By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
As you may know, 55 years ago today at about 4 a.m., forces of the DPRK crossed the 38th parallel hellbent on uniting Koreans under the communist banner.
A war of words still rages in some circles about who started the war, but the conventional historical wisdom these days appears to be that it was the DPRK.
More information may be found here, here and here.
The war would last for three years and cost the lives of an estimated 2 to 3 million people.
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20 Comments
Korea is all too eager to celebrate that God damned summit five years ago, the Gwangju “massacre,” or the schoolgirls getting run over, but I doubt we’ll see any such commemoration of this day….
There will be the normal round tv documentaries and official trips to the national cemetery or some such place today, but I doubt that’s the kind of ‘commemoration’ you have in mind (the kind with youth at candlelight vigils holding signs written in blood?).
I wonder how it will be celebrated in Pyongyang?
(By the way, how many more people would have had to be killed for you to consider Gwangju to be a massacre instead of a “massacre”?)
What is the proper terminology for the tragic events in Gwanju? Is it a “massacre” or an “armed rebellion put down with (excessive) force”?
There is contreversy over who started the war only because academia has a stupid habit of promoting what is “thought provoking.” The argument that South Korea or the US started the war does not hold water, but it gets some attention, because it is unconventional and cuts against the grain (of reality). Books and articles written by people like Cumings will always find a home in academia….
Bulgasari-you might be well enlightened if you look back on the contents of this blog about 6 weeks-the marmot ran a full timeline of each day of the incident in remembrance of those people. Whether it is repression of an armed uprising or a massacre depends on where your heart lies-those with connections to the Cholla province and its people will lean towards massacre while those with Kyeoungsang province, government and possibly Chaebol leanings will side with the armed uprising view. Part of the controversy there lies with the accounting of how many citizens were killed by the army. The government maintains a significantly smaller number than the local population does.
I think the DPRK is the only group that argues they were the victims with the US and South Korea being the aggressors. I think Chinas entrance was due at least in part to MacArther’s incistance on taking China while they were ready and that the fact that US planse did actually “mistakenly” bomb the Chinese side of the river on a number of occasions.
I’m well aware of the differences in perception regarding the Kwangju uprising, though I don’t think the collection of incidents Marmot posted will really enlighten anyone. They simply state occurences with no explanation or context and don’t aid much in understanding other than in a temporal way (posting them every day for the duration of the uprising’s anniversary). It does help in considering whether it was a ‘massacre’ or ‘armed uprising’ to be aware of the context in which events occured and to look at who was initiating the violence, something I looked at indepth here. “Excessive brutality by the military which set off an uprising which became armed after troops fired on masses of demonstrators, which was ultimately put down with excessive force” might be a better description than the options Mac provided above.
For many Americans the anniversary is looked at only as a day when the US gets kicked around by segments of the Korean population without thinking too much about what happened. Mark’s comment above suggests that the summit 5 years ago, the USFK traffic accident, and the Kwangju ‘Massacre’ are unworthy of commemoration (and I’d agree on the first two) but the inclusion of Kwangju (and the use of quotations around ‘massacre’, which seem to possibly question it’s applicability or even ridicule it’s use) does a disservice to hundreds of people.
James,
No. There are a few scholars in South Korea and abroad who claim South Korea, either pushed on by the US or on its own, started the Korean War. If I remember correctly, Cumings lays out three “possible” causes for the start of the war, but in so doing, he is fighting to pull people away from the idea North Korea started it.
And of these scholars who either claim the North didn’t start it or that it is at least debatable, they are all not considered mouth pieces of the North or laughed at. They are considered scholars like everybody else.
Some very good links on the Kwangju uprising, offering much food for thought. That the U.S. was aware of what was going on, at least in some circles, appears well documented. The question that remains unasked is: What could they have done about it? As the sources show, the Koreans did inform CFC of some troop movements, but likewise ordered unilateral “chops” of forces when they deemed them necessary. It would appear that whatever the U.S. players knew, and some knew quite a lot, the command itself had no real authority over ROK deployments.
