I have complex feelings about Bruce Cumings’ work, to say the least, but his interview in OhMyNews International is an interesting one. Go read it.
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I have complex feelings about Bruce Cumings’ work, to say the least, but his interview in OhMyNews International is an interesting one. Go read it.
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39 Comments
I can see alot of conservatives hating Bruce Cumings. I’ve got mixed feelings towards him, like you Marmot.
He says he doesn’t know what “Pro-Korean” and Anti-Korean” are, but he definately chooses distinct sides in certain matters - like any distpute involving Japan, and many between SK and the US. He definately lays too much blame for Korean problems (ie, the Kwangju uprising and the Nork Nukes) at the feet of the US. I say that and I’m an australian liberal. I read his book Korea in the Sun and thought it was pretty good, if a little abstract.
I agree with his ideas on North Korea, to an extent. Although he comes across as a little bit of an apologist I think some of what he says has merit. I think engaging NK is the only option in breaking down the regime in the long run.
“Pro-Korean” was a term in the 80s referring to those who supported the Chun dictatorship, and I think Cumings as “ban-han” or supposedly “anti-Korean” was definitely on the correct side of that struggle.
One thing that struck me as odd in the interview was the way Cumings advocated that the US take the position of balancer between Japan and China. Usually this is the role of a weaker state, that swings back and forth to balance against the stronger side. US military expenditure, though, is over ten times more per year than either China or Japan - the US is clearly more powerful than both.
Also troubling is the inconsistency on democracy - strongly pro-human rights, backing the democratic movement in S. Korea, but tolerant of the even more brutal N Korean dictatorship. I’d like him to address that question.
“Korea’s Place in the Sun” was, overall, substandard and biased.
One apt example, since today is oh-il-pal. Reading about Chun visiting the Whitehouse in that book you’d think a sinister Reagan was endorsing what happened in Kwangju. The reality – that the visit got KDJ’s death sentence commuted – was of course entirely different that what Cumings attempted to shill off on readers. The book, published in 1997 at the height of the famine, also downplays the real threat that North Korea was in 1980 and U.S. concerns for stability in the South. That’s just one example.
Aside from cold, hard figures (e.g., in 1950 x number of y were documented as z – and with a reference), I don’t trust anything Cumings says or writes. Every assertion needs to be reanalyzed to see if what he omitted is relevant, which makes reading his stuff time consuming and adds frustration.
Not as bas a Chomsky, but close enough.
I found the origins of the war series a very fluid read, well referenced and lacking in the tabloid anti-imperialist american tripe that he seems to be known for now-a-days.
It was pretty much the strength of those two books that he got his name.
He still does good stuff in journals.
Understandably, he work does not sit well with the katchi kapshida crowd, but they know deep down that they are not wanted here, they just don’t like one of ‘their own’ pointing that out to them.
Amazingly, I actually agreed with Cumings on something-his support of the FTA and his belief that it will be of real benefit to Korea.
At the same time, as dokdoforever points out, I find it a bit disconcerting that as someone who claims to be so strongly pro-democracy and human rights, it appears to be not part of the equation in any of his arguments. The whole idea that more sunshine will work to reunify the country somewhere down the road is ludicrous. How long are you going to support a brutal dictator with the idea that somehow, someday, he will fall and the country will reunify peacefully? The longer and more you support him, the longer he is going to survive. And does that mean accepting horrific human rights violations for 5, 10, 20, 50 years? Seems pretty hypocritical to me.
His older stuff was much, much better, aside from attempting to pin the start of the war on the South Koreans.
Currently, Cumings’ work should not “sit well” with anyone interested in the truth, or anyone doesn’t want to have to fact check each sentence. But for those who don’t care about those things, drink up.
I agree
Nice to see the Concord up and running again
Since the US never really had a problem with guys like Chun Do Hwan back in the good ole days (nor with Saddam Hussein, as long as he was warring with the Ayatollah, nor with Osama bin Laden, as long as he was fighting the Soviets), don’t really see why there is so much fuss about Kim Jong Il. America has no problem being chummy with dictators or religious fanatics, as long as said dictators or religious fanatics are convenient to US interests. So all the talk about human rights and what not is complete and utter bullshit. This is where America’s interests and Korea’s interests diverge and may even conflict. That is why Korea is right to pursue her own independent policy, especially with regards to NK.
