SFist: Opening Night Party at YBCA for transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix

KWillets

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:49:00 -0800

I confess I'm in the middle of reading a history of the war, so don't take my verbal diarrhea too seriously. However much of Korean contemporary and even "pop" culture consists of loyalties and disloyalties to different groups and their versions of history, so I suppose it's relevant in that sense.

jhatch

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:57:30 -0800

No worries, discussion is interesting! That's fascinating if what you say is true; I was simply repeating my memory from a general history of the US I read once upon a time, and what you said seemed to conflict with that. Mostly, I just wanted to clarify the sense of the line you took issue with, since it wasn't meant to be taken quite so literally. Cheers!

KWillets

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:29:05 -0800

Kim Il Sung spent his pre-dictator career in the USSR, moved into NK with the Soviet occupation, and sought Stalin's permission before invading the South in the summer of 1950. I believe it was winter before the PRC committed forces, after Stalin said no and told Kim to move back to Manchuria. US forces had been in the South since WWII, filling in for the Japanese who were previously occupying the country. I'm sorry to be nitpicky, but historical revisionism is so strong in Korea right now that many native Koreans aren't educated to know these facts, with over half of recent high school graduates not even knowing who started the war. The Korean teacher's union is unfortunately controlled by NK, from all appearances.

jhatch

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:51:36 -0800

@KWillets: Your first sentence is technically correct. However: 1) When North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, the North Korean Army was backed by the PRC, not the USSR. 2) In response to this invasion by North Korea, the US (and eventually, UN forces) occupied South Korea and invaded North Korea within months. Then, as you probably know, the PRC intervened on behalf of North Korea, and the war stalemated for 3+ years before all four sides called it off. While it's true that the US and US-led forces occupied allied South Korea, and invaded enemy North Korea, the sentence "shared invader" alludes to this sense of the US as an occupying foreign power, a situation that both Korea and Vietnam experienced.

KWillets

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:25:05 -0800

Korea was not invaded by the United States. In fact one major element contributing to North Korea and Stalin's decision to invade the South was the US's seeming disinterest in occupying or defending it.