Korean War page
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Selected Papers
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"Revisiting Korea: Exposing Myths of the Forgotten War"
by
James I. Matray
New Mexico State University
"A myth is an account that is demonstrably
untrue in whole or substantial part."
Thomas A. Bailey
For many years, the Korean War attracted little attention from either American diplomatic historians or the general public. Clay Blair even titled his detailed study of the Korean conflict The Forgotten War. Other authors have labeled Korea The War Before Vietnam and The Unknown War.1 That the Korean War avoided scholarly examination for so long resulted in the emergence of a number of myths about the conflict that remain central to Korea's place in popular memory almost a half century after the fighting stopped. The Korean War Memorial in Washington, DC presents in granite what for many remains its most powerful lesson that "Freedom Is Not Free." Tourists can buy teeshirts sporting a map of Korea over which appears the judgment that this was 'Me Place Where Communism Was Stopped." But since 1981 a swelling stream of books and articles reexamining not only the war itself, but U.S. policy toward Korea before June 1950 has shattered traditional beliefs about the conflict.2 This paper will revisit the Korean War with the purpose of exposing old myths and replacing them with current realities of a no longer forgotten conflict.
Early accounts of the Korean War almost without exception focused on events beginning with the North Korean invasion of South Korea. This was because few people doubted that the Soviet Union had ordered the attack as part of its plan for global conquest. President Harry S. Truman provided support for this assumption just two days after the start of hostilities. On June 27, 1950, he told the American people that North Korea's attack on South Korea showed that world "communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war."3 This assessment reflected Truman's firm belief that North Korea was a puppet of the Soviet Union and Kim Il Sung was acting on instructions from Moscow. In his memoirs, Truman equated Joseph Stalin's actions with Adolf Hitler's in the 1930s, arguing that military intervention to defend the Republic of Korea (ROK) was vital because appeasement had not prevented but ensured the outbreak of World War II.4 Top administration officials, as well as the general public, fully shared these assumptions. This traditional interpretation provided the analytical foundation for early accounts of the war, perpetuating the most important myth of the Korean conflict.5
A consensus now prevails that the origins of the Korean War date from at least World War II. Rather than characterizing the conflict as the product of external aggression, scholars acknowledge the centrality of domestic factors. In fact, more than a decade ago, it became fashionable to portray the Korean War as a civil conflict, rejecting not only the argument that it was an example of Soviet-inspired, external aggression, but denying Moscow's involvement. Bruce Cumings, the leading proponent of this interpretation, insisted in his two volume study titled The Origins of the Korean War that a conventional war would start in Korea in June 1950 because the United States prevented a leftist revolution on the peninsula during 1945 and imposed a reactionary regime in the south during the years immediately following World War 11.6 Accounts of the war thereafter adopted the Cumings interpretation. Callum MacDonald wrote that the North Korean "attack was the latest act in a civil war which had been taking shape since the liberation of Korea from Japan in 1945." Burton I. Kaufman labeled the conflict "a true civil war." For Peter Lowe, by 1950, the "situation in the Korean peninsula was in essence one of civil war." John Merrill charged that prior accounts the Korean War ignored the "local setting," insisting that "the war can be usefully interpreted as a case of intervention in the ongoing civil strife in the South."7
Release of previously classified Soviet and Chinese documents during the 1990s abruptly ended the emerging consensus that Korea was a classic civil war. A renewed emphasis on international factors in reexaminations of the Korean conflict resulted in the current description of it as an "international civil war" that only sounds like an oxymoron. Kathryn Weathersby provides a succinct summary of this new consensus when she concludes that the war's origins "lie primarily with the division of Korea in 1945 and the polarization of Korean politics that resulted from . . . the policies of the two occupying powers . . .. The Soviet Union played a key role in the outbreak of the war, but it was as facilitator, not as originator. "8 Many writers already had arrived at this conclusion before Communist archival materials became available in the course of reexamining U.S. policy toward Korea in World War II, focusing attention on how Korea came to be divided in 1945. A myth had taken hold during the McCarthy era that just as Communists in the State Department had helped Mao Zedong seize power in China, so too had they conspired to ensure Soviet control in North Korea. Korea's partition at the 38th parallel allegedly was part of the price President Franklin D. Roosevelt paid at Yalta for Soviet entry in the Pacific War. This coexisted with another erroneous belief that the Allies divided Korea at the Potsdam Conference.9