#6 I don’t think he tried to pin the origins of the war purely on S.K. From memory he said the war began as a series of incursions across the border by both the north and south - although he did point out particular incidents by the ROK which may have accelerated things. Max Hastings in the Korean War had a pretty similar view: It wasn’t just Kim Il Sung, it was Rhee too. Martin in Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader was more inclined to blame the Norks, citing Chinese and Soviet correspondance.
In this case I tend to agree with him - I think both sides were guilty. If you think about it, with the peninsular divided by completely incompatible and hostile systems for the first time ever, at the cold war fault line, was there much of a chance of avoiding war?
I agree with the others about Cumings views of NK. For someone who is absolutely pedantic about teasing out all the grubby little details of US mistakes in east asia over the last 60 years, he spends very little time shining the spotlight on the NK regime.
On the other hand, if you look at the situation from a purely practical point of view, I think the idea of engaging NK is a good one. Look at what’s happened in Vietnam and China. The more cultural exchange, the more joint projects, the more capitalism that leeches into the north, the closer the regime gets to opening up for good. Sure you have to get your hands grubby dealing with the monsters in Pyongyang, but since when have Republicans been worried about dealing with tyrants? The alternative, where the Norks find themselves backed into a corner, could be catastrophic.
Bruce Cumings is a piece of shit. He proves it again and again. And dlatn, it has nothing to do with my understanding of how South Koreans don’t want the US in Korea (except for the time-being, that is). I surely don’t want us there…
Origins of the Korean War was an academic book, but the signs of how much his bias twisted the material was still readily available in it. Since the end of the Cold War and the loss of the communist bloc as a viable alternative to the evils of democratic capitalism, he has just decided to cut himself loose from the bulk of similar intelligencia in the West who were able to admit they were wrong and find a new message to attack those ills of the West. Bruce chose the option of dropping the mask and letting his distortions fly out full force.
And in Origins, he did seek to lay the blame on South Korea - but he did so in a way he would not today —- when he still had a hope of convincing his audience, back in the Cold War period when the communist-liberal democracy ideological debate was still going on, he wanted people to entertain his view point, so he watered it down into posing 3 possible alternatives to how the war started — with the goal being to inch people away from the obvious reality that the North’s invasion was well-prepared far in advance and well-executed. Today, if Bruce were writing Origins for the first time, he’d drop the pretense and just argue straight forward that South Korea started the war. He wouldn’t hum-n-haw it.
Everyone should go read North Korea: Another Country to see what has always been behind his work.
I fail to see how anybody can claim he is “a little bit of an apologist” for North Korea. He is a full blown apologist and for the same reason. He was so disalusioned by the Vietnam War, it has been his life’s mission to pick apart US foreign policy and more - to heap as much shame on it possible in the hopes either it or the rest of the world will admit how horrible it has been.
There isn’t that great of a mystery here. He gives us more than enough to go on.
His work was tolerable in the 1970s and into the 1980s, because the debate on ideological and economic systems was still viable though it increasingly became less so as people were forced to admit the Soviets and the like were both much more tyrannical than anything in the contemporary democracies and that their economic system was an amazing failure.
By the 1990s, and especially post-North Korean famine, his shit has become inexcusable and I wish people would state it as such. He deserves an academic spanking over and over again (though he will never make the transition other intellectuals of his era did manage).
And I like the last quote particularly —
Let’s see, Bruce ol pal, what you envision for Iraq —- it turning into another South Korea now that US bases are pot marking its soil?….
gee….50 years from now……a democratic Iraq with a thriving economy and one of the highest standards of living in the world? What an optimist you are (jackass)….
On another note, I can’t understand why we (I mean people who read this stuff in general) still hum-n-haw with Cumings….???….
It’s as if we feel better about ourselves by patting ourselves on the back for being so open minded we can entertain his poo.
We can put roses in front of our noses, but poo still smells like poo.
If people agree with Cumings, fine. Engage in the material that way. But, how the heck can people manage common ground with the man and his work after we’ve seen the evolution of it as the world as evolved as well?
