Early in the post-World War II occupation of Korea, an exasperated Soviet military government officer confided to his American counterpart that the Koreans were “the Poles of Asia.” The accuracy of that assessment may be disputed, but there can be little argument that the scope and duration of unwelcome and usually violent foreign intervention in Korean affairs indeed rivals that suffered by Poland. Thus, it is one of the tragic ironies of history that this almost uniquely united culture and people would be brutally occupied by imperial Japan, then riven, first by two casually imposed foreign military governments, and then by one of the twentieth century’s most bloody fratricidal conflicts, made all the more sanguinary by outside interventions.

Any listing and discussion of resources for the history of the Korean War (1950-1953) must deal with Soviet-era documents released or uncovered in the last several years. These documents confirm the prevailing conclusion in the West that the war was indeed ignited by an invasion from North Korea (1). Strong confirmation of that point was recently advanced by an unlikely source, Japanese scholar and journalist Ryo Hagiwara, who covered what passes as politics in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) for a Japanese Communist newspaper. Hagiwara’s research indicates that North Korean leader Kim Il Sung was preparing for a full-scale invasion of the South in 1950 and that he solicited the cautious support of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. The North Korean culpability has now been well established through the testimony of North Korean defectors and recently released Soviet-era documents. One of the more convincing pieces of evidence is a handwritten Russian language plan, located by this author in the U.S. National Archives, for just such a campaign, apparently drawn up by the Soviet military mission to North Korea. This document postulates the invasion against South Korean “defensive positions” for between 22 and 25 June 1950. It is further discussed in this author’s The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished. Other such documents, reproduced in the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Research Bulletin, reveal, for example, the Soviet and North Korean/Chinese orchestration of their theatrical “germ warfare” campaign against the United States (2).

As for secondary sources, in view of the outpouring of writing, television documentaries, and informative web sites on the Korean War, terms such as the “Unknown War,” the “Forgotten War,” or the “war before Vietnam” have become obsolete.

The Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) has produced many worthy accounts of the Korean War. The Truth About the Korean War, edited by Kim Chull Baum, is particularly valuable, with its discussion by expatriate North Korean officers of the war. Also worthwhile is From Pusan to Panmunjom, written by Paik Sun-yup, undoubtedly the most distinguished ROK soldier of the Korean War.

Works from the North Korean perspective must begin with the publications of Bruce Cumings, who has dominated the field as much by the extent of his works as by their scholarship. He sympathetically portrays the northern regime, beginning with his editing of Child of Conflict: The Korean-American Relationship, 1943-1953; followed by The Origins of the Korean War; and Korea’s Place in the Sun. Throughout these works Cumings maintains his theme of the North more sinned against than sinning. In a similar vein, Canadians Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, in their United States and Biological Warfare, argue at some length, and against the evidence, that “large-scale field experiments with biological weapons could have been conducted [by the United States] during the Korean War” (3).

Works about China and the Korean War include Russell Spurr’s Enter the Dragon; while Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai deal collectively with China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea in their book Uncertain Partners.

Notable American works on the war and its background include James Irving Matray’s Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea; John Merrill’s Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War; James Cotton and Ian Neary’s edited volume The Korean War in History; and William Whitney Stueck’s Korean War: An International History. These works show that there was sufficient belligerency on both sides of the 38th parallel to have caused a civil conflict at any time between 1948 and 1949, but not in 1950. Rather, the war erupted as a result of a North Korean blitzkrieg across the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950.

What might be termed “standard” histories of the Korean War, written from a Western perspective, but indicting American and South Korean (but rarely other Allied) shortcomings include T. R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War; and Bevin Alexander’s Korea: The First War We Lost. Peter Lowe’s Origins of the Korean War represents the best of British work on the subject. Particularly useful are Roy E. Appleman’s East of Chosin; Escaping the Trap; Disaster in Korea; and Ridgway Duels for Korea. Clay Blair’s Forgotten War provides a “popular” work that is well-researched and well-written, but that perhaps relies too much on the memories and postwar perspectives of aging veterans.