We now know that President Harry S. Truman proposed partitioning Korea on the eve of Japan's surrender to prevent the Soviets from occupying the entire peninsula. When he became president following Roosevelt's death in April 1945, Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe had begun to alarm U.S. leaders. Almost from the outset, the new president expected Soviet actions in Korea to parallel Stalin's policies in Poland. Within a week after assuming office, Truman began to search for some way to eliminate any opportunity for a repetition of Soviet expansion. The atomic bomb seemed to provide him with an easy answer. Japan's prompt surrender after an atomic attack would preempt Soviet entrance into the Pacific war, thereby permitting the United States to occupy Korea alone and removing any possibility for "sovietization." But Truman's gamble failed. When Stalin declared war on Japan and sent the Red Army into Korea prematurely on August 12, 1945, the United States proposed Korea's division into Soviet and U.S. zones of military occupation at the 38th parallel. Only Stalin's acceptance of this desperate eleventh hour plan saved the peninsula from unification under Communist rule. Accepting Korea's division into suitable spheres of influence, the Soviet leader probably also hoped to trade this concession for an equal voice in occupied Japan.10
Korea soon found itself a captive of the Cold War. As Soviet-American relations in Europe deteriorated, neither side was willing to acquiesce to an agreement appreciably strengthening its adversary. After eighteen months of failed negotiations Washington and Moscow moved toward the formation of separate regimes, resulting in creation in August 1948 of the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north the following September.11 After North Korea launched its attack two years later, a myth took hold that the United States abandoned the ROK, thereby encouraging an invasion. Admittedly, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) had recommended during September 1947 prompt U.S. military withdrawal from Korea, but a major uprising against the government of Syngman Rhee in October 1948 caused the United States to postpone disengagement until June 29, 1949. By then, Truman believed that South Korea could survive and even prosper without protection from U.S. troops despite the existence of a powerful army in North Korea. This was because before U.S. troops left, the administration had assumed a commitment to train, equip, and supply a security force in the south that was capable of preserving internal order and deterring an attack from the north. Also, it had asked Congress to approve a three-year program of technical and economic assistance. 12
To build political support for the Korean assistance package, Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson delivered a speech before the National Press Club on January 12, 1950, offering an optimistic appraisal of the ROK's future. Later, critics perpetrated the myth that Acheson's exclusion of South Korea from the U.S. "defensive perimeter" gave the Kremlin a "green light" to order an attack.13 Currently available declassified Soviet documents demonstate that Acheson's words had little impact on Communist planning for the invasion, not least because none even mention the Press Club speech. In fact, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung thought Acheson had placed South Korea inside the U.S. defensive perimeter.14 More important was the correct assumption guiding Truman's Korea policy that Moscow was reluctant to allow the North Koreans to practice open aggression. This belief allowed the administration to pursue containment through economic means and the policy seemed to be experiencing marked success in Korea during the weeks after Acheson's address. South Korea had acted vigorously to end spiraling inflation, while elections in May had given Rhee's critics control of the legislature. Finally, the South Korean army had nearly eliminated guerrilla activities threatening internal order, prompting approval of a large increase in U.S. military aid.15
While the United States was willing to be patient, awaiting the collapse of what it saw as Moscow's artificial client state in North Korea, South Korea's President Rhee was obsessed with accomplishing early reunification through military means. The Truman administration's fear that Rhee would launch an invasion prompted it to limit South Korea's military capabilities, refusing to provide tanks, heavy artillery, and combat planes.16 This did not stop the South Koreans from initiating most of the border clashes with North Korean forces at the 38th parallel beginning in the summer of 1948 and reaching a high level of intensity and violence a year later. Historians now acknowledge that the two Koreas already were waging a civil conflict when North Korea's attack opened the conventional phase of the war. 17 Contradicting traditional assumptions, however, available declassified Soviet documents demonstrate that throughout 1949 Stalin consistently refused to approve Kim Il Sung's persistent requests to approve an invasion of South Korea. The Soviet leader believed that North Korea had not achieved either military superiority north of the parallel or political strength south of that line. His main concern was the threat South Korea posed to North Korea's survival, for example fearing an invasion northward following U.S. military withdrawal in June 1949.18
