help, then rested to say that Kim Il Sung single handedly freed the Korean peninsula from Japan.

    South Koreans are already moving in this direction. During the previous Liberation Day holidays (at least the past three years), there were no references in Korean newspapers about who actually liberated them. I guess it would have put a damper on the spirit of hating the US….

  3. Red,
    Japan DID get an excellent start by providing all sorts of supplies (not sure about weapons though) during the Korean War… but what the prof didn’t tell you is that South Korea did the same during Vietnam! In fact that’s where some of the Chaebol got their start. Nothing wrong with that in either case – supply, demand, no problem.

  4. Isn’t Kang Man-gil one of South Korea’s major revisionist, pro-Nork historians? I believe he was behind the í•´ë°© 전후사의 인식, which was apparently an influential book for hardcore 386-generation Korean leftists.

  5. Yes, Sewing, I believe that you’re correct about his having a role in that book — though the work was a joint effort of many scholars.

    He’s certainly a major, important historian and scholar, and I respect him as a serious academic — though I’d probably take issue with his interpretation in many cases.

    But he probably wouldn’t like ‘my’ song, either.

    Jeffery Hodges

    * * *

  6. Richardson, the US had decided to rebuild Japan’s industry before the Korean War started, to provide the US a strong stable ally in East Asia to counter the Soviet Union and China.

    To assert that the sole reason Japan is strong, stable, and prosperous today is due to their exploiting the Korean War was just a left-handed attempt by the prof. to downplay Japan’s prosperity and make it somehow tied to Korean suffering.