Part of what I mean is, the excretions he squeezes out today are not disconnected from his prior work. More openly blatant in their bias they are, but even if you couldn’t see it back when you first read Origins of the Korean War, don’t you have to admit they were always there to be recognized?….
Yes, usinkorea, but there are some folks over at another blog, the one you argue isn’t anti-Korean, who seem to think Cumings is a pretty credible source when they argue that the Japanese colonization was a pretty good thing for Korea.
Chun Do-hwan = Kim Jong-il?
Pipe, needle, or pills?
Book Review: The Guest, by Hwang Sok-Yong
http://www.politicalaffairs.ne.....3481/1/32/
I like cartoons, too.
You know, if Cumings wanted to point out the hypocrisy between what America states as its ideals and the reality it created, and he wanted to focus on the 1950s before the Vietnam War to show how it was part of the fiber of American society, all he had to do was go into American cultural studies, not NorthEast Asian….He could have come to Georgia and the deep south and write volumes and volumes on the evil of segragation, peppering his work with the images of lynched black people and police dogs attacking peaceful marchers. He could have tied that into slavery and kept on going right back to the first sprouts of growth in the American colonies.
He did not have to become an apologist for Kim Il Sung and son’s tyranny if he wanted to strike his blow against Uncle Hypocrite.
And this is one reason I despise the man as an academic so much….
I only ever read Korea In The Sun and thought it was pretty well-balanced, but I’ve checked out some of the other things he’s said here:
http://hnn.us/articles/2742.html
and if only half of it is true, well, I tend to agree with usinkorea. Anyone read North Korea: Another Country?
I did 4 or 5 scathing posts on it as I read it some time ago, but it was either at an older version of the blog or culled long since.
The book was more spiteful than that review tells. It was written as a man who had recognized the best days of his message playing in the mainstream had come and gone and rather than shift his scholarly approach to match the changing times post-Cold War collapse of global communism, he decided to go full tilt into venting spleen (perhaps not terribly different from some of my blogging….)
The short book was full of stuff like this:
The worst for me was when he got to a point of heaping so much anger and claims of atrocities on the US even his own mind decided perhaps a reader reading it would start to ask what NK had done, and he dismisses all consideration of the North by saying something close to, “Sure, the Kim Il Sung regime did some bad things too. They were communists, right?” in a beyond spiteful manner. I had to pick my book up and throw it down on the ground and stomp on it three or four times before I could go on….
Another thing I can remember sticking out was how pretty much all the ills in North Korea are a result of the amount of Napalm the US dropped on the North. We made the regime the way it has been by our war atrocities and that is why it is up to the US to do whatever it takes to convince Kim Jong Il we can love him.
And that review did point out a good example of other things that came page after page in that text:
What I find most ironic about Nork apologists (and apologists for other nasties) like Cumings is that so many of them were supportive of democracy activists and human rights activists against less odious military governments and yet have no interest in promoting democracy or human rights when it comes to totalitarian (communist) governments the US opposes.
#15 Yeah. Great book to define the nature of American war atrocities……A fiction novel with a reviewer taking North Korean sources as definitive while gleaning very short quotes here and there from “newly released secret documents” that fail to justify the wordy attachment of strong claims. I guess if the reviewer would have gotten into more details with such claims of “chemical and biological” warfare used by the US, she would have mentioned experiments done on US medical ships and the use of germ warfare in Manchuria - using more references from North Korean sources and the same sources indirectly from non-Korean scholars - like good ole Dr. Cumings….
….The truth will set you free…
Bruce Cumings is a flake, that much is clear. I even agree with him about a few things, but the way he states his case makes me want to be on the opposite side of whatever side he is on. His most recent book, “Korea’s Place in the Sun”, was a fluffy piece of crap that I could hardly finish. The most annoying thing is his self-righteous attitude about the US (where he could actually score some points if he would play fair) while he pulls his punches with NK. I guess he is afraid they will revoke the welcome mat for future visits if he says anything untoward (or remotely honest) about the NK regime.
Although I have to hold my nose when reading so much of his “red-rot,” I still would have to say that his popular books have lots of fun stuff. What pisses me off is that the lack of refutation by other Koreanists. That’s why, US, we have to keep talking about him.