The U.S. Marines were first off the mark with official service histories, beginning with Lynn Montross, et al., History of U.S. Marine Operations in Korea; followed by Malcolm W. Cagle and Frank A. Manson’s Sea War in Korea; and much later by Robert F. Futrell’s United States Air Force in Korea. A useful corrective to the air force’s official history of successfully fighting World War II all over again is Conrad C. Crane’s American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950-1953.

Army histories must begin with Appleman’s meticulous and admirable South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu. Walter G. Hermes’s Truce Tent and Fighting Front; and Billy C. Mossman’s long-delayed Ebb and Flow—both published by the Army’s Center of Military History (CMH)—are less critical, but still useful. Doris Condit’s Test of War provides a detailed history of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as do James F. Schnabel and Robert J. Watson in The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, volume 3, The Korean War. A more specialized CMH publication is Albert E. Cowdrey’s Medics’ War. James A. Huston provides a valuable unofficial study in Guns and Butter, Powder and Rice.

The CMH’s William T. Bowers, William M. Hammond, and George L. MacGarrigle performed yeoman service (and took considerable criticism) in documenting the baleful effects of military racial segregation upon the all-Black 24th Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division in Black Soldier, White Army. Withal, the Korean War saw the end of official racial segregation in the U.S. military.

The vexed question of the behavior of captive U.S. troops is dealt with by Albert Biderman in March to Calumny: The Story of American POWs in the Korean War, while Paul M. Cole offers a definitive study of the issue in POW/MIA Issues, volume 1, The Korean War.

Students of the Korean War are grateful to Scholarly Resources, Inc., for its microfilm sets of documents dealing with U.S. Army Historical Studies interim evaluation reports prepared for the Commander Pacific Fleet, and documents of the United Nations Armistice Commission. Like gratitude is due University Publications for a similar microfiche collection of after-action reports and histories written up by the Far East Command’s military history detachment toward the end of the war or soon after.

Korea was the United Nation’s first war, with some seventeen member states aiding the U.N. Command, which was itself under an American commander. By far the most extensive accounts of this aid come from South Korea and include the ROK Ministry of Defense’s History of the United Nations Forces in the Korean War, in no less than six volumes. Official Commonwealth histories include Anthony Farrar-Hockley’s British Part in the Korean War; and Robert O’Neill’s Australia in the Korean War, while Jeffrey Grey’s Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War has become an unofficial standard.

Recent works have lifted much of the secrecy around U.S. special operations. The best are Ed Evanhoe’s Darkmoon: Eighth Army Special Operations in the Korean War; William B. Breuer’s Shadow Warriors: The Covert War in Korea; and Ben S. Malcom’s White Tigers: My Secret War in North Korea, but all must be read with caution, coming as they do so much later than the events remembered.

A useful memoir of U.S. military leadership during the war can be found in Matthew B. Ridgway’s Korean War, while D. Clayton James and Anne Sharp Wells analyze collective leadership at the highest U.S. levels in Refighting the Last War. Richard C. Allen’s critical Korea’s Syngman Rhee provides a biography of the South Korean president.

Representative retrospectives of the war are Francis Heller, ed., The Korean War: A 25-Year Perspective; and James Irving Matray and Kim Chull Baum, eds., Korea and the Cold War.

Finally, reference works include Keith D. McFarland, The Korean War: An Annotated Bibliography; James Irving Matray, ed., Historical Dictionary of the Korean War; Stanley Sandler, ed., The Korean War: An Encyclopedia; Lester H. Brune and Robin Higham, eds., The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and Research; Spencer Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Korean War; and Allan R. Millett, “A Reader’s Guide to the Korean War,” to which this work is particularly indebted.

Endnotes

1. See, for example, RG 242, National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, Captured Korean Documents.

2. Cold War International History Research Bulletin (Winter 1998/1999).

3. Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 120; emphasis added.

Bibliography

Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York: Hippocrene, 1986.

Allen, Richard C. Korea’s Syngman Rhee: An Unauthorized Portrait. Rutland, VT: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1960.

Appleman, Roy E. Disaster in Korea: The Chinese Confront MacArthur. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989.

———. East of Chosin: Entrapment and Breakout in Korea, 1950. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987.

———. Escaping the Trap: The U.S. Army X Corps in Northeast Korea, 1950. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990.

———. Ridgway Duels for Korea. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990.

