Wada Haruki - The Korean War: An International History

Wada Haruki

University of Tokyo

Translated by Frank Baldwin

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This volume took shape over more than two decades through extraordinary collaboration. After my first article on North Korean history appeared in 19811982, I spent two months at the University of Washington in 1984 at the invitation of Bruce Cumings, whose monumental two-volume work The Origins of the Korean War inspired my interest in the conflict. Although our understandings of the war differ in several respects, I deeply appreciate his support and friendship.

While working on captured North Korean materials at the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland in 1983, I became acquainted with independent Korean scholar Pang Sun-joo, who shared his peerless familiarity with the collection. I was assisted at the Russian archives in Moscow by the late Grant Adibekov, archivist of Russian State Archives of Social-Political History, and Gennadii Boldiugov, President of AIRO XX, an independent association of Russian historians on twentieth-century Russia.

Kathryn Weathersby and the Cold War International History Project provided a set of declassified Soviet documents on the war. Without these records this book could not have been written. I treasure the exciting discussions with her and other CWIHP colleaguesChen Jian, Vladislav Zubok, Odd Arne Westad, Aleksandre Mansourov, and David Wolf. I would also like to thank Yurii V. Vanin, Charles Armstrong, Okonogi Masao, and Mizuno Naoki. Korean scholars were particularly generous with insights and assistance, including Moon Jong-in, Park Myung-lim, Yi Chong-sok, Chong Hyon-su, Lee Jong-won, Nam Ki-jong, and the late Suh Dong-man.

This book is an expanded version and translation of Chosen Senso Zenshi (The Korean War: A History) published in 2002 by Iwanami Shoten, whose kind permission made it possible. Gavan McCormack and Mark Selden encouraged me to publish an English version. I am greatly indebted to Frank Baldwin for the translation, accomplished over several years as we struggled to mesh schedules. Chen Jian, as one of the first readers of my manuscript, encouraged the publication and gave important revision advice. Mark Seldens dedicated editing greatly improved the narrative. Tom Wells read the manuscript and made many useful suggestions. I alone am responsible for any errors that remain.

This book uses elements of the McCune-Reischauer system of romanizing Korean. But I dropped the diacritical marks (breve and apostrophe) used to distinguish unaspirated consonants from aspirated consonants and simple vowels from compound vowels. When a specific romanization usage has been sanctioned by history and personal choice, I have not changed that usage.

All Asian names are given in normal order, family name first and given name second, such as Kim Il-sung, Mao Zedong, and Yoshida Shigeru. In these cases, Kim, Mao, and Yoshida are family names. But some people express their names in English form, such as Shu Guang Zhang. Here Zhang is the family name.