From the publisher’s website: In Reencounters, Crystal Mun-hye Baik examines what it means to live with and remember an ongoing war when its manifestations—hypervisible and deeply sensed—become everyday formations delinked from militarization. Contemplating beyond notions of inherited trauma and postmemory, Baik offers the concept of reencounters to better track the Korean War’s illegible entanglements through an interdisciplinary … [Read More]
Booklist: Korean War (page 2)
Right to Mourn: Trauma, Empathy, and Korean War Memorials
From the publisher’s website: In the highly politicized memory space of postwar South Korea, many families have been deprived of their right to mourn loved ones lost in the Korean War. Only since the 1990s has the government begun to acknowledge the atrocities committed by South Korean and American troops that resulted in large numbers … [Read More]
The Devil’s Playground: Inside America’s Defense of the Deadly Korean DMZ
From the publisher’s website: The Devil’s Playground is a timely account of what it is like to serve along perhaps the most dangerous and sensitive strip of land in the world. In recent months two bullet-riddled attempted escapes from North to South brought worldwide headlines. And with Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un exchanging threats, the world hopes … [Read More]
Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical Fragmentation
From the publisher’s website: This pioneering book is the first English volume on Korean memories. In it, Mikyoung Kim introduces ‘psycho-historical fragmentation’, a concept that explains South Korea’s mnemonic rupture as a result of living under intense temporal, psychological and physical pressure. As Korean society has undergone transformation at unusual speed and intensity, so has … [Read More]
The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History
A groundbreaking look at how the interrogation rooms of the Korean War set the stage for a new kind of battle—not over land but over human subjects Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean … [Read More]
Was that Mountain Really There?
From the publisher’s website: Was that Mountain Really there? by Park Wan-Suh, an award winning and well-known Korean novelist, has recently been translated by Hannah Kim and published by Kitaab. The novel depicts the trauma of partition faced by civilians in a war that reft Korea in two. Was that Mountain Really There? portrays the … [Read More]
Eyewitness Korea: The Experience of British and American Soldiers in the Korean War 1950-1953
Today the Korean War of 1950-1953 is overshadowed by later twentieth-century conflicts in Vietnam and the Middle East, yet at the time it was the focus of international attention. It threatened to lead to a third world war, and although fought on a limited scale, it still involved over a million men under UN command … [Read More]
If You Leave Me
An emotionally riveting debut novel about war, family, and forbidden love—the unforgettable saga of two ill-fated lovers in Korea and the heartbreaking choices they’re forced to make in the years surrounding the civil war that still haunts us today. When the communist-backed army from the north invades her home, sixteen-year-old Haemi Lee, along with her … [Read More]
The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, selfhood and forgetting
The Korean War in Britain explores the social and cultural impact of the Korean War (1950-53) on Britain. Coming just five years after the ravages of the Second World War, Korea was a deeply unsettling moment in post-war British history. From allegations about American use of ‘germ’ warfare to anxiety over Communist use of ‘brainwashing’ … [Read More]
The Korean War: An International History
From the publisher’s website: This classic history of the Korean War—from its origins through the armistice—is now available in a paperback edition including a substantive introduction that considers the heightened danger of a new Northeast Asian war as Trump and Kim Jong-un escalate their rhetoric. Wada Haruki, one of the world’s leading scholars of the … [Read More]
King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America’s Spymaster in Korea
From the publisher’s website: In King of Spies, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden, reveals one of the most astonishing – and previously untold – spy stories of the twentieth century. Donald Nichols was ‘a one man war’, according to his US Air Force commanding general. He won the Distinguished Service … [Read More]
The Korean War in Asia: A Hidden History
From the publisher’s website: This book takes a fresh look at the Korean War by considering the conflict from a Northeast Asian regional perspective. It highlights the connections of the war to earlier conflicts in the region and examines the human impact of the war on neighboring countries, focusing particularly on the ways in which … [Read More]
Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History
From the publisher’s website: Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century when Korea became entangled in the world of modern imperialism and the old social, economic and political order began to change; this handbook brings together cutting edge scholarship on major themes in Korean History. Contributions by experts in the field cover the Late Choson and Colonial … [Read More]
The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot
From the publisher’s website: A non-fiction thriller by international bestselling author Blaine Harden (Escape from Camp 14) that explores the world’s most repressive state through the intertwined lives of two North Koreans, one infamous, one obscure: Kim Il Sung, the former North Korean leader and No Kum Sok, once the state’s youngest jet fighter pilot. … [Read More]
Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World
The end of World War II did not mean the arrival of peace. The major powers faced social upheaval at home, while anticolonial wars erupted around the world. American–Soviet relations grew chilly, but the meaning of the rivalry remained disputable. Cold War Crucible reveals the Korean War as the catalyst for a new postwar order. The conflict … [Read More]
China’s Battle for Korea: The 1951 Spring Offensive
From the publisher’s website: Between November 1950 and the end of fighting in June 1953, China launched six major offensives against UN forces in Korea. The most important of these began on April 22, 1951, and was the largest Communist military operation of the war. The UN forces put up a strong defense, prevented the … [Read More]