Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea - Hardcover

Jager, Sheila Miyoshi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393068498 ISBN 13: 9780393068498

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Synopsis

A major historical account of the Korean War, its origins, and its evolving impact on the world.

Sixty years after North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea, the Korean War has not yet ended. Sheila Miyoshi Jager presents the first comprehensive history of this misunderstood war, one that risks involving the world’s superpowers―again. Her sweeping narrative ranges from the middle of the Second World War―when Korean independence was fiercely debated between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill―to the present day, as North Korea, with China’s aid, stockpiles nuclear weapons while starving its people. At the center of this conflict is an ongoing struggle between North and South Korea for the mantle of Korean legitimacy, a “brother’s war,” which continues to fuel tensions on the Korean peninsula and the region.

Drawing from newly available diplomatic archives in China, South Korea, and the former Soviet Union, Jager analyzes top-level military strategy. She brings to life the bitter struggles of the postwar period and shows how the conflict between the two Koreas has continued to evolve to the present, with important and tragic consequences for the region and the world. Her portraits of the many fascinating characters that populate this history―Truman, MacArthur, Kim Il Sung, Mao, Stalin, and Park Chung Hee―reveal the complexities of the Korean War and the repercussions this conflict has had on lives of many individuals, statesmen, soldiers, and ordinary people, including the millions of hungry North Koreans for whom daily existence continues to be a nightmarish struggle.

The most accessible, up-to date, and balanced account yet written, illustrated with dozens of astonishing photographs and maps, Brothers at War will become the definitive chronicle of the struggle’s origins and aftermath and its global impact for years to come.

95 illustrations; 16 maps

About this title

About the Author

Sheila Miyoshi Jager earned her PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary Korean politics and history and is the author and coeditor of two previous books on Korea and East Asia. She is an associate professor and director of the East Asian program at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she lives with her husband and children.

Reviews

After visiting the heavily fortified DMZ separating North and South Korea, Bill Clinton called it the “scariest place on earth.” As the current crisis with North Korea illustrates, that description remains apt. Jager writes an ambitious, engrossing, and often disturbing history of the conflict, including its origins and its continuation since, technically, the war has never ended. As Jager indicates, Korea, which had a national identity as far back as the seventh century, was dominated by foreign powers for a century before WWII. The postwar division of the peninsula was inherently unstable, and there was considerable violence in the south even before the North Korean invasion in 1950. In analyzing the war, Jager provides multiple perspectives, including Korean, American, and Chinese. The war turned a civil conflict into a battleground of the Cold War. She now views the war as, however, a struggle for legitimacy between the two Koreas. This is a struggle that the North cannot win, and Jager sees that regime as dying but extremely dangerous. This is a superbly researched work that should be an essential tool in understanding the current crisis on the peninsula. --Jay Freeman

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393068498
• ISBN 13: 9780393068498
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608