Stalin was not prepared to risk war with the United States in 1949, but the Communist victory in China that fall placed pressure on him to show his support for the same outcome in Korea. This allowed Kim Il Sung to use the "strategy he later used so extensively of playing China and the Soviet Union against one another."19 In January 1950, Stalin approved Kim's request to visit Moscow but, despite Acheson's speech, he was not ready to approve an invasion. At that time, he also approved a major expansion of North Korea's military capabilities, but his purpose was more to ensure its survival than to promote aggressive expansion. When they met during April, Kim persuaded Stalin that a military victory would be quick and easy, especially because of support from southern guerrillas and an expected popular uprising against Rhee. But Stalin still feared U.S. military intervention, advising Kim that he could stage an offensive only if China's Mao Zedong approved. During May, Kim Il Sung traveled to Beijing to secure Chinese consent for the invasion. Significantly, Mao also expressed concerns about U.S. military intervention. But after Kim disingenuously explained that Stalin had approved his plans, Mao gave his reluctant consent for the offensive as well. Kim II Sung knew that time was running out and manipulated his patrons into supporting his desperate bid for reunification before Rhee could beat him to the punch.20
Few Americans then and thereafter
doubted for a moment that on June 25, 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea on orders
from Moscow. They also came to believe a myth that President Truman acted with swiftness
and courage to prevent conquest of the entire peninsula. But in fact, he did not commit
U.S. ground troops in Korea for almost a week, referring the matter instead to the United
Nations and banking on South Korea's ability to defend itself. This was consistent with
Truman's containment policy in Asia, where he hoped to prevent Communist expansion without
relying on U.S. military power, thus avoiding the need to reverse his policy of reducing
defense spending. At a press conference on June 29, he was still optimistic that a total
commitment was avoidable, agreeing with a newsman's description of the war as a "police
action" rather than coining the phrase himself. But the next morning, General Douglas
MacArthur advised that without American combat forces, Communist conquest of South Korea
was certain. Even then, however, Truman hesitated, asking Secretary of the Army Frank Pace,
who phoned before dawn requesting approval of MacArthur's request, "Do we have to
decide tonight?" Told that a decision could not wait, the president sent U.S. soldiers to
fight in Korea.21
Truman made much at the time of how
the United States intervened in Korea in response to the request for defense of the
Republic of Korea from the Security Council of the United Nations. But the myth that the
Korean War was an example of collective security lost its credibility long ago, given the
reality that the United States acted prior to passage of UN resolutions. The UN Security
Council resolution of July 7, 1950 provided for the creation of a United Nations
Command (UNC), requiring MacArthur, Truman's choice as the UNC commander, to make periodic
reports on developments in the war. The Truman administration had blocked formation of a
UN committee that would have had direct access to the UNC, adopting instead a
procedure whereby MacArthur received his instructions from and reported to the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Since Washington had to approve them, MacArthur's reports in fact
were after-action summaries of information that was common knowledge because newspapers
already had printed detailed coverage of the same developments. More significant, the
United States and South Korea contributed ninety percent of the manpower. It was not the
United Nations, but the United States that provided the weapons and equipment, as well
as the logistical support, to save South Korea. All this provided clear proof of the
nominal role that the United Nations played in the Korean War.22 MacArthur's Inchon landing reversed
the course of the Korean War, but contrary to traditional beliefs did not create the
momentum that resulted in the decision to cross the 38th parallel and continue the
offensive to the Yalu. In fact, throughout July, Truman's advisors, certain that a
battlefield victory was inevitable, debated whether to pursue forcible reunification
once North Korea's army had been thrown out of the south. Initially, Acheson opposed
crossing the parallel, stating publicly on June 29 that U.S. military action is "solely
for the purpose of restoring [South Korea] to its status prior to the invasion." However,
State Department officials worked to change Acheson's mind, arguing persuasively that the
United States should destroy the North Korean army and then sponsor free elections for a
government to rule all of Korea. U.S. military leaders were reluctant to endorse this
drastic change in war aims until, in late July, UN defensive lines finally stabilized.
