The Korean War: A History (36 page)

17.
NA, RG94, Central Intelligence, entry 427, box no. 18343, 441st CIC detachment, report from Cheju of June 18, 1948.

18.
NA, USFIK 11071 file, box 33, “Opinion on the Settlement of the Cheju Situation,” July 23, 1948, by Ko Pyong-uk, KNP superintendent.

19.
Rothwell Brown Papers, Brown to Hodge, “Report of Activities on Cheju-Do Island [sic] from 22 May 1948, to 30 June 1948”;
Seoul Times
, June 5 and 7, 1948. I have found no evidence of the return of Japanese officers, but that does not mean it did not happen.

20.
Seoul Times
, Aug. 6 and 11, 1948; G-2 Intelligence Summary no. 146, June 25–July 2, 1948; NA, RG338, KMAG file, box 5412, Roberts, “Weekly activities,” Nov. 8, Nov. 15, Dec. 6, 1948. Roberts also said that rebels were burning villages, but it seems to have been the official authorities who did most of the burning.

21.
USFIK, G-2 Intelligence Summary no. 154, Aug. 21–27, no. 159, Sept. 24–Oct. 1, no. 163, Oct. 22–29, 1948; NA, RG94, Central Intelligence, entry 427, box no. 18343, 441st CIC detachment monthly report, Oct. 21, 1948; 895.00 file, box no. 7127, Drumwright to State, Jan. 7 and 10, 1949.

22.
NA, 895.00 file, box no. 7127, Drumwright to State, March 14, 1949; Muccio to State, April 18, 1949.

23.
FO, F0317, piece no. 76258, Holt to Bevin, March 22, 1949.

24.
NA, 895.00 file, box no. 7127, Drumwright to State, May 17, 1949; Muccio to State, May 13, 1949.

25.
“The Background of the Present War in Korea,”
Far Eastern Economic Review
(Aug. 31, 1950), 233–37; this account is by an anonymous but knowledgeable American who served in the occupation. See also Koh Kwang-il, “In Quest of National Unity,”
Hapdong t’ongshin
, June 27, 1949, 149, quoted in
Sun’gan t’ongshin
, no. 34 (Sept. 1949), 1. Also NA, RG349, FEC G-2 Theater Intelligence, box 466, May 23, 1950, G-2 report on Cheju, which has the governor’s figures. He put the preinsurgency island population at 400,000, which I think is high. For a detailed North Korean account, see Yi Sung-yop, “The Struggle of the Southern Guerrillas for Unification of the Homeland,”
Kulloja
(The Worker), Jan. 1950, 18.

26.
NA, 895.00 file, box 7127, account of a survey of Cheju by Capt. Harold Fischgrund of KMAG, in Drumwright to Muccio, Nov. 28,
1949. Fischgrund thought all members of the NWY should be removed from the island, but of course they were not.

27.
NA, 795.00 file, box 4299, Drumwright to State, June 21, 1950; box 4268, Drumwright to Allison, Aug. 29, 1950, enclosing a survey, “Conditions on Cheju Island.” See also
Korean Survey
(March 1954), 6–7. The Americans put Yi’s death in June, but in awarding him a posthumous medal the North Koreans said he died in a guerrilla skirmish on the mainland in August 1949. See NDSM, Feb. 11, 1950.

28.
Seong Nae Kim, “Lamentations of the Dead,” 251–85.

29.
“History of the Rebellion,” USFIK 11017 file, box 77/96, packet of documents in “Operation Yousi
[sic].”

30.
“Operation Yousi,” ibid., “G-3 to C/S,” Oct. 20, 1948; “W.L. Roberts to CG, USAFIK,” Oct. 20, 1948; “Capt. Hatcher to G-3,” Oct. 21, 1948; “History of the Rebellion,” USFIK 11071 file, box 77/96, KMAG HQ to Gen. Song Ho-song, Oct. 21, 1948. The message is unsigned, but was presumably from Roberts. This file contains numerous original messages from Korean military and police units to and from USAFIK headquarters; also many daily intelligence reports. On the American C-47s see 740.0019 file, box C-215, Muccio to State, May 3, 1949. KMAG was at that time called PMAG, since it was still “provisional.”

31.
Interview with Thames Television, Feb. 1987.

32.
Hoover Institution, M. Preston Goodfellow Papers, box 1, draft of letter to Rhee, no date but late 1948.

33.
NA, 895.00 file, box 7127, Drumwright to State, Feb. 11 and 21, 1949. In March 1949 Drumwright urged two vice-consuls to solicit political information from American missionaries:

See NA, 895.00 file, box 7127, Drumwright directive included in Drumwright to State, March 17, 1949. See also ECA official Edgar A. J. Johnson’s testimony to Congress on June 13, 1950, to the effect that the ROKA had killed five thousand guerrillas in the past year, and that it was “prepared to meet any challenge by North Korean forces” (quoted in
New York Times
, July 6, 1950).

34.
“Military Studies on Manchuria.”

35.
Hugh Deane Papers, “Notes on Korea,” March 20, 1948.

36.
New York Times
, March 6 and 15, 1950.

37.
Paul Preston, Letter to the Editor,
Times Literary Supplement
(May 1, 2009), 6.

38.
NA, 895.00 file, box 7127, Muccio to State, May 13, 1949; Drumwright to State, June 13, 1949.

39.
NDSM, Feb. 6, 1950. Mount Songak is in the middle of Kaesong, and the 38th parallel cuts across it. When I visited Kaesong in 1987, this mountain was still pockmarked by the scars of artillery shells.

