The Korean War Revisited
Kathryn Weathersby details new findings about the Korean War.
Kathryn Weathersby details new findings about the Korean War.
The end of the Cold War has not done much to reduce the long-simmering hostility between North and South Korea, but it has indirectly shed a great deal of light on the brutal war they fought nearly 50 years ago--and on the behavior of North Korea's leaders during the conflict-ridden years since.
As long as the Soviet Union existed, Moscow and its allies in the war effort, North Korea and China, maintained a united front of secrecy about the conflict, closely adhering to their early declarations about its causes and origins. Over the years, historians learned much about the South Korean-United Nations side of the war, but some of the most basic questions about the conflict remained unanswerable. Now, with the post-Cold War opening of important archives in the former Soviet Union and China, scholars are dramatically rewriting the history of the war.