The Korean War

                                      The Korean War

Ch.1

Subtopic: The suspension of the war

Who is Bruce Cummings?

Bruce Cumings is an American academic historian and author. He is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the chair of the history department at the University of Chicago.

Born: September 5, 1943 (age 69) Education: Columbia University, Denison University

Books

 

North Korea

 

The critical issue was freedom of choice in regard to repatriation. North Korean Pows and chinese POWs did not want to return to communist control. Meanwhile South Korea refused to sign any armistice that would keep Korea divided.

"North Koreans had abused many Americans depriving them of food,sleep and subject many to political thought reform" (32).  

North Koreans were trying to brainwash Americans. At first they were trying to overthrow Americans in their country.
 

"In 1953 the communist side agreed to place POWs who refused repatriation under the control of the Neutral Nations' Supervisory Commission for three months" (33).   

 This was one of the way to change communist minds about repatriation. Americans believed in individual rights and human dignity. However, communist was against that.

"The fighting could have come to an end much earlier, but both Moscow and Washington had interests in keeping it going since Korea no longer threatened to erupt into general war" (34).
 

The war lasted so long because United States of America wanted to showed the world their high power weapons.

"Countries involved in the Three-year conflict suffered a total of more than 4 million casualties of which at least 2 million were civilians- a higher percentage than in World War II or vietnam"(35).

Why was this war a collective shrug of the shoulders?

Many Americans believed this was not a war because in Iowa court ruled that there had been no state of war in korea, since congress never declared one to exist. The tragedy was that the war solved nothing. Only a cease-fire held the peace.