The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [2]
I have sought to record here the ways in which the two halves of this ancient and homogeneous people, thoughtlessly divided at the end of World War II by the great powers, have grappled with each other for advantage and supremacy in the past three decades, and how they have dealt with the powerful forces all around them. The course of their struggle, like those that enveloped the Korean peninsula for many centuries past, has been deeply affected by actions of the surrounding powers-China, Japan, and Russia. Since World War II and especially since the Korean War, in which nearly 1,500,000 Americans served and 36,000 Americans were killed, the United States has played a major role. Korea is the only country in the world where the interests and security concerns of these four powers directly intersect. Although the major powers have had a large impact on Korea's fate, the hardy, gutsy, independent-minded Koreans on both sides of the DMZ have demanded and won for themselves important roles. Beginning with the North-South summit meeting of June 2000, they have begun to take their future into their own hands as never before.
Because of its turbulent history, its strategic location, and its enduring state of tension, Korea has often flitted across the world's newspaper headlines and television screens in the past thirty years, only to disappear from view when the immediate dangers seemed to pass. The episodic nature of the world's attention means that most people in most countries have little idea how the recurrent Korea crises developed or what their significance has been. Whether acts of war, terrorism or heroism, showdowns over nuclear weapons, the sudden deaths of Korean leaders, the starvation of the people of the North, or the turn toward peaceful engagement, the news from and about Korea has been marked by a remarkable absence of historical context, background, or basis for understanding.
Upon retiring from daily journalism in 1993, I set out to remedy this omission by producing a history of the North-South conflict and conciliation in contemporary Korea, with special attention to the roles of the outside powers. It seemed presumptuous for an American to undertake this task, but I realized I had advantages not available to most others. I was a witness to some of the events described here during my 1972-75 tenure as Northeast Asia correspondent for the Washington Post and lived through other major events in Washington or in nearly yearly trips to Korea as the newspaper's diplomatic correspondent in the seventeen years thereafter. I have met all of South Korea's presidents, except its founding president, Syngman Rhee, and most of the other senior political leaders of that country. Starting in the mid-1980s I met North Korea's foreign minister or his senior deputy almost every year during their annual trips to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. These and other contacts led to my visits to North Korea in 1991 and 1995. I have been fortunate to have had many associations with present and former officials of the governments in Washington, Beijing, Moscow, and Tokyo, who provided unusual access to international aspects of the story.
The original edition of this book was four years in the making, nearly equally divided between research and writing, during which I examined the past while keeping up with fast-paced current events. The sponsorship of Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, which appointed me journalist-in-residence upon my retirement from the Washington Post and grants from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Korea Foundation made it possible for me to concentrate almost full time on this effort in 1993-97 and to travel extensively to interview hundreds of participants in the events described here. After the dramatic events of 1998-2000 I decided