From the back cover:
“Now in the twentieth century as it moves towards sanity or mad despair the slayer needs merely touch a button and death is on the wing, blindly, blotting out the remote, the unknown people.”
From September 1950 Reginald Thompson reported from the frontline during the four months in which the Korean War was ‘won’ and ‘lost’. After the Inchon landings, he followed UN forces up to the Chinese border and back, witnessing scenes of appalling brutality.
Reporting the war in Korea was not easy. General MacArthur was quick to expel those who wrote things he did not wish to see in print. Few journalists dared to write the exact truth. Cry Korea is Thompson’s attempt to set the record straight.
No newcomer to war, Thompson was sickened by the carnage left in the wake of America’s military machine, and horrified by the implications of this new form of warfare. Cry Korea is not only a powerful piece of reportage, but a cry for us all to examine the resonant issues of modern conflict and intervention.