Korea: Where the American Century Began

by Michael Pembroke

Unless you know the history, you cannot see the future. In late 1950, the US-led invasion of North Korea failed and for the next three years the United States relentlessly bombed the North’s cities, towns and villages. Pyongyang has been determined to develop a credible nuclear deterrent ever since.

The Korean War was the first of America’s unsuccessful military interventions post-World War II and its first modern conflict with China. It established the pattern for the next sixty years and marked the true beginning of the American century – opening the door to ever-increasing defense expenditure and creating the dangerous and festering geopolitical sore that exists in Northeast Asia today.

Michael Pembroke tells the story of the Korean peninsula with compassion for the people of the North and South, understanding for the soldiers caught between the bitter winter and an implacable enemy, and concern about the past and present role of the United States.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, War, United States, Historical, Military Fiction

368 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 4, 2018

Reviews

[Marie Belcredi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Pembroke has packed this book full of research on the history of the American foray into Korea. It's an academic work but has some personal touches, however, the most interesting is the afterword where he described his own connection with Korea. His father had been a young platoon commander and was sent into the Battle of Maryang San. It was one of those useless battles reminiscent of WW1 where many thousands of soldiers from both sides died and nothing was gained in the end. His father, though very young acquitted himself well.
Through the book, Pembroke described the history of the Korean War exposing American hubris, naivete and arrogance. The initial separation of Korea into two states was effected after WW2 when the Japanese occupation ended and the Americans divided the country based on a map in the National Geographic late one night. The DMZ is now a no-man's land and an ecological refuge for flora and fauna due to the fact that both sides closely monitor it from both sides.
Pembroke comes across as a anti-American at times. He has not one good thing to say about them in the whole book. He has 20-20 hindsight which is first demonstrated when he interprets the atmosphere of Europe in the late 40's and early 50's. He criticizes Truman et al for believing that the Soviets were attempting slowly to take over Europe and the rest of the world. The then acknowledges
...but by 1950 a number of troubling events had occurred in Europe that unsettled America's postwar sense of imperium.
He then mentions Berlin and and Russia's developing of the nuclear bomb. Pembroke is looking at this from the point of view of an academic Australian far far away from the action. The fact that Czechoslovakia fell to the communists in 1948, East Germany was a Soviet satellite and it even looked like West Germany could be taken over by the communists - all this made for a highly alarmed charged atmosphere. This ended the Morgenthau plan so that West Germany could be a bulwark against the Communism that seemed to be advancing across Europe. It was in this atmosphere that the Korean war was started.
Pembroke describes the Americans' initial surge into Korean crossing the 38th Parallel and invading North Korea up to the Yalu River.
MacArthur surrounded himself with men who would not disturb the dream-world of self-worship in which he often chose to live
The Americans were lured deep into enemy territory in freezing weather in October 1950. They were loud, overconfident and completely unaware of their fate.
One senior cavalry officer - absurdly 'seated astride a massive cowboy saddle' in a jeep - roared past a British infantry column wile the astonished soldiers looked on
After a resounding defeat, the Americans revenged themselves on North Korea with massive bombing and the liberal use of napalm. To most people alive during the Vietnam war, this reminds us of the terrible picture of the naked girl running screaming in a village after a napalm attack by the Americans. North Korea had to be destroyed - its people, its industry and infrastructure.
Small wonder that the North Koreans now feel as they do towards the Americans.
In the end peace talks began but proceeded slowly. The Americans, who had until then not lost a war and would have been deeply humiliated at having to negotiate for peace, managed to string the talks out thereby causing many more deaths, wounded and destruction.
Pembroke is a wordsmith and the book is engaging. I have learned a lot about Korea by reading this book. The role of Australia gets mentioned, sometimes even criticizing the Americans. This makes me wonder at the Australia of today - following the Americans into the debacle that was in the invasion of Iraq and being one of the handful of countries supporting the Americans in the UN no matter how hypocritical the motion is. It is best summed up by Gore Vidal:
We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose...we bomb, invade, subvert other states.

