Korean Atrocity! Forgotten War Crimes, 1950-1953. - Review - book review

Aerospace Power Journal, Summer, 2001 by Kenneth P. Werrell

Korean Atrocity! Forgotten War Crimes, 1950-1953 by Philip D. Chinnery. Naval Institute Press (http://www.usni.org), 2062 Generals Highway, Annapolis, Maryland 21401, 2001,296 pages, $34.95.

Korean Atrocity! by British aviation writer Philip Chinnery focuses on communist murder and mistreatment of captured United Nations (UN) troops (and some civilians) during the Korean War. Using recently declassified materials collected for war-crimes purposes and numerous memoirs, he details the topic in gory detail, complete with photos. Much of the story is well known. Early in the war, UN forces found bodies of bound and frequently mutilated American and Korean prisoners. More were killed in marches to the prison camps, where others were murdered, and many more died from maltreatment. Approximately 38 percent of all US prisoners died in the Korean War, compared to about 1 percent held by the Germans and about 50 percent by the Japanese during World War II. Certainly, a number of the 8,000 Americans listed as missing in action in Korea suffered the same fate.

Does Chinnery uncover anything new? From the war-crimes materials, he found that cases involving North Korean troops outnumbered those involving Chinese troops by a ratio of more than two to one. This discovery reinforces the conventional view of the crueler Korean and more calculated Chinese treatment of prisoners. He states that captured communists (418) suspected of war crimes were included in the general prisoner-of-war (POW) exchange at the conclusion of the war because decision makers believed that to hold them might jeopardize the POW swap. Chinnery deals with some little-known information on a related subject--the misconduct of American prisoners. Seldom discussed for obvious reasons, this situation involved 13 percent of Army prisoners. (He does not deal with the other services, each of which had a different definition of collaboration.) Of the 425 serious cases considered by the Army, 22 went to trial, resulting in 11 convictions. In addition, 21 American prisoners stayed with the communists, and a nother 75 prisoners who were returned agreed to spy for them. The performance of US prisoners shocked the nation, led to the "code of conduct," and produced fears made vivid by films such as The Manchurian Candidate. Chinnery also mentions the numerous escape attempts by POWs, including those of British captain FarrarHockley, who made six such efforts.

While Chinnery and the Naval Institute Press are to be commended for bringing these graphic charges to light just as our interest in North Korea and China is coming to the fore, the execution is flawed. Korean Atrocity! reads like a series of research notes, vignette by vignette, with many long quotations. There are names and graphic details but little analysis or organization. There are no citations, and the bibliography lists but 14 secondary and four primary sources. The author repeats allegations that UN prisoners were taken to the Soviet Union and never returned after the war. The evidence presented here (and elsewhere) to support these charges is tenuous at best. No mention is made of UN atrocities although the better treatment of communist prisoners is mentioned in passing. In sum, this is a book only for readers with strong stomachs or a special purpose--or for those who prefer journalistic (read sensationalistic) literature. The subjects of atrocities and POWs in Korea deserve further work but with a more systematic, better organized, and broader-researched study than this one.