Ebook: The Origins Of The Korean War, Volume 1: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947

Previous studies of the origins of the Korean War have explained the outbreak of conventional fighting by focusing on the events of the weeks and months just prior to June 25, 1950. Bruce Cumings maintains, to the contrary, that its origins must be sought in the five-year period preceding the war, when Korea was dominated by widespread demands for political, economic, and social change.

Making extensive use of Korean language materials from North and South, and of heretofore classified documents, intelligence reports, and U.S. military government sources, the author first examines the background and setting of postwar Korean politics and the arrival of American and Soviet power in 1945. He then analyzes Korean politics and American policies in Seoul as well as in the hinterlands.

Arguing that the Korean War was civil and revolutionary in character, Professor Cumings shows how the basic issues over which the war was fought were apparent immediately after Korea's liberation from colonial rule in 1945, leading to the effective emergence of separate northern and southern regimes within a year, extensive political violence in the southern provinces and preemptive American policies designed to create a bulwark against revolution in the South and communism in the North.