[Anne Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mum saw me reading this book and said she wanted to read it after me. I told her I didn't think it was a good idea. She asked me why. I had to tell her I thought that she'd be too upset by it and that, since she been ignorant until she was nearly 90, there wasn't much point in being distressed in your late old age. Somehow this made her determined. Halfway through, she asked me: "Do you think the average American knows any of this?"

I had to say no. Halfway through, I had an entirely different thought: "North Korea will never ever trust America." And it would not be wisdom for them to do so.

Three-quarters of the way through, I began to wonder if the book was really written by an American (I had assumed this because of the mention of "Princeton" in the Preface.) The exposé of so much perfidy and treachery in the process of implementing American policy was too thorough not to be threatening to the national psyche as it's regularly presented to us. It turned out, right at the end, it was an Australian who wrote the book.

There are parts that are simply harrowing. There are parts that are simply gob-smacking in their hypocrisy. There are parts that are heart-rending, as when decent citizens discover how their own country—the USA—has betrayed its own ideals and its own soldiers in order to destroy an ideology that was never the threat it was portrayed as being.

An early resolution in the United Nations was deliberately deceptive so that Truman's goal of regime change in North Korea could be imposed. In those days, according to British historian Paul Johnson, the UN was virtually an instrument of US power. (pg 79)

"Musical instruments, like bugles and flutes, could be heard in the hills north of Unsan. Distinctive sounds, unlike anything the Americans had heard before, drifted out of the dark. No one recognised the sequence of notes. All that could be identified was a menacing foreign trilling that some likened to bagpipes—but it was subtler, lighter, not as harsh and more eerie. It was the chilling sound of Chinese entry into battle at night, signalling to one another and striking fear into the enemy. When the music stopped, the Chinese raced through the first battalion's thinly positioned lines, almost at will." (pg 96)

Attacks on dams and dykes to cause major losses in the civilian population are now prohibited by the Geneva Convention. The US has not ratified this, despite the fact that at Nuremberg, a Nazi officer in the Netherlands was convicted and hanged for it. Blaine Harden of the Washington Post wrote that the American people "never really became conscious of a war crime committed in their name" with regard to bombing in North Korea deliberately conducted to destroy agricultural land and cause famine, starvation and slow death in the population. (pg 151)

One of the most disturbing parts of the book is the country-wide napalm bombing. Winston Churchill was so appalled by letting it loose over entire villages that he protested "no one ever thought of splashing it about all over the civilian population." John Wayne's chilling commentary in John Ford's propaganda film, "Burn 'em out, cook 'em, fry 'em," is grotesque and a damning indictment on those who acclaimed it. (pg 152)

The atomic bomb which had already been deployed in Japan was often considered for Korea. Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, said the successful testing of it caused Truman to be "tremendously pepped up." Winston Churchill thought he became a "changed man". And Peter Townsend, royal equerry, said, "It was natural. The former bankrupt haberdasher from Kansas City, with the atom bomb in his pocket, was now the most powerful man on earth." (pg 160)

Bacteriological weapons were created and concealed. (pg 180)

Released prisoners-of-war who signed confessions of involvement in the biological warfare program were threatened on their return to the USA with charges of treason and were segregated in a psychiatric ward and constantly monitored. These collaborators were said to be 'symbols of an "effete and indulgent society" and were linked to "deep anxieties about the American character." Popular cinema even blamed the supposed loss of manly vigour on "an overwhelming feminine force that threatens American manhood/nationhood." Mothers were said to be to blame. The film My Son John explored an unhealthy relationship between mother and son that eventually turned John into a communist.' (pg 181)

"If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation." Madeleine Allbright (pg 207)

