Book recommendation:
Patriots, Traitors and Empires - Korea’s Struggle for Freedom, by Stephen Gowans
For better or worse I don’t remember hearing much about anything in school past the US civil war, and I even took an optional class specifically about war lol. Nothing about Korea, nothing about the US colonization of the Philippines, just extremely basic stuff.
In my experience, the only things that were significantly covered past that were: The Holocaust (I read maybe near 10 books on the subject, far more than on any other topic), a very white-washed version of the civil rights movement where we really only talked vaguely about segregation and MLK Jr., and 9/11.
In school I basically didn’t get told america ever did wrong anywhere to anyone also basically learned nothing about the Korean war or any other war post ww2 and even that era I didn’t learn about the fire bombings and such until I was much older
we literally didn’t even cover it in school. nothing past WWII (which america won singlehandedly natch) was ever taught until college
why yes I did grow up in the southern U.S.
I think 9th year briefly touched on it, a century ago when I was in that class. I think one of my Soc classes in college maybe touched on it. But yes, 50s, yes, South USA. 🤣
just to make it a little worse, i am in my early 30s
Well, we live, we learn. Here’s to that 🥂
You guys learned about the Korea war?
I asked my US history teacher what happened in the Korean War and basically got a shrug.
The state of Education!
I had no real idea about any of it until I listened to the Blowback podcast season on Korea. I’d heard inklings on Korea before that in commie circles, but nothing all that detailed. It really puts into context how much brutality Korea has faced, first at the hands of imperial Japan and then at the hands of US occupation.
No Americans ever learn about the Jeju Island massacre in school. We only ever learn that “bad Stalin and bad Kim collabed to invade, no other reasons.”
I only learned about the massacre and the US’s indiscriminate murdering of Koreans before and throughout the Korean War from Nodutdol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising for those who didn’t know (me included)
Google search suggestion did not want to recognize or reference this event
Thanks. I never even heard of Jeju Island before.
It’s a really pretty island known for having more women than men (a consequence of the massacre) and delicious mandarin oranges.
Wow, it was very difficult to read about. Actually, I think of it before now, when I read about the plot of the book, We Do Not Part. I didn’t realize it was a real place.
Yep! Han Kang also wrote about the Gwang-ju massacre by Chun Do-Hwan, in a book called Human Acts.
Learning about the Jeju island massacre was the root for me breaking away from the western propaganda around the DPRK. To be honest though, as an American, we really weren’t taught about the Korean war at all. We covered the Vietnam war, pretty much just the domestic situation, focusing especially on the presidents, but completely glossed over the Korean war. It was basically a footnote in our curriculum.
Hell, I didn’t learn about the Vietnam war even. Until I started learning about politics in my free time in my late teens, I couldn’t have even told you whether Vietnam or Korea was first, or what either of those wars were about. I was vaguely aware America had been to war in both countries (because of movies I guess) but when? Why? How? Couldn’t begin to say.
Absolutely, my experience is very similar. It’s pretty stark how much more vague history we were taught became covering anything more recent than WWII. Granted, everything before that was heavily skewed to the American Imperialist perspective anyway, but we at least went more in-depth in events that happened. I could tell you more about the start of WWI than any details about any post-WWII war coming out of high school.
Lmao as if german schools teach anything besides the nazi period in germany (in my experience at least). Other countries are only mentioned when they were invaded by germany and not beyond that tbh
We had the Korean war as part of a short segment about the cold war but it was really propagandistic.
We learn about how Türkiye saved poor Koreans from le ebul gommiez because Türkiye is frenli countrie, and not because sucking up to US for entering the NATO to keep the government’s contemporary reactionary politics.
Even if you count jeju island as a separate event they were fighting along the border on and off They just drew a line around the DPRK pushing back with force as the “unprovoked” start.
I remember a Korean War veteran coming to my school in Canada to give a Rememberance Day speech but I don’t remember learning anything about the Korean War other than that it happened and Canada participated.