Roughly two weeks later, Truman decided to approve military operations in pursuit of forcible
reunification. Truman's plan for conquering North Korea, which he approved on September 1,
included precautions to mimimize the chance of Chinese intervention that MacArthur
later ignored. But allegations that MacArthur was responsible for the ill-advised
advance into North Korea is a myth. Truman made this decision to register a victory in
the Cold War.23 China's decision to intervene in
the Korean War has received a thorough reexamination in recent years as a consequence of
access to new documents and personal accounts on the Communist side. Chen Jian has
demonstrated that Beijing's "entry into the Korean War was determined by concerns much
more complicated than safeguarding the Chinese-Korean border." Mao Zedong sought "to
win a glorious victory" that would restore China's world status as the "Central Kingdom."
He also wanted to repay a debt to North Korea, which had sent thousands of soldiers to
fight in the Chinese Civil War. Furthermore, after the Inchon landing, Stalin also had
been pressing Beijing to intevene and prevent U.S. conquest of North Korea. His pledge of
Soviet air support removed any remaining doubts that Mao might have had about crossing
the Yalu. But his associates hesitated, causing Mao, Chen explains, to use his "wisdom
and authority to persuade his comrades" that U.S. conquest of North Korea would inflict
an intolerable blow on revolutionary nationalism in Asia. After Stalin reneged on his
promise of air support early in October, some writers argue that China balked, but then
intervened to avoid the prospect of Kim Il Sung setting up a government in exile in
Manchuria. Chen insists, however, that because the triumph of Mao's revolutionary
nationalist program was vital to "the new China's . . . domestic and international
interests, there was little possibility that China's entrance into the Korean War could
have been averted."24 Recent research has contributed
to a modest rehabilitation of MacArthur on other issues, most notably the general's
persistent efforts to escalate the Korean War. After China's massive military assault
in late November 1950, MacArthur submitted a "Plan for Victory" that proposed four
specific steps to defeat the Communists. First, the general called for a blockade of
China's coast. Second, he wanted authorization to bomb military installations in
Manchuria. Third, MacArthur advocated deployment of Chinese Nationalist forces in Korea.
Finally, he recommended that Jiang Jieshi launch an attack from Taiwan against the
mainland.25 We now know that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, despite later denials, seriously
considered endorsing implementation of these actions prior to receiving favorable
reports from the battlefront late in December. By spring 1951, Truman had approved the
first two proposals if UN forces faced annihilation or China expanded the war beyond Korea.
In fact, the president even was prepared to use atomic weapons, an option that he had
under consideration since the early days of the fighting. According to some
historians, the United States was closer to using nuclear weapons in Korea under
Truman than under his successor Dwight D. Eisenhower.26 A surprising pattern in recent
writing on the Korean War has been the indifference to the role of MacArthur. Nevertheless,
scholars have clarified events surrounding Truman's decision to recall the general in
April 1951. Early in 1951, General Matthew B. Ridgway halted the Chinese Communist
advance southward, making it possible for the administration to implement its preference
for fighting a limited war in Korea. After Washington turned down successive pleas
from MacArthur to expand the war through attacking China, the general grew frustrated
with a policy of settling for an armistice near the 38th parallel. In March, his demand
for an immediate Communist surrender sabotaged a planned cease-fire initiative. But
for various reasons, many of them political, Truman reprimanded, but did not recall
the general. By early April, a combination of factors forced the president to act. The JCS
worried about a Chinese and Soviet military buildup in East Asia and thought the UN
commander should have standing authority to retaliate against any Communist escalation,
even recommending deployment of atomic weapons to forward Pacific bases. They mistrusted
MacArthur and guessed he might provoke an incident in order to widen the war. While
MacArthur's letter to House Republican Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin on April 5 once
again criticizing the administration's efforts to limit the war was, as Truman later
argued, "rank insubordination" and the "last straw," he already had made his decision
for a more compelling reason related to military strategy.27 During the month after MacArthur's
recall, UN forces had repulsed two massive Chinese Communist offensives, creating a
battlefield stalemate that persuaded the belligerents to open negotiations for an
armistice at Kaesong during July. A myth that Communist intransigence stalled progress
at the talks went unchallenged for a generation. North Korea and China created an
acrimonious atmosphere at the start with efforts to score propaganda points, but the
United States raised the first major roadblock with its proposal for a demilitarized
zone deep in North Korea.28 More important, after the talks moved to Panmunjom late in
October, there was rapid progress in resolving all but one of the agenda items. The
delegates agreed that the demilitarized zone would follow the line of battle, while
adopting inspection procedures to enforce the truce. After approval of a postwar political
conference to discuss withdrawal of foreign troops and reunification, a tradeoff settled
disputes on airfield rehabilitation and membership on a neutral supervisory commission.