Only a month after the Korean Armistice, Dulles authorised with Presidential approval the CIA's first known coup d'état. Kermit Roosevelt Jnr led the brutal operation in August 1953 that toppled the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran and installed the Shah on the Peacock Throne. Regime change in Iran was followed by other successes—all now acknowledged—Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Dominican Republic (1963), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Chile (1973). Nicaragua won a famous victory against the US in the International Court of Justice in 1986 but the US simply withdrew its consent to the court's jurisdiction. CIA intervention was justified according to the US because Nicaragua had "taken significant steps towards establishing a totalitarian Communist dictatorship." The International Court of Justice did not consider this was sufficient reason for the US violation of state sovereignty. (pg 212)

The US "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." John Quincy Adams (pg 213)

In an earlier age, it was thought only fascists and socialists celebrated war; that only they glorified the armed struggle; that only they depicted armies as expressions of national unity and collective purpose; that only they believed that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun". The civilised world regarded armed conflict as barbarism, brutality, ugliness and sheer waste, whose horror and futility were enshrined in the unfeigned verses of poets such as Sassoon and Owen and graphically depicted by writers such as Hemingway, Remarque and Graves. Now it is different, at least in the United States. No nation has more guns, weapons, ships and aircraft. No nation spends more on defence. (pg 225)

Military leaders speak openly, without a hint of recognition of the resentment that it causes, of "full spectrum military dominance [of the world]." (pg 223)

[Stan Prager · Rating 1 out of 5]

There’s an abiding irony to the fact that the United Nations, formed in the wake of a catastrophic global war to keep the peace, instead gave sanction to the first and most significant multinational armed conflict since World War II, not even five full years after Japan’s capitulation. It never would have happened had Stalin not ordered Soviet delegates to boycott that Security Council session in protest over the seating of Chiang Kai-shek’s government-in-exile on Taiwan instead of Mao’s de facto People’s Republic of China. It might never have happened if United States President Truman was not under enormous political pressure due to a hysterical campaign of right-wing outrage known as “Who Lost China” born out of Mao’s surprise victory in 1949, the same year that the Cold War grew much hotter when the Soviets successfully tested an atomic bomb, and fears of global communist domination magnified. It probably never would have found the support of so many other nations if the memories of appeasement to Hitler were still not so fresh and compelling.
“It”—of course—was the Korean War, which took place on a wide swath of East Asian geography that remains unresolved to this very day. Historically, the Korean peninsula hosted at various times both competing kingdoms and a unitary state but was always dominated by its more powerful neighbors: China, Russia and Japan. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea, and an especially brutal occupation ensued. Following the Japanese defeat, the peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel into two zones administered in the north by the Soviet Union and in the south by the United States. Cold War politics enabled the creation of two separate states in the two zones, each mutually hostile to one another. In June 1950, the Soviet-backed communist regime in the north invaded the pro-western capitalist state in the south, which spawned a UN resolution to intervene and launched the Korean War. At first South Korea fared poorly, but an American-led multinational coalition eventually pushed communist forces back across the 38th parallel. The fateful decision was then made by the Truman Administration to pursue the enemy and expand full-scale combat operations into North Korea. This brought China into the war and a long bloody struggle to stalemate ensued. Like a weird Twilight Zone loop, more than sixty-six years later a state of war still exists on the peninsula, and Kim Jong-un—the erratic supreme leader of a now nuclear-armed North Korea who regularly taunts the United States—is the grandson of supreme leader Kim Il-sung, whose invasion of the south sparked the conflict!
The origins, history and consequences of the Korea War makes for a fascinating story that—especially given both its scope and its dramatic contemporary echo—has received far less attention in the literature than it deserves. Unfortunately, Michael Pembroke’s recent attempt, Korea: Where the American Century Began, contributes almost nothing worthwhile to the historiography. This is a shame, because Pembroke—a self-styled historian who currently serves as a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia—is a talented writer who seems to have conducted significant research for this work. Alas, he squanders it all on what turns out to be little more than a lengthy philippic that serves as a multilayered condemnation of the United States.
As the subtitle suggests, Pembroke’s bitter polemic is directed not only at US intervention in Korea, but at the subsequent muscular but misguided American foreign policy that has begat a series of often pointless wars at a terrible cost in blood and treasure not only for the United States but also for the allies and adversaries in her orbit. Many—including this reviewer—might be in rough agreement with a good portion of that assessment. But the author sacrifices all credibility with a narrative that repeatedly acts as apologist for Mao, Kim Il-sung and even Stalin! For Pembroke, Truman takes on an outsize stature of a bloodthirsty monster who is not satisfied with the hundreds of thousands he vaporized at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but is willing and even eager to sacrifice millions more in order to achieve his nefarious goal of global domination. Stalin and Mao, on the other hand, simply had their reasons, and were often misunderstood. Left unexplained is why, invested with that motivation and given that the United States in that era had overwhelming strategic nuclear and conventional superiority, Truman and his successors chose not to deploy that capability to pave a dramatic sanguinary road to hegemony.
To my mind, America’s war in Korea was a calamitous misstep, further exacerbated by the escalation that ensued with the crossing of the 38th parallel after achieving the initial objective of driving communist forces from the south. And one could make a good argument that none of the seemingly endless conflicts the United States has engaged in since that time was worth the life of a single American serviceman or woman. Yet, it is a hideous distortion to disfavorably juxtapose America—warts and all—with the endemic mass murder of Stalin’s Soviet Union. History, as I have often noted, is a matter of complexity and nuance, a perspective that seems utterly alien to Michael Pembroke in a book that is neither a history nor an analysis but simply an almost breathless diatribe that reduces characters to caricature and events to a bizarre comic book style of exposing villainy—but in this case all the villains happen to be American.
Because I received this book as part of an early reviewer’s program, I felt an obligation to plod through it to the very last page. In other circumstances, I would have abandoned it far, far earlier. As a reviewer, rarely would I suggest that a work has absolutely no value to a reader, but here I will make an exception: the best-case scenario for this book is for it to go out of print.