As to “wars of words” over which side started the Korean War, only an idiot could ignore the very size and organization of the North Korean offensive. Res Ipsa Loquator!
I just found an essay called ‘The United States and South Korean Democratization’, by James Fowler, which was published in Political Science Quarterly in 1999.
I haven’t had a chance to read it in its entirety, but it examines the US role in the pro-democracy movements of 1979-80 and 1987, using mostly declassified cables. From what I’ve read so far it’s a pretty balanced look at the US role; my main criticism would be that he seems to rely too much on the cables for accounts of events in Korea (like the Busan-Masan and Kwangju uprisings) and gets certain details and dates wrong.
Looks well worth reading though.
Wtf just happened to my post? At least the link works…
I guess Mark must think that Boston Massacre was Boston “Massacre.”
Mark, you a Tory?
Well, that is interesting. I would think the Boston Massacre was a “massacre” and I’m a partiotic American. I mean it. Even when I was a little one in elementary school, I had questions about the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.
Dressing up like Indians, raiding a ship, and destroying property? Something to be proud of?
And even though the Boston Massacre was also taught, in elementary school, as a patriotic moment in the American’s fight for freedom, I didn’t buy it completely. I could put myself in the soldiers’ shoes — what was the mob doing to cause them to shoot?
It wasn’t until much later that I happened to come across the event again when reading biographies of our early presidents.
And what I found solidified my distaste for the partiotic tone of reading the Boston Massacre.
Here are the basics from a website that made the Boston Massacre a very interesting topic, to me.
“At the Custom House the crowd presses in, began to throw ice and rocks, taunting the soldiers, damning them to fire their muskets, knowing that soldiers are forbidden to shoot without orders from a civil magistrate. Private Hugh Montgomery is knocked down, and someone yells “Fire!” The soldiers shoot into the crowd, killing five and wounding six.”
11 people shot is kind of a small massacre even if it is a massacre.
“Counsel for the Defense
John Adams, a Patriot, was the foremost Boston attorney of the time. Adams became instrumental in the cause for independence as a representative to the Continental Congress. He signed the Declaration of Independence, became a commissioner to France, the first Vice-President, and second President of the United States.”
That solidified it for me. Can’t get a whole lot more patriotic than John Adams, but he defended the soldiers.
The fact someone can conclude the soldiers might have had a justification for firing on the mob does not take away from, or add to, a conclusion about whether the colonies were right for breaking away or not.
Well, I say no taxation without representation!
and I think the Kwangjuites had a similiar gripe.
USinkorea, I’m rather impressed that you had such a view when you were so young! I think you are older than me, when I leared about the Boston Massacre (6h grade?) the teacher actually had two newspaper articles from that time. One a tory the other from rebel-scum. The point of the lesson was about different view in history and bias in media and yaddi yaddi yadda. Good times were had by all back in those days…
I am a contrarian. I get it from my mother. I don’t always go against the grain, but anytime I hear a group of people agreeing with each other, I figure there have to be some cracks.
Anyway, I was serious about my early reaction to being told about the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party - especially the tea party. The dressing up as Indians started it. If you believe in what you are doing, why try to pretend you’re an indian when you do it?
And even though the teachers in elementary school were teaching both events as great patriotic parts of American history, I remember what we read said something about shells and rock being in the snowballs the mob was throwing at the small number of soldiers, and I could imagine the fear and confusion of the moment.
I also thought 5 people dead isn’t a whole hell of a lot.
It was not that time in India where the Brits mowed a large gathering of peaceful protesters — forcing many to jump into a well to risk death and injury in it rather than by a bullet. Nor was it on the scale of the Kwangju Massacre…
Another thing I remember now is that my teachers in elementary school didn’t mention or highlight the trial of the Brit soldiers nor that they were defended by a future president.
That was kind of a big point, wasn’t it?
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