Ten months after the talks began negotiators would have signed an armistice agreement
had they not deadlocked over disposition of the prisoners of war. Progress had occurred
because both sides, despite serious disagreement on a number of issues, proposed and
accepted compromises that each thought would contribute to an agreement preserving
security interests defined in terms of military power and political influence.29 Popular memory still finds
humanitarian motivation behind the inflexible refusal of the United States to return
Communist prisoners of war (POWs) to China and North Korea against their will, coinciding
with Truman's portrayal of his decision at the time. But a different reality has emerged
regarding the issue that prevented peace in Korea for over a year. Truman's main goal
was to win a propaganda victory in the Cold War, even though this necessitated a
misrepresentation of the facts. For example, the U.S. stand on the principle of
non-forcible repatriation may have seemed moral, but it contradicted the Geneva Convention,
which required, as the Communist side demanded, the return of all POWs. Far worse was the
Truman administration's purposeful decision to allow the perception that those POWs
refusing repatriation were Communists defecting to the "Free World." A vast majority
of North Korean POWs were actually South Koreans who either had joined voluntarily or
were impressed into the Communist army. And thousands of Chinese POWs were Nationalist
soldiers trapped in China at the end of the civil war who now had the chance to escape
to Taiwan. Moreover, Chinese Nationalist guards at UN POW camps had used terrorist
"reeducation" tactics to persuade prisoners to refuse repatriation. Those who resisted
risked beatings or death. Truman's stand on voluntary repatriation had little to do
with moral considerations. 30 How Eisenhower managed to achieve
an armistice ending the Korean War remains contested terrain. Historians acknowledge
that Eisenhower entered office thinking about using expanded conventional bombing and
the threat of nuclear attack to force concessions from the Communist side. The armistice
agreement came on July 23, after an accelerated bombing campaign in North Korea and
bellicose rhetoric about expanding the war. Most scholars, however, reject as myth
Eisenhower's claim that Beijing was responding to his threat of an expanded war
employing atomic weapons because no documentary evidence has surfaced to support
his assertion.31 They contend that the Chinese, facing major internal economic
problems and wanting peaceful coexistence with the West, already had decided to make
peace once Truman left office. And Stalin's death in March only added to China's
sense of political vulnerability, causing the Communist delegation to break the logjam
at Panmunjom later that month before Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conveyed
his vague atomic threat to India's prime minister for delivery to Beijing. Moreover,
the nuclear threats of May 1953 were not clearly or forcefully delivered and were
not substantively different from those implied threats that the Truman administration
made in the fall of 1951, when B-29 bombers carried out atomic bombing test runs
over North Korea with large conventional bombs.32 By January 1953, both sides
in fact wanted an armistice. Washington and Beijing had grown tired of the economic
burdens, military losses, political and military constraints, worrying about an expanded
war, and pressure from allies and the world community to end the stalemated war. Food
shortages in North Korea coupled with an understanding that forcible reunification was
no longer possible, caused Pyongyang to favor an armistice even earlier. Moscow's
new leaders had been concerned even before Stalin died about economic problems in
Eastern Europe. A more conciliatory approach in the Cold War, they hoped, not only
would reduce the risk of general war, but also might create tensions in the Western
alliance if the United States acted provocatively in Korea. Several weeks before
Eisenhower's threats of an expanded war using nuclear weapons and the bombing of
North Korea's dams and irrigation system in May, Chinese negotiators signaled a
change in policy when they accepted the UNC's proposal for an exchange of sick and
wounded prisoners and then recommended turning non-repatriates over to a neutral
state. Also, in late May and early June 1953, Chinese forces launched powerful attacks
against positions that South Korean units were defending along the front line. Far
from being intimidated, Beijing thus showed its continuing resolve, relying on
military means to persuade the United States to compromise on the final terms of
the armistice. In the end, both sides conceded points on the POW repatriation issue.33 While scholars continue to debate
how the Korean War ended, few writers now disagree that the conflict was the key turning
point in U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Reacting to North Korea's attack, the
United States not only expanded greatly its commitment to halt further Communist seizures
of power elsewhere in Asia, it also vastly increased defense spending, strengthened
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization militarily, and pressed for West German rearmament.