———. South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu: June-November 1950. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1961.

Biderman, Albert. March to Calumny: The Story of American POWs in the Korean War. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953. New York: Times Books, 1987.

Bowers, William T., William M. Hammond, and George L. MacGarrigle. Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1996.

Breuer, William B. Shadow Warriors: The Covert War in Korea. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996.

Brune, Lester H. and Robin Higham, eds. The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and Research. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Cagle, Malcolm W. and Frank A. Manson. The Sea War in Korea. Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1957.

Cole, Paul M. POW/MIA Issues. Volume 1, The Korean War. Santa Monica: Rand, 1994.

Condit, Doris M. The Test of War, 1950-1953. Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1988.

Cotton, James and Ian Neary, eds., The Korean War in History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.

Cowdrey, Albert E. The Medics’ War. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1987.

Crane, Conrad C. American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950-1953. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

Cumings, Bruce, ed. Child of Conflict: The Korean-American Relationship, 1943-1953. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983.

———. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: Norton, 1997.

———. The Origins of the Korean War. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981 and 1990.

Evanhoe, Ed. Darkmoon: Eighth Army Special Operations in the Korean War. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995.

Farrar-Hockley, Anthony. The British Part in the Korean War. 2 vols. London: HMSO, 1990 and 1994.

Fehrenbach, T. R. This Kind of War: A Study of Unpreparedness. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Futrell, Robert F. The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953. Rev. ed. Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, U.S. Air Force, 1983.

Goncharov, Sergei N., John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai. Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993

Grey, Jeffrey. The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War: An Alliance Study. New York: Manchester University Press, 1988.

Heller, Francis H., ed. The Korean War: A 25-Year Perspective. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1977.

Hermes, Walter G. Truce Tent and Fighting Front. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army, 1966.

The History of the United Nations Forces in the Korean War. Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, 1972-1977.

Huston, James A. Guns and Butter, Powder and Rice: U.S. Army Logistics in the Korean War. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1989.

James, D. Clayton and Anne Sharp Wells. Refighting the Last War: Command and Crisis in Korea, 1950-1953. New York: Free Press, 1993.

Kim Chull Baum, ed. The Truth About the Korean War: Testimony 40 Years Later. Seoul: Eulyoo Publishing Co., 1991.

Lowe, Peter. The Origins of the Korean War. New York: Longman, 1986.

Malcom, Ben S. White Tigers: My Secret War in North Korea. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1996.

Matray, James Irving, ed. Historical Dictionary of the Korean War. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

———. The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1941-1950. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985.

Matray, James Irving and Kim Chull Baum, eds. Korea and the Cold War: Division, Destruction, Disarmament. Claremont, CA: Regina, 1993.

Merrill, John. Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

Millett, Allan R. “A Reader’s Guide to the Korean War,” Journal of Military History 61, no. 3 (July 1997).

Montross, Lynn, et al., History of U.S. Marine Operations in Korea, 1950-1953, 5 vols. Austin, TX: R. J. Speights, 1992.

Mossman, Billy C. Ebb and Flow: November 1950-July 1951. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1990.

O’Neill, Robert. Australia in the Korean War, 1950-1953. 2 vols. Canberra: Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, 1981 and 1985.

Paik Sun-yup. From Pusan to Panmunjom. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1992.

Ridgway, Matthew B. The Korean War: How We Met the Challenge: How All-Out Asian War Was Averted: Why MacArthur Was Dismissed: Why Today’s War Objectives Must Be Limited. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967.

Sandler, Stanley. The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished. London: UCL Press, 1999.

———, ed. The Korean War: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995.

Schnabel, James F. and Robert J. Watson. The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy. Vol. 3, The Korean War. Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier, 1979-1980.

Spurr, Russell. Enter the Dragon: China’s Undeclared War Against the U.S. in Korea, 1950-1951. New York: Newmarket Press, 1988.

Stueck, William Whitney. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Tucker, Spencer C., ed. The Encyclopedia of the Korean War. 3 vols. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, forthcoming.

Stanley Sandler is the holder of the Conquest ’14 Chair in History at Virginia Military Institute. His publications include eight books and numerous articles in military history. His most recent book is The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished (1999).