40.
UN Archives, BOX DAG-1/2.1.2, box 3, account of briefing on June 15, 1949.

41.
MacArthur Archives, RG9, box 43, Roberts to Department of the Army, Aug. 1, Aug. 9, 1949;
New York Times
, Aug. 5, 1949; NDSM, Feb. 6, 1950.

42.
NA, 895.00 file, box 946, Muccio, memos of conversation on Aug. 13 and 16, 1949.

43.
State Department official Niles Bond told Australian officials that Muccio and Roberts “were constantly warning the Koreans that such a step [an attack northward] would result in the stoppage of American aid, the withdrawal of the Military Mission,” and other measures. See Washington to Canberra, memorandum 953, Aug. 17, 1949; also British Foreign Office (FO 317), Piece #76259, Holt to FO, Sept. 2, 1949.

44.
Cumings (1990), 572–73, 582–85.

45.
See documents II through VI translated and reprinted in
Cold War International History Project Bulletin
, no. 5 (Spring 1995), 6–9.

46.
I have never seen such a high number. He may be including the anti-Japanese war, and ethnic Koreans in China. Zhang (1995), 44–45.

47.
Anyone who thinks they know exactly what happened in June 1950 is insufficiently well read in the documentation; there is still much more to be learned from Soviet, Chinese, and North and South Korean archives—and from the U.S. National Security Agency, which still has not declassified crucial signals intelligence on the Korean War.

48.
Columbia University, Wellington Koo Papers, box 217, Koo Diaries, entry for Jan. 4, 1950. Goodfellow arrived in Seoul on September 27, 1949 (895.00 file, box 7127, Muccio to State, Oct. 7, 1949). He went back in December 1949, which is the recent visit referred to in the quotation.

1.
Truman left office in 1952 with a 35 percent approval rating, but when he hit 23 percent earlier it was the lowest in recorded polling history, and it barely recovered thereafter. See Peter Baker, “Bush’s Unpopularity Nears Historic Depths,”
Washington Post
, republished in
Ann
Arbor News
(July 25, 2007), A8; also Casey (2008), 215, 292, 365. Bush subsequently went below Truman’s margin in 2008.

2.
Friedrich (2006), 14–17, 50, 52, 61–62, 71, 76. See also Eden (2004), 66, 78, and James (1993), 4.

3.
Quoted in Friedrich (2006), 82, 485.

4.
Princeton University, J. F. Dulles Papers, Curtis LeMay oral history, April 28, 1966. South Korean cities were bombed only when North Koreans or Chinese occupied them, and the destruction was much less than in the North. On the bombing as a war crime, see Walzer (1992), 155–56.

5.
Crane (2000), 32–33, 66–68, 122–25, 133; Knox (1985), 552.

6.
Lovett in Truman Library, Connelly Papers, “Notes on Cabinet Meetings,” Sept. 12, 1952.

7.
Hermann Knell,
To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II
(Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003), 25, 334.

8.
Crane (2000), 133.

9.
Friedrich (2006), 85–87, 110, 151.

10.
Hermann Lautensach,
Korea: A Geography Based on the Author’s Travels and Literature
, trans. Katherine and Eckart Dege (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1945, 1988), 202.

11.
Crane (2000), 160–64.

12.
Cumings (1990), 750–51; Rhodes (1995), 448–51.

13.
Samuel Cohen was a childhood friend of Herman Kahn; see Fred Kaplan,
The Wizards of Armageddon
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 220. On Oppenheimer and Project Vista, see Cumings (1990), 751–52; also David C. Elliot, “Project Vista and Nuclear Weapons in Europe,”
International Security
2:1 (Summer 1986), 163–83.

14.
Cumings (1990), 752.

15.
Dean (1954), 274.

16.
Thames Television, transcript from the fifth seminar for
Korea: The Unknown War
(November 1986); Thames interview with Tibor Meray (also 1986).

17.
Friedrich (2006), 75, 89; Knell (2003), 266; Crane (2000), 126; Foot (1990), 208; Crane (2000), 168–71.

18.
Karig et al. (1952), 111–12.

19.
Crane (2000), 168–71.

20.
Knell (2003), 329.

1.
Ernest J. Hopkins, ed.,
The Civil War Stories of Ambrose Bierce
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 48. Here I draw partially on my
“Occurrence at Nogun-ri Bridge: An Inquiry into the History and Memory of a Civil War,”
Critical Asian Studies
33:4 (2001), 509–26.

2.
Hanley et al. (2001), 236–37. I worked with this Associated Press team from time to time, and believe their investigative work deserved a Pulitzer Prize. But their book came out just as 9/11 happened, and got buried.

3.
New York Times
, Sept. 30, 1999.

4.
Doug Struck, “U.S., South Korea Gingerly Probe the Past,”
Washington Post
(Oct. 27, 1999), A-24.

5.
John Osborne, “Report from the Orient—Guns Are Not Enough,”
Life
(Aug. 21, 1950), 74–84.

6.
Walter Karig, “Korea—Tougher Than Okinawa,”
Collier’s
(Sept. 23, 1950), 24–26. Gen. Lawton Collins remarked that Korea saw “a reversion to old-style fighting—more comparable to that of our own Indian frontier days than to modern war.” (New
York Times
, Dec. 27, 1950.)

7.
Eric Larrabee, “Korea: The Military Lesson,”
Harper’s
(Nov. 1950), 51–57.

8.
Thompson,
Cry Korea
, 39, 44, 84, 114.