[Book Review]: 'The Hidden History of the Korean War' by I.F. Stone
	                                 Jay Hauben  
                                                                                
The Hidden History of the Korean War
                                                                                
by I. F. Stone, 364 pages. 
                                                                                
Monthly Review Press. 1952, 1970.

The controversial book, The Hidden History of the Korean War by I. F. 
Stone was originally published in 1952 during the Korean War (1950-1953) 
and republished in 1970 during the Vietnam War (1960-1975). It raised 
questions about the origin of the Korean War, made a case that the United 
States government manipulated the United Nations, and gave evidence that 
the U.S. military and South Korean oligarchy dragged out the war by 
sabotaging the peace talks.

Publishing such a book in the U.S. during the time of McCarthyism, while 
the war was still continuing was an act of journalistic courage. Forty 
years later, declassified U.S., Soviet and People's Republic of China 
documents both confirmed some and corrected some of Stone's story.

Until his death in 1989, Stone was an experienced and respected, 
independent, left-wing journalist and iconoclast. This book-length feat of 
journalism, with over 600 citations for his quotes and materials, is a 
testament to Stone's search for a way to strengthen his readers to think 
for themselves, rather than be overwhelmed by official stories and war 
propaganda.

The standard telling was that the Korean War was an unprovoked aggression 
by the North Koreans beginning on June 25, 1950, undertaken at the behest 
of the Soviet Union to extend the Soviet sphere of influence to the whole 
of Korea, completely surprising the South Koreans, the U.S., and the U.N.

But was it a surprise? Could an attack by 70,000 men using at least 70 
tanks launched simultaneously at four different points have been a 
surprise?

Stone gathers contemporary reports from South Korean, U.S. and U.N. 
sources documenting what was known before June 25. The head of the U.S. 
CIA, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenloetter, is reported to have said on the 
record, "that American intelligence was aware that 'conditions existed in 
Korea that could have meant an invasion this week or next.'" (p. 2) Stone 
writes that "America's leading military commentator, Hanson Baldwin of the 
New York Times, a trusted confidant of the Pentagon, reported that they 
[U.S. military documents] showed 'a marked buildup by the North Korean 
People's Army along the 38th Parallel beginning in the early days of 
June.'" (p. 4)

How and why did U.S. President Truman so quickly decide by June 27 to 
commit the U.S. military to battle in South Korea? Stone makes a strong 
case that there were those in the U.S. government and military who saw a 
war in Korea and the resulting instability in East Asia as in the U.S. 
national interest. Stone presents the ideas and actions of them, including 
John Foster Dulles, General Douglas MacArthur, President Syngman Rhee and 
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which appear to amount to a willingness to 
see the June 25 military action by North Korea as another Pearl Harbor in 
order to "commit the United States more strongly against Communism in the 
Far East." (p. 21). Their reasoning may have been, Stone thought, the 
sooner a war with China and/or Russia the better before both become 
stronger. President Truman removed Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, 
according to Stone's account, because Johnson had been selling this 
doctrine of preventive war. (p. 93)

Stone shows that Truman committed the U. S. military to the war in Korea, 
then went to the U.N. for sanctions against North Korea. "It was neither 
honorable nor wise," Stone argues, "for the U.N. under pressure from an 
interested great power to condemn a country for aggression without 
investigation and without hearings its side of the case." (p. 50) But that 
is what the U. S. insisted should happen using, Stone argues, distorted 
reports to rush its case.

Then when the war came to a stalemate at the 38th Parallel, Stone makes a 
strong case that U.S. Army headquarters provoked or created incidents to 
derail the ceasefire negotiations. When the North Koreans and Chinese had 
ceded on Nov. 4, 1952 to the three demands of the U.N. side, the U. S. 
military spread a story that "The Communists had brutally murdered 5,500 
American prisoners." The talks were being dragged out, the U.S. military 
argued, because "The communists don't want to have to answer questions 
about what happened to their prisoners" and they are lower than 
"barbarians." (pp. 324-25) At no time after these reports were these 
"atrocities" reported again or documented. But hope of a ceasefire 
subsided.

Stone takes the story in time only a little beyond the dismissal of 
MacArthur on April 11, 1951. He quotes press reports as late as January 
1952 that "there still could be American bombing and naval blockade of Red 
China if Korean talks fail."(1)

The evidence which Stone presents is solid but circumstantial. What else 
could it be, with the official documents still unavailable? In the 1960s, 
the Rand Corporation, a major think tank originally funded by the U.S. Air 
Force, conducted studies with additional information and according to one 
reviewer came to "almost identical conclusions" as Stone.(2)

Stone's telling of the history of the Korean War, emphasizing the 
opportunistic response by the forces in the U.S. advocating rollback and 
also downplaying the role of the Soviet Union challenged the dominant 
assumption that this was Stalin's war. "Until the release of Western 
documents in the 1970s, prompted a new wave of literature on the war, his 
remained a minority view."(3)

Then in the 1990s, documents from the former Soviet archives became 
available, as did telegrams and other sources from the PRC archives. 
Scholars examining these documents and fitting the pieces together were 
able to make the case that Kim Il-sung had sought and eventually received 
Soviet support for a military effort to unify Korea. Stone had been wrong 
to suspect that General MacArthur and John Foster Dulles somehow colluded 
in the start of the Korean War.

But Stone did a service by documenting the role of sectors of U.S. 
policymakers looking for an opportunity to push the USSR and the PRC back 
from Northeast Asia. Bruce Cummings studied the detailed policy debate in 
the U.S. which led to the policy of active containment. Cumings' book, The 
Origins of the Korean War, Volume II gives substance to the internal fight 
between supporters of rollback and those who supported containment, which 
for Stone was journalistic speculation.

In 1952 when it was published, The Hidden History of the Korean War met 
with almost a complete press blackout and boycott. But that included no 
rebuttals or answers from official U.S. sources. There was a republication 
in 1970 and the book has been translated at least into Spanish, Italian, 
and Japanese. Some chapters also appeared in French. Used copies are still 
available, especially from online booksellers.

I. F. Stone's case is thought provoking and helpful, especially when 
tensions are being stirred up again on the Korean Peninsula, and 
manipulated wars are still in style. Perhaps however journalism like that 
of Stone's and lessons from the first Korean War are making a second 
Korean War less likely.


1. Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17, 1952

2. Stephen E. Ambrose, Professor of Maritime History at the Naval College 
in the Baltimore Sun

3. Kathryn Weathersby, "The Soviet Role in the Korean War: The State of 
Historical Knowledge," in The Korean War in World History, edited by 
William Stueck, University Press of Kentucky, 2004, page 63.

4. Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Volume II: The Roaring of 
the Cataract 1947-1950, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990

This article first appeared in OhmyNews on Feb.14, 2007