Review of: Korea: Where the American Century Began, by Michael Pembroke https://regarp.com/2019/08/28/review-...

[Pei-jean Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling and gripping. This is a well written account of the failures of America to properly handle the conflict in the Korean Peninsula and how those decisions over 60 years ago have led to the continuing troubles that have plagued the region since the armistice was signed. This also provides frightening insight into how the Korean War has shaped American involvement in subsequent foreign conflicts based on the ideology that it’s ‘the American way or the highway.’ Pembroke ends this book with a very true statement: ‘Voltaire said that history should be written as philosophy - as an account of human culture and civilisation, not of kings and conflicts, but as an insight into the nature of mankind. The history of the Korean Peninsula since its division in 1945 is a sad testament to the ignorance and intransigence of some men and women.’ Sadly for the conflict in Korea this will continually ring true.

[Lesley Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to understand how we got to where we are on the Korean Peninsula I absolutely recommend this book, with its thoroughly researched 'surgical strike' on the militaristic and utterly self-interested behaviour of the US there since 1945.

It's written by a NSW Supreme Court judge whose father actually fought alongside the Americans.

Pembroke set out to know more about just one battle, but came to understand a lot more about a history not enough people know or acknowledge - one that has little to do with simplistic caricatures of crazy Kims and US heroes.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

essential reading

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating history. Now I have a better understanding of why North Korea distrusts the United States.

[Viktoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and horrifying reading. Hard to put down. Review coming.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When will they ever learn?"

--Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Reading this book is apt to provoke a demoralizing sense of déjà vu. It describes an (undeclared) war, prosecuted by a U.S. president, justified by false and/or misleading intelligence, and conducted with little knowledge of the history and culture of the "enemy". Not surprisingly, the outcome was exceedingly grim, but this type of scenario didn't stop with Korea. Vietnam and Iraq were to follow.

