Korea: Where the American Century Began - Softcover

Michael Pembroke

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1743793936 ISBN 13: 9781743793930

Publisher: Hardie Grant Books, 2018

Synopsis

Perceptive and compelling often heart-rending, sometimes downright terrifying... The lessons are all too pertinent in today s toxic political climate, with Korea once again a centrepiece and victim. - Noam Chomsky

This is a very important book, an eye-opening one, and a wise one. ... beautifully written...the phrase 'as gripping as a thriller,' really applies... No-one with an interest in recent history and current affairs should fail to read it. - AC Grayling

Korea: Where the American Century Began is a timely new account of the role of the US in the Korean War and its responsibility for the current impasse on the Korean peninsula. It provides the history and the context that explains US involvement; why there has been no peace treaty, no unification, and why we now live with the threat of nuclear war in Northeast Asia. Few people understand the real failures of the Korean War or that the United States was the first to abrogate the armistice. As President Trump threatens to totally destroy' North Korea, this book tells the tale that fires Pyongyang s indignation from the disastrous decision to invade North Korea; to the longest retreat in American military history; to the napalm, the nuclear threats, the biological warfare and the ghastly treatment of POWs in camps run by the US Army. Korea examines Washington s role from 1945 to the present in the creation and worsening of relations how hubris, overreach and militarism have dominated policy, and how, in pursuit of regional hegemony in Northeast Asia, the United States has made a bad situation worse.

About this title

Review:

[This] book should become compulsory material for anyone who wonders how the situation on the Korean peninsula deteriorated to the point it has today. [It] explains why Kim Jong-un and his military commanders are so determined to acquire a credible nuclear deterrent. [The] description of the punitive and inhumane air assault north of the 38th parallel from 1951 to 1953 is appalling and compelling. I would, if I had the power, make it compulsory reading for all our national politicians. --Richard Broinowski, former Australian Ambassador to South Korea

North Korea is an impossible country to understand, unless you start by reading a book like this. It movingly describes the inhumanity of US military policy during the Korean War ¬ three years of carpet bombing, the use of napalm, calls for nuclear evisceration and biological warfare No book could be more timely or with warnings more necessary to heed, if history is not to be repeated. --Geoffrey Robertson QC, author of Crimes Against Humanity

Started to read and just could not stop ¬ Maddening, painful. Perceptive and compelling ¬ often heart-rending, sometimes downright terrifying ¬ this richly informed study amply establishes its thesis that the permanent phenomenon¹ of American global militarism has its origin in the Korean conflict. The incisive review of the historical record reveals as well how judicious statesmanship and even a dose of good common sense could have spared the people of Korea the horrors they have endured since the end of World War II and the constant threat of even worse. The lessons are all too pertinent in today¹s toxic political climate, with Korea once again a centerpiece and victim. --Noam Chomsky

About the Author:

Michael Pembroke is a writer, historian, naturalist and the author of the acclaimed historical biography Arthur Phillip - Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy (2013). He was educated at the Universities of Sydney and Cambridge, is the son and the father of army officers, and has lived and travelled extensively throughout the world, including in East Asia. His father, an infantry platoon commander during the Korean War, was awarded the Military Cross for his role in a battle described as 'one of the finest battalion attacks in British history'. The research for this book has taken Pembroke to Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, Washington DC, Princeton and Cambridge. In 2016, he travelled through North Korea from the Yalu River to the Demilitarised Zone. He has been a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales since 2010.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1743793936
• ISBN 13: 9781743793930
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368