America's occupation and liberation of southern Korea from Japanese rule has usually been examined as an example of Cold War diplomacy in which civilian and military officials working for the US government facilitated the rise to power of Koreas' anticommunist far right as they confronted the Soviet occupation of northern Korea. Historians treat this history as a case study of US-Korea bilateral relations and rarely study its broader contexts. By contrast, this article explores the history of Americas' occupation of southern Korea in the context of comparative and connected histories, examining in particular the linked themes of liberation and decolonization. The narrative interrogates how Korea's independence from Japan in 1945 was similar to, or different from, big power diplomacy in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and how the United States and other big powers' responses to World War II in Asia impacted the subsequent history of empire and decolonization. It outlines the ways in which events in Korea were connected to the wider history of the American empire in Asia, and explores American military operations in World War II in colonial Southeast Asia as foreshadowing US occupation policy in Korea. This methodology helps us to rethink existing chronologies and to connect the world before and after 1945, while also better contextualizing Korean history, at perilous crossroads in 1945.

Monica Kim has written the first major re-interpretation of the Korean War in two generations of scholarship, a rare and considerable historiographical accomplishment, particularly for a first book. Eschewing the multiple military crossings of the 38th parallel as the major interpretative frame for the conflict, Kim argues that the longer-term trajectories and legacies of the Japanese empire and the American government's transpacific imperial goals are the more important frames for understanding the war. She thereby supplants the traditional history of Korea's hot war with a new history of the peninsula's decolonization, a welcome re-assessment of the field. The Korean conflict, Kim argues, began an era of wars of intervention fought over claims for humanity, the start of a period when wars established nation-states. Sovereignty and recognition are two of the major themes of this book, which takes as its main subject the history of prisoners of war (POWs) in camps located below, along, and north of the 38th parallel. Kim is particularly interested in how the history of POWs intersect with, and illuminates, the practices of America's liberal empire, but also how they are tied to other mid-twentieth-century political projects: the right-wing dictatorship of Rhee; the politics of neutralism practiced by India; and North Korea's own

This article reviews the 2014 book co-edited by Donald W. Boose, Jr. and James I. Matray, The Ashgate Research Companion to the Korean War. The essay evaluates the book in relation to the historiography of the Korean conflict, outlines areas where future research needs to be carried out, reflects on methodological issues related to the field of military history, and, with reference to Michael Hunt and Steven Levine's book, Arc of Empire, discusses the Korean War as part of broader histories of empire.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen's book is part of the University of North Carolina Press's “New Cold War History” series, which has produced a number of distinguished monographs on the Vietnam War. This volume is the first in the series to focus on the North Vietnamese perspective on the conflict, particularly the wartime strategy of Le Duan, who assumed the leadership of the Vietnam Workers' Party in 1959. Nguyen has incorporated into her narrative interviews with Vietnamese officials and primary source materials in Vietnamese, especially from the Communist Party and the ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs. While many significant documents remain inaccessible to researchers, her excellent work adds substantially to our understanding of the strategic objectives of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) during the war, and to the linkages between the domestic and foreign policy goals of the regime prior to 1973. According to Nguyen, Le Duan's role in the southern insurgency during the First Indochina War (1945–1954) was formative in shaping his longer term policies toward the southern revolution. As the leader of the Central Office of South Vietnam, Le Duan adopted aggressive military policies, but these were significantly tempered by the Vietminh victory at Dien Bien Phu, the withdrawal of French forces from Vietnam, and the northern policy of adhering to the 1954 Geneva Accords. The “North-firsters,” including Ho Chi Minh, Pham Van Dong, and Vo Nguyen Giap, wanted to strengthen the northern economy as a precedent for reunification, while the “South-firsters,” led by Le Duan, pressed for revolutionary war in the south and Ngo Dinh Diem's overthrow. Nguyen describes Le Duan's political ascendance in Hanoi in the latter 1950s as “the greatest usurpation of power in the annals of the Vietnamese Communist Party” (p. 47). Working with Le Duc Tho, Le Duan moved the Politburo toward more aggressive policies vis-à-vis the South, reflected in the adoption of Resolution 15 in 1959, which called for a dual strategy of political struggle and military force.

Tens of thousands of US soldiers and untold millions of Koreans died in this war the first major arena of the East-West conflict. This concise international history of the war offers a new approach to its understanding, tracing its origins and dynamics to the interplay between modern Korean history and twentieth century world history. The narrative also uniquely examines the social history of the conflict, and includes material on the newly racially integrated US fighting forces, war and disease, women and war and life in the Prisoner of War camps. While most surveys stop at 1953, with the signing of the armistice, Steven Hugh Lee carries the story through to the Geneva Conference in the spring of 1954 the last major international effort before recent years to negotiate a permanent peace for the Korean peninsula.

Qiang Zhai. China and the Vietnam Wars 1950–1975. (The New Cold War History.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2000. Pp. xii, 304. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95 Zhai Qiang. China and the Vietnam Wars 1950–1975. (The New Cold War History.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2000. Pp. xii, 304. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95. Steven Hugh Lee Steven Hugh Lee University of British Columbia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 106, Issue 4, October 2001, Pages 1336–1337, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/106.4.1336 Published: 01 October 2001

Since December 1997, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the United States have met in a series of talks aimed at promoting peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in the region. According to a November 1998 U.S. Department of Defense report, the discussions have created a “diplomatic venue for reducing tensions and ultimately replacing the Armistice Agreement with a permanent peace settlement.”1 Amidst the tragic human suffering which has occurred in North Korea, there have been some encouraging developments on the peninsula. The 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea placed international controls on North Korea’s atomic energy program and cautiously anticipated the normalization of U.S.-DPRK relations. Since assuming power in early 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has vigorously pursued a policy of engagement with P’yo¨ngyang, known as the “sunshine policy.” Over the past decade, North Korea has also reoriented its foreign policy. In the early 1990s, the regime’s social and economic crisis led to a rethinking of its autarkic economic system. By early 1994, the state had created new free trade zones and relatively open foreign investment laws.2 By complying with the Agreed Framework, the DPRK has also shown a willingness to work with the international community on sensitive issues affecting its internal sovereignty and ability to project power beyond its borders.