Conclusion

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.”