The Racial Borderlands of the Korean War

2020 ◽  
pp. 203-240
Author(s):  
Daniel Y. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Writers Of Color ◽  
War Novels ◽  
Us Imperialism ◽  
Detention Centers ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Korean War

This chapter brings together an array of Korean War novels, authored by US writers of color, to engage in a counterhegemonic project of cultural memory that explores the conflict’s significance for African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans: Toni Morrison’s Home, Rolando Hinojosa’s trilogy of works set during the conflict (Korean Love Songs, Rites and Witnesses, and The Useless Servants), and Ha Jin’s War Trash. These works critique the mistreatment of US soldiers of color and Chinese combatants by those in command. Morrison’s and Hinojosa’s novels emphasize the racism that persisted within the newly integrated US military, and Jin’s highlights the plight of prisoners of war in US-administered detention centers. These novels also highlight, however, nonwhite soldiers—including African American and Chicano servicemen—who committed atrocities during the conflict. Hinojosa’s and Jin’s writings, moreover, contextualize the war in a wider and longer set of historical trajectories: the former suggests a connection between US imperial aspirations as they took shape in 1950 and the ones that led to the US-Mexico War a century before; the latter conveys how the Korean War has been framed by the nationalist mythology of the People’s Republic of China as a great victory against US imperialism.

Soviet-Chinese-North Korean consultations on armistice during the Korean War

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 274-287
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Consultation Process ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Armistice Agreement

The paper highlights the consultation process of Soviet-Chinese-North Korean leaders on the ceasefire issue during the Korean War and their respective positions. The author stresses that the Armistice Agreement, signed in July 1953, was in response to the demands of the Soviet leadership to rush to end the war with Stalin’s death, rather than reflecting the wishes of the communists. The forced repatriation of the prisoners of war demanded by the communists was also frustrated and the war was a tie that almost returned to its pre-war state.

The Struggle to Fight a Humane War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahr Conway-Lanz
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Boomerang Effect ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
War Experiences ◽  
War Victims

The Korean War demonstrated the serious problems that the United States had adhering to the new 1949 Geneva Conventions and the severely limited protections that these new treaties provided. The protections for war victims were undermined both by serious gaps in the treaties that failed to provide much safety from bombing to civilians and by US deviations from the agreements in the handling of refugees and prisoners of war. However, Americans did not discard the agreements in the wake of their troubled Korean War experiences. Instead, the war helped to legitimize and lay the foundation for the further internalization of the new laws through their formal implementation, the public controversy they generated, and a boomerang effect of atrocity accusations. Despite failing to provide much protection for Korean War victims, the treaties were part of a broader international consensus-building process that helped to spread humanitarian norms.

Segregation, Integration, and Death: Evidence from the Korean War

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Connor Huff ◽  
Robert Schub
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Level Data ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Military Units ◽  
Null Finding

Abstract How does the design of military institutions affect who bears the costs of war? We answer this question by studying the transformative shift from segregated to integrated US military units during the Korean War. Combining new micro-level data on combat fatalities with archival data on the deployment and racial composition of military battalions, we show that Black and white soldiers died at similar rates under segregation. Qualitative and quantitative evidence provides one potential explanation for this counterintuitive null finding: acute battlefield concerns necessitated deploying military units wherever soldiers were needed, regardless of their race. We next argue that the mid-war racial integration of units, which tied the fates of soldiers more closely together, should not alter the relative fatality rates. The evidence is consistent with this expectation. Finally, while aggregate fatality rates were equal across races, segregation enabled short-term casualty discrepancies. Under segregation there were high casualty periods for white units followed by high casualty periods for Black units. Integration eliminated this variability. This research note highlights how enshrining segregationist policies within militaries creates permissive conditions for either commanders' choices, or the dictates and variability of conflict, to shape who bears war's costs.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 349-360
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Global Impact ◽  
The Korean War

This chapter considers the long-term and global impact of the Korean War. It suggests that telling the story of the Korean War through the interrogation room puts into stark relief the productive capabilities of war, not simply its destructive ones. What the prisoners of war and interrogators understood intimately was that states used warfare not simply as political strategy but also as a form of governance. The violence enacted by militaries on the battlefields, through mass air bombings and via torture in the interrogation rooms, must be viewed through a larger, implicating lens, where these acts are not simply rendered as “immoral,” “evil,” or “irrational.”

The Parallax Shift

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Prados
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Military Doctrine ◽  
Special Forces ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Near Term

Special Forces materialized during a period when US military doctrine was actually least favorable to their creation. Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who entered office near the end of the Korean War, the military’s emphasis shifted from preparing its forces for near-term potential conflict...

Congress and the Cold War: U.S.-China Policy, 1955

1981 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 80-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
China Policy ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
China Mainland ◽  
The Cold War

Perhaps no other foreign policy area brought forth the emotional anti communism characteristic of the 1950s as did American relations with the People's Republic of China. The so–called “ loss of China ”issue beginning in 1949, for which the Republicans primarily blamed the Democrats, severely strained the bipartisan approach towards foreign policy. In addition, four years before he died in 1951, Republican foreign policy leader Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg excluded China policy from the area of bipartisan agreement, while his party's loyalty to the defeated Nationalists remained strong. Senator Joseph McCarthy's“communists–in– government” charges during the Korean War, when American forces were engaged in combat with the People's Liberation Army, further exacerbated relations between the Republican and Democratic parties, and between the legislative and executive branches of government. Ominously, the possibility of a preventive strike on the China mainland also became the focus of serious consideration and possible implementation during the Formosa Strait confrontation of 1954–55.

Mao, Tibet, and the Korean War

2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael M. Sheng
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Chinese Leader ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

In October 1950 the Chinese leader Mao Zedong embarked on a two-front war. He sent troops to Korea and invaded Tibet at a time when the People's Republic of China was burdened with many domestic problems. The logic behind Mao's risky policy has baffled historians ever since. By drawing on newly available Chinese and Western documents and memoirs, this article explains what happened in October 1950 and why Mao acted as he did. The release of key documents such as telegrams between Mao and his subordinates enables scholars to understand Chinese policymaking vis-à-vis Tibet much more fully than in the past. The article shows that Mao skillfully used the conflicts for his own purposes and consolidated his hold over the Chinese Communist Party.

scholarly journals Psychiatry in the Korean War: Perils, PIES, and Prisoners of War

2002 ◽  
Vol 167 (11) ◽  
pp. 898-903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elspeth Cameron Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
The Korean War
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