Strangely, many mainstream one-volume U.S. history books say very little about the Korean War, and many Americans today seem largely ignorant of the subject. Consequently, Michael Pembroke's contribution is welcome. Pembroke, an Australian writer, offers plenty of criticisms of America's role in the Korean War, but they are important and need to be digested. In what follows, I'll provide a brief sketch of his account.

At the end of World War II, separate parts of Korea were occupied by United States and Russian troops. Pembroke reports that the Americans proposed a division at the 38th parallel:

The proposed dividing line was selected on 10 August 1945 by two young colonels from the State Department working late in the evening in the Pentagon. They were given half an hour for the task and a map of 'Asia and Adjacent' areas from a 1942 National Geographic magazine. One of the colonels was Dean Rusk. A few days later President Truman confirmed the selection. [p. 25]

Almost inevitably, the partition evolved into two separate states, and in 1948 two republics were proclaimed, the North headed by Kim Il-sung, and the South by Syngman Rhee. Both were bent on unification by force. There were some minor border skirmishes in 1949, but in 1950, North Korea invaded the South. Within three months, the North Korean forces had been repelled, and the UN Security Council resolution calling for North Korea "to withdraw their armed forces to the 38th parallel" [p. 72] had been satisfied. However, Rhee, Truman, and General Douglas MacArthur saw this as an opportunity to "defeat Communism", and on the basis of a weak and ambiguous UN General Assembly resolution, MacArthur was given permission to lead UN Command forces in an invasion of the North. A full-throated Chinese military response was not anticipated, and when it came, the result was carnage, panic, and withdrawal, accompanied by "razing of villages along our withdrawal route and destruction of food staples" [p. 127].

By the spring of 1951, a military status quo had been achieved, and armistice negotiations began in July of that year. Between that time, and the signing of an armistice some two years later, the United States maintained a deadly bombing campaign in the North, including extensive use of napalm, resulting in "a slaughter such as I [MacArthur] have never heard of in the history of mankind"** [p. 156]. The goal, evidently, was to tilt the terms of the armistice in favor of the United States. Pembroke suggests that the United States' foot-dragging over the repatriation of prisoners was another factor in prolonging the armistice negotiations unnecessarily. To this day, a peace treaty has never been signed.

Pembroke has a lot to say about the United States' historical role in the world, its policies regarding nuclear and biological weapons, its commitment (or lack thereof) to international accords, and its projection of power "from sea to shining sea". Although these themes do not originate with the Korean War, they are aptly illustrated by it. Pembroke also offers some astute suggestions for improving current relations between the U.S. and North Korea. Any such process must include an understanding of how the United States' actions during the Korean War engendered hatred and distrust.

Korea is an important book, smoothly written. Professional historians are far better placed than I am to evaluate its full merits and accuracy. But the author has obviously done a monumental amount of research, and his sources are extensively documented. Those sources are also listed on his website, where in some instances they are easier to use (e.g., references pointing to website URLs contain clickable links). Anyone wanting to fill an informational vacuum about the Korean War and its aftermath would do well to start with this history.
_________________________
**Pembroke misrepresents MacArthur here to some extent. The full quotation says "If you go on indefinitely, you are perpetuating a slaughter such as I have never heard of in the history of mankind" [italics added]. So, technically, MacArthur's statement did not claim the bombing had already produced that result. This is a minor quibble, but it reminds us of a historian's obligation to present quotations in a way that does not distort their meaning. That said, MacArthur's 1951 Congressional testimony, given few lines earlier but not quoted by Pembroke, is entirely congruent with the impression that Pembroke creates. There MacArthur says: "I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach, the last time I was there. After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited."

[Charles Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable read - didn’t realise the author is a former barrister and judge of the NSW Supreme Court.

[John Tannhauser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Pembroke's work is well-researched and refreshingly objective. It is highly informative and, at times whilst reading it, moved me to tears.

