Ted H. Kim's Weblog

Tuesday October 12, 2004

In Mortal Combat

Next up in the backlog of military history was In Mortal Combat by John Toland. This book is about the Korean War. Now as you probably guess from my name, I am of Korean descent. So there was a certain amount of curiosity about the book just based on my heritage and the stories I have heard from my family.

In the United States, the Korean War has a strange place in the public consciousness as the "Forgotten War" (another book has that title). It does not refer to the generally lamentable state of history education in this country (see an episode of "Jaywalk" on the Tonight show). Rather it refers to a more willful desire to forget the disillusionment that the Korean War brought. Coming only five years after the victories of WWII, it brought home to Americans through their own sacrifice of how grim the "Cold War" struggle might be. Further, it would usher in the shades of ambiguity and doubt which would cling to the Cold War years. In the Korean War, there were issues of being a limited conflict, an undeclared war, shifting goals, press censorship, an unresolved outcome and the persistent shadow of atomic and global escalation with the Soviets. In retrospect, there was foreshadowing of many elements of Vietnam.

In Mortal Combat is a book which relates many personal stories about the Korean War. Passages in book follow the experiences of front line soldiers, commanders, POWs, civilians in the battle zone, spies, political leaders and armistice negotiators. The author has done a great job of capturing the "you are there" feel. He has also done a remarkable job at also relating the story of the North Korean and Chinese participants, given the current political realities. In many places, the stories of Chinese of various levels and defecting North Koreans is related. One comes away with an impression of how brutal and bloody the struggle was and also how unprepared the United States was for this new type of Cold War conflict.

Where the book does not do as well is in the higher level description of the military campaigns. There is not much information about orders of battles and the more detailed quantitative analysis on casualties, logistics and so forth. The maps are poor. First, there aren't enough of them, and they are not very useful to following the campaigns. While clearly drawn, the attack arrows often obscure important geographical objectives. Unit designations and organizational boundaries are often missing.

The book does reveal some interesting information. Mao is portrayed as having a fairly direct role in directing the conflict. The exploits of Eugene Clark are also amazing. But the book is weak on analysis and doesn't really make much of an attempt to resolve any of the controversies of the war (e.g. the Communist claim of US germ warfare). Rather, it only seems to bring up the views from the participants of both sides (who naturally disagree about these issues).

Overall, I would recommend it for the personal stories it relates. But I would not treat it as a definitive military history. As for games, I don't have a definitive recommendation. But reading this book has encouraged me to take a look at The Korean War by Victory Games, which has been sitting in my game collection for quite some time.

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(2004-10-12 12:05:00.0) Permalink