It was the Korean War that erroneously persuaded U.S. leaders that only the direct
application of military power could contain what they now perceived as a dire Soviet
threat menacing the entire world.34 Unfortunately, the same myths that dictated the
shift in U.S. Cold War policy after 1950 seem to dominate the thinking of current
President George W. Bush. At a March 7 press conference this year with visiting South
Korean President Kim Dae Jung, he said that there were no plans at this time to resume
talks with Pyongyang end its ballistic missile program and missile exports because of
concerns about its trustworthiness and verifiability of current agreements. His approach
risks destroying the significant progress that President Kim has made over the past
three years toward reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula through opening an isolated
regime to contacts with the outside world. This "Sunshine Policy" of engagement and
cooperation with North Korea, for which Kim won the Nobel Peace Prize, received strong
support from the Clinton administration because it was able to act not on the old myths
about Korea but its new realities. Exposing the myths surrounding the
Korean War is important not just to serve the interests of historical accuracy. The
realities of that conflict are instructive because they teach lessons about the impact
of U.S. participation in world affairs during and after World War II. Connections
between Korea and Vietnam are obvious, although historians have not sufficiently probed
the links between these two Asian wars. But another lesson of the Korean War that
will have continuing significance is how Americans relate to people of other nationalities
and cultures. Recent U.S. expressions of regret for the No Gun Ri incident, in which
U.S. soldiers killed innocent South Korean civilians during the first month of fighting
in Korea, provides an excellent example illustrating this point. Maintaining the myth
that U.S. intervention in the Korean War was an act of idealism and altruism reinforces
the wrong lessons about the conflict's meaning, serving to fuel the anti-Americanism in
South Korea that has been a destructive force in U.S.-Korean relations for at least the
past four decades. Research and writing about the Korean War in recent years presenting
a more accurate account of the conflict has made an important contribution to
strengthening relations between South Korea and the United States. While the resolution
of some issues awaits the release of more archival material, historians have exposed
enough myths about Korea that no longer does it warrant description as the forgotten war. ENDNOTES 1. Clair Blair, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953 (New York, 1985); C
allum McDonald, Korea: The War Before Vietnam (New York, 1986); Jon Halliday and
Bruce Cumings, Korea: The Unknown War (New York, 1989). 2. There now are a number of excellent historiographical articles surveying the literature
on the Korean War. Among the most useful are Rosemary Foot, "Making Known the Unknown War:
Policy Analysis of the Korean Conflict in the Last Decade," Diplomatic History 15,
no. 3 (Summer 1991), 411-31; James I. Matray, "Villain Again: The United States and the
Korean Armistice Talks," Diplomatic History 16, no. 3 (Summer 1992), 473-80;
Robert J. McMahon, "The Cold War in Asia: Toward a New Synthesis," Diplomatic
History 12, no. 3 (Summer 1988), 307-27; Bruce Cumings, "Korean-American Relations:
A Century of Contact and Thirty-Five Years of Intimacy," in New Frontiers in
American-East Asian Relations: Essays Presented to Dorothy Borg, ed. Warren I. Cohen
(New York, 1983), 237-82; Hakjoon Kim, "Trends in Korean War Studies: A Review of the
Literature," in Korea and the Cold War: Division, Destruction, and Disarmament,
eds. Kim Chull Baum and James I. Matray (Claremont, CA, 1993), 7-34. 3. Harry S. Truman statement, June 27, 1950, U.S. Department of State, Bulletin
23 (July 3, 1950), 5. 4. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. II: Years of Trial and Hope
(Garden City, NY, 1956), 464. 5. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State
Department (New York, 1969); John M. Allison, Ambassador from the Prairie
or Allison Wonderland (Boston, 1973); Mark W. Clark, From the Danube to the
Yalu (New York, 1954); J. Lawton Collins, War in Peacetime: The History and