Netizen Kim. Book reviews on internet sites dedicated to “Marxist thought” which dissect the contents of novels, by definition fiction, as a means of providing a “balanced view” of history, are not generally taken at face value by unbiased readers. That the novel takes place in Hwanghae province is especially intriguing, given that Hwanghae-do was the locus of some very strong anti-communist sentiment prior to the war, and gave rise to the “U.N. Partisan Forces” which waged combat operations against the North and were still holding on the the islands off of North Korea by 1953 (thus the justification for the Northern Limit Line). These anti-communist North Koreans fought independently, under the general guidance of the 8240th Army Unit (United Nations Partisan Forces Korea), and even today are not accorded full veterans benefits on a par with those who served in the ROK forces. One would think that if the massacres you refer to took place on even a limited scale in Hwanghae, the province would have been far more receptive to Kim Il-sung’s forces and political commissars.
Hm, the lack of response to my comment at #13 is very telling.
jk wrote:
Yes, very telling of the fact that no one else shares your obsession with trying to discredit Matt and his site.
Gee, I didn’t say any names, doggie-dog boy.
Besides, believe it or not, the owner of said blog actually wrote some stuff I agreed with (hell hath frozen over)…..about the war in Iraq and the (false) premise for attacking it.
Anyway, usinkorea once asked me on this blog about examples of how the blog was anti-Korean. Well, it seems Cumings was a main source repeatedly used by certain people over at that blog to justify the Japanese colonization of Korea.
But NOW, Cumings is said to be not a credible source if he makes unsubstantiated claims about so-called American crimes. Well, gee….what does that say about those who use it as a source to confirm their already reached conclusions about Korea NEEDING the Japanese colonization?
The world is not black-and-white, jk. Cumings is a mortal man — sometimes he’s right and sometimes he’s wrong. It’s as simple as that.
There is no mystery, no hypocrisy in that.
“lack of refutation by other Koreanists.” Here-here.
JK, when you say something worth commenting on, I might do it.
I also figured the Comment Sheriff would zap it since the post had nothing to do with Occidentalism or Japan and the colonial period - thus violating one of the new rules in yet another pointless thread-disrupting effort by you.
I will admit, however, it has me laughing to see someone use the use of Bruce Cumings to prove the user is anti-Korean.
That is a hoot
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I see, usinkorea, so when one of the writers at said site uses Cumings and quotes him repeatedly to show that the Japanese colonization of Korea was GOOD for Korea and that Korea shouldn’t complain….but heaven forbid Cumings ever criticize the US of A! Yes, that is a hoot, usinkorea.
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Let me see if I understand this new comment policing policy —- I’ve seen it attacked strongly from the start, but I thought unfairly, and I’ve been waiting to see how it unfolds —-
but, here, JK going off YET AGAIN into his fucking obsession with Occidentalism moves — and he does repeatedly all the time —- to yank the thread into a discussion he believes everybody on planet earth MUST involved in —- and yet those comments are just fine.
But, calling for the comment sheriff to come and police up his shit gets deleted….
Nice….
The man I think JK subconsciously wants to give a BJ too, Matt at Occidentalism, pointed out when this comment system began that just sitting back and allowing the few JKs who come over here from time to time to post comments against you while you say nothing —– gives an impression that that person’s usually stupid off topic illogical and/or hyperbolic commentary on you has validity.
Reference #25.
And now that this thread has been culled, one would have to conclude JK’s thread jerking passes muster….
But asking the comment sherrif to step in does not…
Fine…..
The floor is yours JK….
Have fun and raise your arms in victory…..and continue to do so each time in the future you reference Occidentalism or me and neither of us responds…..
You struck the good blow for uri nara…..
“You struck the good blow for uri nara…..”
And once AGAIN, someone is implying that I, a US-born Korean-American, am defending “uri nara” because I write things as opposed to what the anti-Koreanists write. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a racist. Would he have said it about a white or black person? Hmm.
If usinkorea can refer to my comments as defending “uri nara” simply because I counter either unfair criticisms of Korea (along with his overly pro-American views of history) as defending “uri nara” based on my blood and ethnic background (I am of Korean descent) then I guess his child will be HALF guilty of defending “uri nara”, huh?
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[...] rolled my eyes when Robert Koehler called his interview an "interesting one", but shouldn’t have resisted reading this OMN interview with Bruce Cumings. [...]