The Korean War in Asia: A Hidden History contains eight essays advancing ideas that the authors first discussed at a November 2013 Academy of Korean Studies conference in South Korea. In her introduction, editor Tessa Morris-Suzuki explains that these essays “take a fresh look at the Korean War by highlighting the human impact of the war on neighboring countries” (p. 2). She identifies four themes that emerge in different groupings of the articles. First, “the Korean War grew directly from earlier conflicts, and must therefore be understood in the wider framework of twentieth-century regional history” (p. 2). Second, the conflict's impact on Korea's neighbors was uneven, totally transforming some towns and localities but leaving other areas unaffected. Third, civilian neighbors, voluntarily or under duress, contributed goods, money, and labor, and often relocated, in a socialist front to help the war effort. Fourth, “multiple confusions about the nature of participation and the identities of the combatants” (p. 4) created misperceptions, misunderstandings, and misremembering about the Korean War. Scholars and those with a casual interest in the conflict will find new information and insights in these essays on largely ignored peripheral dimensions of the Korean War.

Morris-Suzuki, in the opening essay titled “A Fire on the Other Shore? Japan and the Korean War Order,” describes in detail the “semiconcealed” and often “forgotten … fact that Japan was centrally, actively, and indeed militarily engaged” (p. 8) in the Korean War. Not only did the Japanese produce munitions, but the US military and private firms employed engineers and countless support workers in Japan. That some died on sunken minesweepers and the battlefield ignited popular protests and intensified political divisions in Japan. Mo Tian's “The Korean War and Manchuria: Economic, Social, and Human Effects” explains China's use of “mass mobilization and collectivism” (p. 49) to expand war-related production in that region, relocating industrial facilities northward to escape anticipated US bombing. Li Narangoa's “From One Divided Country to Another: The Korean War in Mongolia” emphasizes that the Mongolian People's Republic sent only food and animals to North Korea, while “Inner Mongols not only made donations, but also participated in combat …” (p. 56). In “Victory with Minimum Effort: How Nationalist China ‘Won’ the Korean War,” Catherine Churchman shows how the Republic of China's encouragement of anti-communist prisoners of war to refuse repatriation prolonged the Korean War, allowing China to secure US protection and its legitimacy at the United Nations.

Uniting the last four articles is an analytical focus on the impact of the Korean War on individuals rather than areas. In “The Other Legacy of the Korean War: Okinawa and the Fear of World War III,” Pedro Iacobelli discusses how the US military buildup on the island brought “radical changes” (p. 114) and created enormous emotional anxiety for residents who were the potential target for a communist attack. To reveal “the backroads of war” (p. 130), Morris-Suzuki's “A War across Borders: The Strange Journey of Prisoner No. 600,001” traces the experiences of Matsushita Kazutoshi, who served in the Japanese, Nationalist, and Chinese Communist armies before he became one of three Japanese prisoners of war. Churchman next describes how the US military trained roughly four hundred Chinese prisoners of war for spying operations in North Korea in “The Life and Death of Line-Crossers: The Secret Chinese Agents of UNPIK [United Nations Partisan Infantry Korea].” Until repatriation to Taiwan, the few who escaped death or capture “felt trapped, used, and helpless” (p. 164). Finally, in “The United States, Japan, and the Undercover War in Korea,” Morris-Suzuki covers the covert intelligence and counterintelligence operations of Jack Y. Canon's Z Unit, classified until recently, exposing not only collaboration with former Japanese wartime leaders but also “its recklessness and penchant for melodrama” (p. 189).

All of the essays in this anthology are well written. Moreover, each relies upon solid research, generously citing sources in archival collections located in China, Japan (including Okinawa), and Mongolia, as well as the United States. Many of the authors also make good use of newspaper articles, interviews, and non-English-language secondary sources. Five photographs, two tables, and one map are valuable additions. However, Wonsan is not located on North Korea's “west” coast and the 38th parallel is not the current line dividing the peninsula. Along with interesting references, such as Owen Lattimore's labeling of Manchuria as “the cradle of conflict” (p. 132), important points of emphasis include how a large majority of the Chinese People's Volunteers had served in the Nationalist army. Morris-Suzuki makes a persuasive argument against viewing the Korean War as the result of the collision between the communist and noncommunist blocs because “this static, crystalline vision makes much of the past invisible” (p. 132). Instead, she accurately writes in her epilogue that this anthology shows how, despite “diverse memories of the war” in China, Japan, Taiwan, and Mongolia, “all of these countries were involved in the conflict in ways that left a lasting imprint on national and local society and politics” (p. 196).