Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History

Rating:
Summary: A Partisan and Selective Account
Review: One of the first books I read about Korea, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History, illustrates the importance of interpreting history cautiously. Korean history, because of the division of the peninsula between two warring countries, is highly politicized. Cumings has been generally classified as a New Left historian and as sympathetic to the North Korean regime. The second charge is just mud-slinging, but the first generalization is still an active question in South Korean politics and academia.

First, since the book's publication in 1997, the Koreas have undergone many changes, both domestically and in their relations. South Korea's media and academic industries have also matured, and expression is more lively and open. There are more generalist and expert histories available on the market, so the importance of Cumings' work is easier to evaluate.

Cumings is generally a proponent of unification. This taints his history in several ways. First, Choson is depicted as a golden age of unified Korean power. Cumings also supports the Conservative Korean line, that foreigners wrecked Choson and downplays evidence of aristocratic factionalism and the weakness of the Korean central government. His discussion of the Japanese Occupation downplays the role of Korean businessmen in the Occupation economy and government. His account of the Korean War is heavy on politics and military leadership discussions, but spare on soldier's recollections. Cumings' sections on North Korean industrialization are competent, but since 1997 the subject has been better researched. Cumings still cannot compensate for the dearth of economic data, which plagues accounts to the present.

Cumings also burdens his account of Korean history with questionable social psychological opinions about the nature of Korean culture. He reinforces the conservative Korean view of the unique mission and origin of the Korean people as offspring of divine forces, a tactic the Koreans share with the Japanese. His account is subtly anti-global and anti-foreign. For this reason, his account is by Korean standards mainstream unificationist, but his open-minded treatment of North Korea notwithstanding, he is aligned with the forces of anti-globalization.

Not that the book does not contain valuable information about Korean history presented with colorful prose. However, what Cumings omits is damning. Most of ancient Korean history is omitted, which accentuates Choson at the expense of earlier dynasties. Discussions of religion are downplayed for politics and sociology. Cumings does not hide his bias, but readers need to examine his opinions well and use his footnotes for independent evaluation. And, by all means, read other newer books about Korea.

Rating:
Summary: A View From The Left?
Review: Reading Bruce Cummings' book "Korea's Place in the Sun" was a flashback to my college days. I had a radical history professor --- good teacher, nice guy, but his constant rants against US foreign policy through the ages got old very fast. That teacher was not Mr. Cummings ... but the two could be good friends!

On Page 385, Professor Cummings says that "In the 1980s the American Embassy in Seoul had the hallucination" that his writings had encouraged anti-American demonstrations. He calls the charge "pure nonsense." But if his earlier writings had the same tone as this book, I can understand why someone might have such a "hallucination."

Cummings' chapters on pre-World War II Korea are the most interesting (and least offensive) in the book. The chapter on "Industrialization, 1953 - 1996" is rather bogged down with economic and financial information --- but is still readable.

Unless you're a left-leaning academic, you might want to skip or skim the chapters on the post- WW II occupation and the Korean War. (And if you are a left-leaning academic, there's probably little in this book that you haven't already heard or mused upon anyway!)

The chapter on Korean-Americans was simply a 21-page litany of how racist white- and African-Americans have been, and how they continue to hold stereotypes about Koreans. (It does not occur to the professor that perhaps, for example, the reason ABC's sitcom "All American Girl" failed was simply because it was just not a very good show; no, it was those racist Americans who couldn't accept an Asian actress on TV!)

I also question some of Cummings' "facts." Just one example is the famous "Tree-Cutting Incident" of August, 1976, when North Korean border guards at the DMZ brutally murdered two American officers supervising South Korea workers sent to trim branches to give the Southern guards a clearer view of the area. Cummings (Page 469) claims that the tree was being trimmed by North Koreans ... and implies that the South Koreans and Americans overreacted. (Don Oberdorfer has a different --- and I think more accurate --- account of this incident in his book "The Two Koreas," PP 74 - 83.)

While it seems that Cummings is primarily negative toward USA, I can't say he is totally biased in favor of North Korea and its allies. There is criticism that --- considering how sensitive the DPRK is most of the time --- would offend the folks in Pyongyang. Still, Cummings' general attitude indicates that he blames America for a lot.