The Hangug Saram (Korean people) have been repeatedly downtrodden and humiliated during their extensive history, and continue to suffer the effects of the artificial division imposed upon them by that ugly business known as the Korean War (which hasn't yet ended). Pembroke treats this and other related subject matter - including some pretty nasty Geneva-convention-flouting stuff (although the Yanks are excused since they've never been signatories) - with proper journalistic integrity in Korea: Where the American Century Began. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to gain a clearer insight into the Koreas and their one people.

[Brie · Rating 5 out of 5]

From what I've seen, a lot of Western society (US, Australia, UK, ...) doesn't really remember why there was a Korean War. (People of will remember the series M*A*S*H, but that doesn't really help.)

Turns out that the Korean peninsula got tangled up in what happened in Asia after World War II. Especially how badly the US behaved, making a serious of jingoist actions that meant they ended up in a proxy war with China.

This book explains all that and why there are two Koreas when there should have always been one, why America still really doesn't "get it" about East Asia (or much of the rest of the world, really) and how this event significantly changed their military thinking.

[Joel McMahon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it. The narrative of the history of Korea, originated from the US initiated war on the peninsula, is more often than not a US derived history. Pembroke reveals a different side to the conflict. He expertly outlines the history of Korea - pre, during and post the Korean War, from a non-US view. This book will change your perspective of Korea, and how/why North Korea hold animosity toward the US. ‘Korea’ further highlights the US’s desire for world hegemony and illustrates its methodology in ensuring its dominance throughout Asia.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Took me a few weeks to get through this book but not because it isn’t compelling, masterly written and thought-provoking - it’s all those things. There’s just so much to take in, and a lot of it is horrifying and so pertinent to global events right now. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn about Korea, international relations or who thinks America is a guiding light.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. An insightful account of a problem that has existed all through my lifetime and that I have found fascinating. Unfortunately also a period of history too often ignored or “washed over” by the western history books.

[john O’R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our history as a vassal of Britain and the US

Well written. Bravery on demand for the ‘great’ powers. We will never learn and if we were to do so could never prevail

[Rosita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read but worth it. Learnt a lot on the history of Korea and how North Korea ended it to be what we see now.

[Geoff Walling · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. Now the whole situation with Korea makes perfect sense. You really should read this book, especially given current events.

[Aidan Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty good Liberal history of the Korean War that acknowledges the horrors of US imperialism. Does his best to demonise North Korea at the end like a good neoliberal. Aid from the IMF and World Bank framed as positive developments for Pyongyang.

“They support the regime because the regime supports them. Their rewards and inducements place them in a world apart from ordinary citizens, where they are insulated from economic hardship and the effects of sanctions.” As if this isn’t exactly what Capitalism is.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

fascinating look into US involvement in Korea and the Indo-Pacific before, during, and after the Korean War. while informative, I wish the book dived more into South Korea’s post war recovery that had American influence rather than the denser focus solely on North Korea. overall it was an interesting perspective on a chapter of US history that is largely forgotten in discourse and history textbooks.

[Paul Baillie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Pembroke presents some impelling arguments, but as a prosecution barrister in a court of law. I now want to hear the case for the defence.
Pembroke is a gifted man but one sentence on page 225, a generalization ("racist") statement about "troubled, problem-ridden individuals" made me realize how the modern adjective "elitist" came about. And how mutations like Donald Trump come about.

[Ruibo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lives of solders, POWs, and especially the Korean civilians during the untold story of the Korean War proved one thing: Real history can be far more heart rendering than historical fictions fantasized by modern people, for its cruelty goes beyond what people nowadays can comprehend.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author presents very biased and slanted view of the Korean conflict. Having personally known American solders involvement, I read this. Their actual involvement and experience were very unlike what this author presents..

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

fuck merica

[Ian Eerden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting history of the Korean war

[Peter Sunlit · Rating 5 out of 5]

greak book, loved the Australian perspective, although I didn't realise it was until near the end.

[Kelly D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for Americans

[Cv · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will help you understand the USA and its relentless desire for war. Wars which it will often hide from its own people. It is very much worth reading.