Lessons of Korea (Boston, 1969); Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York,
1964); Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War: History and Tactics (Garden City, NY,
1967); C. Turner Joy, How Communists Negotiate (New York, 1955); Courtney Whitney,
MacArthur. His Rendezvous with History (New York, 1956). 6. Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ, 1981,
1990). 7. MacDonald, Korea, p. 3; Burton I. Kaufman, The Korean War: Challenges
in Crisis, Credibility, and Command (Philadelphia, 1986), 32; Peter Lowe, The
Origins of the Korean War (London, 1986), 68; John Merrill, Korea: The Peninsular
Origins of the War (Newark, DE, 1989), 21. 8. Kathryn Weathersby, "The Soviet Role in the Early Phase of the Korean War," The
Journal of American-East Asian Relations 2, no. 4 (Winter 1993), 432. See also
Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners:
Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA, 1993). 9. New York Times, 29 September 1945, p. 14, 18 October 1945, p. 4, and
20 October 1945, p. 10; E. Grant Meade, American Military Government in Korea
(New York, 1951), 90-91; George M. McCune and Arthur L. Grey, Jr., Korea
Today (Cambridge, MA, 1950), 42-43; Robert T. Oliver, Syngman Rhee: The Man
Behind the Myth (New York, 1955), 201-202. 10. James I. Matray, "Captive of the Cold War: The Decision to Divide Korea at the
38th Parallel," Pacific Historical Review 50, no. 2 (May 1981): 145-68. 11. James I. Matray, The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea,
1941-1950 (Honolulu, HI, 1985), 52-150 12. James I. Matray, "Korea: Test Case of Containment in Asia," in Child of
Conflict: The Korean-American Relationship, 1945-1953, ed. Bruce Cumings, (Seattle,
1983), 169-94. 13. Robert T. Oliver, Why War Came in Korea (New York, 1950), 8; David Rees,
Korea: The Limited War (New York, 1964), 9; Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision: June 24-30, 1950 (New York, 1968), 66-67; Carl Berger, The Korean Knot: A Military-Political History (Philadelphia, 1964), 97. 14. "The Cold War in Asia," Cold War International History Project Bulletin
[hereafter CWIHPB], Issues 6-7 (Winter 1995/ 1996): 54-61; Cumings, The Origins of
the Korean War, Vol. II: The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947-1950, pp. 421-30 15. Matray, The Reluctant Crusade, pp. 200-36. 16. William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton,
NJ, 1995), 29-30. 17. Merrill, Korea, pp. 130-31. 18. James I. Matray, "Acheson's Press Club Speech Reexamined," Journal of
Conflict Studies, forthcoming, 2002. 19. Kathryn Weathersby, "New Russian Documents on the Korean War," in "The Cold
War in Asia," CWIHPB, p. 31. 20. James I. Matray, "Civil is a Dumb Name for War," SHAFR Newsletter 27,
no. 4 (December 1995), 1-14. 21. James I. Matray, "America's Reluctant Crusade: Truman's Commitment of Combat
Troops in the Korean War," The Historian 42, no. 3 (May 1980): 437-55. 22. James I. Matray, "MacArthur's Periodic Reports to the UN Security Council,"
in Historical Dictionary of the Korean War, ed. James I. Matray (Westport, CT, 1991),
267-68; Paul J. Morton, "United Nations Command," ibid., 507-508. 23. James I. Matray, "Truman's Plan for Victory: National Self-Determination and
the Thirty-Eighth Parallel Decision in Korea," The Journal of American History
66, no. 2 (September 1979): 314-33. 24. Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the SinoAmerican
Confrontation (New York, 1994), 3-5, 20, 159; Alexandre Y. Mansourov, "Stalin,
Mao, Kim, and China's Decision to Enter the Korean War, September 16-October 15,
1950: New Evidence from the Russian Archives," CWIHP, 6-7 (Winter 1995/1996): 94-107.
See also, Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners; Shu Guang Zhang,
Mao's Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950-1953 (Lawrence, KS, 1995). 25. Michael Schaller, "MacArthur's Plan for Victory," in Historical Dictionary
of the Korean War, 268-69. 26. Roger Dingman, "Atomic Diplomacy During the Korean War," International
Security 13, no. 3 (Winter 1988/ 1989): 50-89. See also Rosemary Foot, The
Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict (Cambridge,
MA, 1985). 27. Michael Schaller, Douglas MacArthur. The Far Eastern General (New York,
1989), 230-40. 28. Donald W. Boose, Jr., "The Korean War Truce Talks: A Study in Conflict
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