Korea's Grievous War presents a chilling account of violence directed primarily by a government against its own people. It considers how best to understand, research, and remember such acts. Using documentary and interview investigation Su-kyoung Hwang investigates various aspects of the violence that the Republic of Korea (ROK) state, with support from the United States, inflicted upon Koreans over the years leading up to and into the Korean War. She states her purpose as seeking to “understand the rational and legacy of anti-communist violence by treating it as a distant phenomenon that deserves attention in its own right.” While recognizing violence caused by the communists, Hwang contends that the “anti-communist violence resulted in a disproportionately high level of civilian deaths during the conflict” (p. 2).

Hwang's efforts cover a wide range of violence from a variety of perspectives. Her discussions suggest a plurality of responsibility, starting with that of the ROK government and Korean rebels, but also that of the US military. Her primary focus is the 1948 Cheju-do incident that was initiated in the final months of the US occupation of southern Korea and continued into the ROK's First Republic under Syngman Rhee. US participation in this tragic history included its arming the Korean soldiers, developing strategy, and allocating personnel to root out the leftist elements, along with its general overseeing of the entire operation (p. 47). In October 1948, the newly inaugurated ROK government issued a set of “emergency laws” that extended the death penalty formally to the primary leaders of the rebellion, but also informally to those suspected of supporting their efforts (chap. 2).

Hwang's “grievous war” intensified as the Korean peninsula approached civil war and the Rhee regime directed a mass slaughter against Koreans suspected of harboring communist sentiments. This slaughter continued into late 1950 as the North and South militaries swapped control over territory across the peninsula. Upon occupying (or reoccupying) territory, both sides conducted campaigns to root out “enemy collaborators” that emerged under enemy occupation. Her treatment includes broad summaries of the mass killings themselves, but also individual cases of Koreans engulfed by the killings. The police station to which a Mr. Kim was summoned for questioning served as a temporary detour to his makeshift execution ground where he, along with others, was shot and buried in the grave he himself had just dug. The killing continued with the aerial bombings conducted by the US Air Force during the course of the Korean War. These operations were justified as the “lesser evil” to the alternative—communist occupation. Any attempts to report the civilian suffering wrought by the bombings were summarily disqualified as “communist propaganda” (pp. 130–31).

Psychological violence complements the physical violence introduced throughout this volume. Fear, for example, prevented Mrs. Kim from collecting her husband's body for proper burial until a full decade after his death, after Rhee's 1960 ouster provided her (albeit briefly) a more understanding political situation. This delay prevented many family members from being able to identify their loved ones among the more than 700 bodies entombed in this mass grave (p. 111). A more sustained atmosphere for public grieving opened in the late 1980s with the successes of that era's democratization movement. Decades later, however, Hwang's research was frustrated by a lingering reluctance by potential informants who remained reluctant to talk openly of this dark period. An additional fear manifested from the threat of US aerial bombing of towns and villages and the firing on civilians attempting to move to safer ground (chap. 5).

The question of responsibility resonates through each chapter. Though it clearly falls on the shoulders of Korean militaries, Hwang also presents a strong case of both indirect and direct US culpability in its tacit and active support of these operations, and its bombing of villages and strafing of civilians. She further cites Japanese responsibility in its training of the Korean National Police that “continued to use colonial methods of third-degree interrogation, torture, and search without authorization” (p. 12). Responsibility as described in a shared or collective manner appears appropriate. However, the question remains as to how to move from here in convincing involved states to acknowledge their responsibility, a critical first step toward true closure.

Korea's Grievous War makes an important contribution to a growing body of literature on the violence that occurred during the delicate period that separated World War II and the Korean War. While the work requires greater integration of the variety of violence treated and tighter editing, its contents act as a bridge connecting the devastating death and destruction brought on by the dregs of the Second World War that five years later brought total war to the Korean peninsula. Combined with theoretical discussions on violence itself (Arendt's On Violence), discussions on postwar European violence, and studies on reconciliation, this work serves as an important supplementary text for a seminar on genocide in general or in Northeast Asia in particular.