When you get a chance, take a look at Michael Moynihan’s shredding of both Bruce Cumings and the NYT over at The Politburo. Just some snippets:
Cumings can barely conceal his enthusiasm for Korean communism. He is quoted by Kotkin as recommending Pyongyang as a holiday destination with therapeutic powers: “On my infrequent visits to the country I have been happy…empathy for the underdog is something I can?€™t help, being a life-long fan of the Cleveland Indians.” A real cut-up, this Cumings. Besides reading like the delusional dispatch from a modern-day Walter Duranty, we think there is something crass in comparing a mediocre baseball team to a totalitarian government guilty of genocide against its citizens.
Between the Japanese gay porn and the comparisons to North Korea, the Indians are having a really crappy run of things of late.
All that personalty-cult business, absurd “Juche” philosophy and lack of freedom forces Cumings to concede that “politically [North Korea] is not a nice place, but it is an understandable place…[it?€™s] an anticolonial and anti-imperial state growing out of a half century of Japanese colonial rule and another half century of continuous confrontation with a hegemonic United States and a more powerful South Korea.” That Korea is “not a nice place” is surely the understatement of the year. That the lack freedom and rights afforded to North Korean citizens is “understandable” leads us to believe that Cumings might be in the pay of Kim?€™s propaganda machine and is so preposterous that it doesn?€™t merit a serious response.
No, he’s not in the pay of Kim Jong-il — that just Bruce being Bruce. Most of us who have read Cumings know he’s not so bad, even if he is an irrepressible wise-ass who tends to take liberties that a scholar of his stature shouldn’t be taking. Bruce should know better, however, than to argue that North Korea has spent a half century of “continuous confrontation with a hegemonic United States and a more powerful South Korea.” Not the way he intends to argue it, anyway. North Korea has spent the better part of its existence not only as the stronger of the two Koreas, but protected by both the Soviet nuclear umbrella and military alliances with both Soviet Russia and Communist China. At the height of its power, North Korea consistently strove to provoke confrontation with its southern neighbor (and that neighbor’s ally), not avoid it. To the extent that North Korea has spent over 50 years locked in a struggle with the United States, it has its own policies vis-a-vis South Korea to thank, so unlike Cumings, it’s difficult for me to muster a whole lot of sympathy (or “understanding”) for P’yongyang.
(Hat tip to Kevin at IA)
6 Comments
Bruce is evil.
He gets too much credit, and when people like the NYT and many humanities departments give him a voice without much critical commentary on him, they compound the problem.
Is he a good scholar? Even here I have trouble. I recommend people read his history of the Korean War. He has fantastic skills for a scholar especially for Korea given his linguistic skills. He is even has a good writing style. But he is still evil, and even in this work that has made his career, his bias comes through clearly enough — but how come that part doesn’t get discussed in the classes I’ve taken where he is required reading???
Have you see the movie Broadcast News?
It’s a good movie. Anyway, at one point, Albert Brooks, the dumpy looking television news guy who is in love with Holly Hunter, the producer who has just told him she is in love the the William Hurt, the good looking but genetically ignorant up-n-coming news anchor of the future —- the next Peter Jennings —
Brooks says something very similar to this about the William Hurt character : “He’s the devil. No. Listen to me. I’m not just saying that. Look, what do you think the devil is going to be like when he comes? He’s not going to be all red with big pointy horns? No! The devil is going to look just like me and you. He’s going to look like us, talk like us, walk like us, and get us to lower our standards - just a little bit -”
I think that fits well here….
More people, especially in the press, should point out the darker side of Bruce that doesn’t get aired enough…
Although I share the view that informs the spirit in which Moynihan wrote, I think he is off-base on the book reviewer Kotkin. The review isn’t as critical as a serious (non-leftist) Korea watcher might be, but it doesn’t endorse Cumming’s odd views. Kotkin seems to get the current context of the nuclear crisis entirely wrong, however. He sems to be an odd choice to review the book.
I also think that Kotkin’s a different type than Cumings. Although I cannot say that I know Kotkin well, I studied with him at Berkeley in the 80s, when we were both grinding through the doctoral program in history, and my impression was that he was far more conservative than other Berkeley students. He openly criticized the Soviet Union and the corrupt ruling elite, i.e., the Nomenklatura. (I learned that word from him.) I don’t know why he was chosen to review this book on North Korea, though, for it’s not his area of expertise. He has co-edited a book with Bruce Elleman on Mongolia: *Mongolia in the 20th Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan* (Marmot,take note), so perhaps he has some interest in this issue. He’s also married to a Korean woman. But his review was rather banal, quoting and summarizing when it should have been critiquing. So, I understand why his review was read as a positive one.
Jeffery Hodges
Thanks Jeffery, I should have mentioned your reference to Mr Kotkin over on the original blogsite. I commend you for sensible, insightful and civil commentary on this board. (I know you mentioned a few days back having several forthcoming monographs, but..) Can you point me/us to recent publications of yours that may be out there?
My articles on the Korean issue of reunification haven’t come out yet. Most of my genuinely scholarly articles deal more with religion than politics, but I’m increasingly moving toward political themes. Here’s a less scholarly effort of mine that combines religious and political issues:
http://www.hanshin.ac.kr/~hih/.....sc_18.html
It was a presentation that I gave on the anniversary of 9/11, and some Koreans didn’t like what I had to say — though nobody really engaged with the central issue that I raised.
A more narrowly focused article of mine on religion appears here:
http://clawww.lmu.edu/faculty/.....dgesA.html
Other then these, there’s not much online.
Jeffery Hodges
Have you guys read Michael Breen’s new book on North Korea? I haven’t, but he promises it’s not a whitewash and he doesn’t blame America for all the North’s ills, like Cumings does.
Somewhere along the way I read a WSJ review of this Cumings monstrosity and he pretty much blames America for whatever few bad things do exist north of the 38th. History will not look kindly upon this man, just like Walter Duranty is getting his comeuppance.