In this book, the historian Sheila Jager argues that the Korean War, on-going since the division of the Korean peninsula in the 1940s, has not yet ended. The war “evolved from a civil war in 1948–49 to an international war from June 1950 to 1953, to a global cold war after 1953” (p. 5). The book starts from the Great Power involvement on the Korean peninsula during the Second World War, putting the Korean issue in a longer historical perspective. The emphasis on the evolution of the war through time is the first theme of the book. The author divides the history into the hot war (1945–53), the Cold War (1954–66), the local war (1967–89) and after the Cold War (1990–2011). It offers a new perspective on the unending Korean competition and conflict and thus expands the scope of the Korean War studies.
The second theme is “the continuous struggle between North and South Korea for the mantle of Korean legitimacy” (p. 5). From the end of the Korean War to the early 1960s, North Korea was more advanced in economic development than South Korea. Thus, Kim Il-sung attempted to achieve Korean unification and regime legitimacy through peaceful means. Due to the changes in international situation, the Korean War entered a new phase from late 1960s to late 1980s. The two Koreas enhanced their local struggle. “The localized confrontations amounted to a competition – economic, military, and psychological – between the two systems and their competing visions of modern Korea” (p. 355). In Jager's view, “few people could deny that North Korea had lost its legitimacy war with the South” by the 1990s. Putting the struggle for legitimacy in a longer historical perspective, Jager explores “how the fraternal conflict has influenced, and continues to influence, East Asia and the world” (p. 6). She believes that a resolution to the Korean conflict must be based on a better understanding of this history.
As a Chinese historian who has studied the Korean War for over two decades, I find that Brothers at War offers a new and interesting perspective for the study of the war. It will be welcomed by Chinese Cold War scholars and is useful for graduate courses on the Korean War and the Cold War in Asia. But I feel that the book is less satisfactory on numerous grounds.
First, Jager points out some of the positive outcomes of China's involvement in the Korean War, including Chinese leaders' perception of China's standing up to US aggression and thus restoring China's status in the world of nations, and the consolidation of Mao Zedong's power and reputation domestically. But she neglects the negative impact of the war on Chinese society, such as the ensuing confrontations and hostilities between China and the US for over two decades, the deterioration of China's international environment, China's complete dependency on the Soviet Union's economic aid, and the Chinese Communist Party's effort to strengthen domestic political control after the outbreak of the Korean War.
Second, how should the international community help to resolve the thorny issue on the Korean peninsula? In Jager's view, the key lies in Beijing (pp. 469, 478). But history proves this wrong. As the book points out that the root cause of the conflict and confrontation on the Korean peninsula is the competition and confrontation of the two Koreas. A Chinese proverb goes, “Whoever ties the bell around the tiger's neck must untie it”: the resolution lies in Pyongyang and Seoul, not in Beijing.
Third, in writing the history of the Korean conflict in the last 30 years, Jager relies primarily on a variety of news reporting, on-line commentaries and secondary literature. Without the support of original documentation, this part of the study tends to be superficial and on shakier grounds. For instance, Jager mentions the “Northeast Asia Project,” asserting that its aim was “to pave the way for the economic intervention and integration of North Korea” (p. 468). This assertion is far-fetched since it is based on politically oriented South Korean newspapers and journals. True, in February 2002, the Frontier History Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences started a state-level research project on the history and current situation of China's Northeast frontier – the “Northeast Project,” – not the “Northeast Asia Project.” But this is a purely academic research project.
Notwithstanding these quibbles, Jager has produced an excellent, lucid and original contribution to the literature on the Korean peninsula based on extensive research in international archives and reference to a vast body of secondary literature. It is a must read for all who are interested in the topic.
