Setting the Record Straight on the Korean War. - Review - book review

Monthly Review, Oct, 2000 by Martin Hart-Landsberg

Deane reports that Kim failed to win Stalin's support for a strike until May 1950. Still, Stalin was cautious and let Kim know that he would not support an unprovoked attack. Deane notes that the North "asserted on June 26, 1950, that the South had started the war by a general assault across the 38th parallel." While there is no evidence of a general assault, there are good reasons for believing that the South struck first, attacking the key northern city of Haeju. The South actually claimed to have taken the city, although it presented its victory as part of a counterattack against the northern offensive. However, the overall military situation makes such a counterattack highly unlikely.

It is more likely that the South launched a first strike across the border, hoping to trigger a northern attack so as to enlist U.S. forces in a march north. The North, having waited for just such a provocation, obliged by sending its troops south. And the United States, eager for an incident to further its own aims, was quick to intervene in what was clearly a civil war between Koreans.

Armies at War

In this, the longest section of the book, Deane lays out the basic dynamics of the fighting, with significant attention to the role of the Chinese (a role North Korea now downplays). But his major challenge to conventional histories of this period is found in a series of short chapters dealing with the armistice negotiations, air war, biological warfare, and treatment of prisoners of war.

By mid-1951, both sides were close in number of fighters and holding territory roughly in the location of the thirty-eighth parallel. Although it seemed likely that the two sides would quickly find a way to end the fighting, the war lasted another two years, mainly because the United States demanded a fully negotiated armistice agreement before it would agree to stop fighting. And as Deane reveals, the United States was in no hurry to conclude an agreement. Two issues dominated the negotiations: the location of the truce line and reparations of prisoners.

The United States initially argued for making the actual battle line the truce line, while the North Koreans and Chinese argued for the original thirty-eighth parallel. When the communist side finally agreed to the U.S. position, the United States changed its position, demanding that the truce line be advanced some thirty-two miles into the north. At the same time, the United States publicly accused the communist side of delaying the negotiations because of its refusal to accept the battle line as the truce line. American reporters were kept in the dark on this and many other things concerning the war. [3] As Deane reports, the deception was finally exposed thanks to the efforts of Wilfred Burchett and Alan Winnington, who were reporting on the communist side.

After agreement was reached on the truce line, the two sides took up the issue of prisoner repatriation. The United States refused to abide by the Geneva Convention, which mandated that all prisoners be repatriated at the end of the fighting. Instead, they argued that Korean and Chinese prisoners should be allowed to decide where they wanted to be released. Deane presents powerful evidence that as the two sides argued the issue, Korean and Chinese prisoners were brutally tortured in an effort to get them to defect. One chapter documents how wounded Chinese and Korean prisoners were used as guinea pigs for medical training and scientific experiments.