Sheila Miyoshi Jager - Brothers at war: the unending conflict in Korea

BROTHERS AT WAR

SHEILA MIYOSHI JAGER is Associate Professor and Director of the East Asian Studies Program at Oberlin, Ohio where she lives with her husband and children.

Also by Sheila Miyoshi Jager
Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia
(with Rana Mitter, eds.)
Narratives of Nation-Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism

The Unending Conflict in Korea

SHEILA MIYOSHI JAGER

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
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First published in the United States of America in 2013 by
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Copyright Sheila Miyoshi Jager, 2013

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eISBN 978 1 84765 202 7

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FOR JIYUL

AEC: Atomic Energy Commission

ASPAC: Asia-Pacific Council

CCP: Chinese Communist Party

CPKI: Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence

CPV: Chinese Peoples Volunteer

DMZ: demilitarized zone

DPRK: Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea

IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency

ICRC: International Committee for the Red Cross

JCS: Joint Chiefs of Staff

KATUSA: Korean Augmentation to the United States Army

KCIA: Korean Central Intelligence Agency

KCP: Korean Communist Party

KDP: Korean Democratic Party

KMAG: Korean Military Advisory Group

KPG: Korean Provisional Government

KPR: Korean Peoples Republic

KSC: Korean Service Corps

LST: landing ship tank

LWR: light-water reactor

MACV: Military Assistance Command Vietnam

NAM: Nonaligned Movement

NKPA: North Korean Peoples Army

NKWP: North Korean Workers Party

NPT: Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

NVA: North Vietnamese Army

PDS: Public Distribution System

PLA: Peoples Liberation Army

POW: prisoner of war

PRC: Peoples Republic of China

ROK: Republic of Korea

SACEUR: Supreme Allied Commander Europe

SCA: Soviet Civil Administration

SCAP: Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers

SKWP: South Korean Workers Party

SOFA: Status of Forces Agreement

TF: Task Force

UNC: United Nations Command

UNRC: United Nations Reception Center

UNCURK: United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea

USAFIK: United States Army Forces in Korea

USAMGIK: United States Military Government in Korea

VPA: Vietnam Peoples Army

WFP: World Food Program

My first opportunity to study the Korean War in depth came in 2006 when I was offered a two-year research fellowship at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Affiliated with the War College is the U.S. Army Military History Institute, which houses the largest collection in the United States of oral history archives on the Korean War. One of the major benefits I saw of working with oral histories at the onset of this project was the visceral connection I was able to make with the subjects of my research. Although oral histories are not always reliable and must be handled with care, they are invaluable for re-creating the mood and emotions of the battlefield that underlay the actions and attitudes of the soldiers who fought there.

I was also fortunate during my research at the Institute to run into a group of South Korean researchers from South Koreas Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The South Korean government had established the Commission in 2005 to investigate various incidents in Korean history, and in particular numerous atrocities committed by various government agencies during Japans occupation of Korea, the Korean War, and the successive authoritarian governments. The Commission was disbanded in 2010. As I sat down with the TRC researchers one evening over coffee, I discussed my project, and they offered their help. As the primary researcher on the Commission at that time, Suh Hee-gyng not only shared with me thousands of pages of unpublished and published reports and photos of the Commissions findings, but also helped me navigate the daunting Korean bureaucracy in securing permission to use them. She also provided invaluable assistance in assembling materials pertaining to the mass killings that occurred early on during the Korean War. Kim Dong-chun, former standing commissioner of the Commission, also provided important materials; it was he who showed me what I regard as one of the most haunting photos of the war, the remains of 114 bodies discovered at Buntegol, Chngwn, Chungbuk province, in 2007, which appears in this book.

I am also indebted to Balzs Szalontai for sharing some of his unpublished work with me. The book is much richer because of it. Katalin Jalsovszky, the archivist at the Hungarian National Museum, quickly and efficiently helped me to secure some rare North Korean photos of the war. I am thankful to Balzs and Chris Springer, who brought these amazing photos to my attention. John Moffett, librarian at the Needham Institute in the United Kingdom, was helpful in taking the time to locate, scan, and send dozens of photos of Joseph Needhams trip to China in 1952. Mitchell Lerner steered me to some of his and other recent work on the USS Pueblo incident from which the book has greatly benefited. Choe Yong-ho of the Korea Institute of Military History, Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, helped me to track down books, articles, and data on Koreas involvement in the Vietnam War. Raymond Lech generously provided me with copies of transcripts of pretrial interviews, appellate reviews, memos, and letters concerning U.S. Korean War POWs. Ray allowed me to borrow this extraordinary collectionfilling more than fifteen boxesto use at my leisure before he deposited them at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, where the collection now resides. New materials about the war from the Soviet, Chinese, East German, Hungarian, and Romanian archives, all available online at the web site for the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, have enabled scholars to adopt a truly multinational approach in their study of the cold war. We now know more about the views of other major players in the cold war than ever before. This book is a direct beneficiary of the tremendous contributions the Wilson Center has made to advancing cold war scholarship. Finally, I would like to acknowledge Oberlin College for granting me a two-year leave during which time the bulk of the research for this book was done. I also benefited greatly from three summer research grants awarded by Oberlin for travel to Korea and other research libraries in the United States. I consider myself lucky to be teaching in such a supportive academic environment. My colleagues Ann Sherif, Pauline Chen, and Qiusha Ma have been not only wonderful mentors but also supportive friends.