Toward the end of his tome (Page 473) --- after so many pages of pointing out America's failures and North Korea's good points or innocence --- the author admits: "The point is not that North Korea is a nice place ... beyond suspicion .... Quite the contrary, its policy for half a century has been to pile lie upon lie, exaggeration upon exaggeration .... But that is what we have learned to expect from communist regimes. What is the excuse for [such behavior] in the US?"

Apparently, the author has a very naive view of how USA should be: perfect and beyond reproach at all times in a very imperfect world. One would think that a college professor would be more sophisticated than that!

One more comment: Hasn't Cummings heard of the 1990s famine that has racked North Korea? I suspect that the conditions he raves about in DPRK --- the high life expectancy, the low infant mortality, the regime's economic self-sufficiency --- no longer apply (if they ever did!)

Bottom line: This is a well-written book. It succeeded in keeping my interest, for the most part. In spite of the cheerleading it does for Kim Il Sung & Co., it is probably well-researched. But I would not recommend it as one for beginners. If you're new to Korean (or Cold War) history, start somewhere else. When you do read this one, be prepared. Or, as another reviewer said, "read with caution."

Rating:
Summary: wrong!
Review: The author must learn about Korean history or East Asian history more carefully. Before 19C, Japanese culture always have been influenced from Korean culture. And Koreans had regarded Japanese as a 'barbarian'. So to speak, Japan always had been inferior to Korea in terms of cultural and social aspects before 19C. This book is a result from serious misunderstand on East Asian history.

Rating:
Summary: Accurate portrayal of both Koreas
Review: The book deals with both North & South Korea fairly. Cummings lays out America's bungling in another Asian country before Vietnam. & even now. He also provides the civil rights abuses in South Korea that were occurring up to the 1980's. He also explains the current Western false thinking of North Korea as a renegade state and thinking of reunification in terms of Germany's. Unfortunately the book only goes up to 1996, & doesn't cover the 1997 South Korean economic meltdown & IMF bailout. This would change substantially Cummings opinions & predictions for South Korea. For example, he predicts that Kim Dae Jung will never win politcal office, which has occurred in the past year.

Rating:
Summary: Useful information and insights but WAY too political...
Review: This book was easy to read and offered valuable insights on modern Korean history, and presented a lot of useful and interesting information. However, the author interjects entirely too much of his own rather extreme political opinion into the text, making the dissenting reader feel alienated when trying to read the other more pertinent information in the text. These comments are peripheral to the message of the text, and serve only to advertise what the author thinks about US domestic affairs, and other issues esentially unrelated to Korea. I think he gives a well-documented fair and balanced critique of both Korean regimes, but it is the frequent off-the-cuff political remark (not to mention the elitist comment that Americans might be better off if we placed our scholars in higher esteem) that were very distracting and annoying while trying to read this otherwise timely and well-written book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent readable background of the two Koreas.
Review: THIS IS MY SECOND ATTEMPT AT A REVIEW AS I DON'T KNOW IF I DID IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME! This is a great and readable history and cultural background. I recommend it strongly. It is as readable as you could wish, an it gives outsiders like me (non-Korean) a feeling that I can understand the situation a bit. I had virtual strangers see it whilst I was in Pyongyang (my second visit) a week ago, and say, hey, isn't that a great book! I agreed that yes, it really is a great book. In fact, I am just ordering a replacement because I gave mine away. Not many books I spend money on twice. You can just open it anywhere and start reading, and you'll get picked up and carried along. This man can write. (Wish I could say that about some of the other non-fiction authors in the tottering pile I have waiting for me to read them.) Incidentally, I also bought his War and Television and found that fascinating too (the bits I pecked at: I don't get a lot of time for reading).

Rating:
Summary: Revisionism intrudes on Reality
Review: While Cumings makes interesting points, especially on the early days of Korea, his discussion of modern history is way too revisionist. The ludicrous idea that the United States bares the brunt of the blame for the Korean War ignores both the US attempt to save as much of Korea as possible from Stalinism, as well as Stalin's secret endorsement of Kim's invasion BEFORE it happened (known because Soviet archives have been opened).,