FEATURES
What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Kim Jong Il Bashing? An Interview With Bruce Cumings
/ Ben Bush
03.31.07
FZ: In your books you describe how during the time that you were teaching in South Korea student protests against the government were quite frequent and that some of your writings which were critical of the South Korean leadership were adopted by this movement. What was your role in all of this?
BC: When I arrived at Korea University in October of 1971 to conduct my dissertation research, there had been a lot of demonstrations on campus against the repressive government of Park Chung Hee, who had also come to power in a military coup. About a week after I moved into my office, General Park sent his tanks crashing through the gates of the university and blasted very virulent tear gas across the campus. I had to leave my office and clamor out of the backside of the university out on to the street to get the hell out of there. Of course, nobody knew who I was; I was just doing dissertation research and trying to keep my head down.
When my first book came out in 1981 on the origins of the Korean War, a lot of student militants read it and realized that they had been fed a lot of malarkey about the Korean War and the American military occupation from 1945 to 1948. Because I had been the first unofficial person to get access into the secret records of the American occupation I was able to cite really unimpeachable documentation, top-secret stuff that no Korean had read. The official language of that three year occupation was English and so Koreans just didn’t know what was going on. They knew what happened but they didn’t know why.
When President Chun Doo Hwan, who had declared martial law, banned my book it only made students want to read it more. It’s kind of like being on Nixon’s enemies list. Ever since then, right up until yesterday, I have Koreans coming to me asking me to sign one of my books saying that when they were students my work meant a lot to them. It’s very gratifying to me and it also represents a kind of a democratic impulse of opening archives and trying to tell the truth.
FZ: Yogi Berra, Richard Pryor and Nietzsche frequently come up in your writings. Is there are reason these non-Korean authorities frequently appear?
BC: A lot of scholars think I shouldn’t do that but I think these things are funny so I say them.
BC: When I arrived at Korea University in October of 1971 to conduct my dissertation research, there had been a lot of demonstrations on campus against the repressive government of Park Chung Hee, who had also come to power in a military coup. About a week after I moved into my office, General Park sent his tanks crashing through the gates of the university and blasted very virulent tear gas across the campus. I had to leave my office and clamor out of the backside of the university out on to the street to get the hell out of there. Of course, nobody knew who I was; I was just doing dissertation research and trying to keep my head down.
When my first book came out in 1981 on the origins of the Korean War, a lot of student militants read it and realized that they had been fed a lot of malarkey about the Korean War and the American military occupation from 1945 to 1948. Because I had been the first unofficial person to get access into the secret records of the American occupation I was able to cite really unimpeachable documentation, top-secret stuff that no Korean had read. The official language of that three year occupation was English and so Koreans just didn’t know what was going on. They knew what happened but they didn’t know why.
When President Chun Doo Hwan, who had declared martial law, banned my book it only made students want to read it more. It’s kind of like being on Nixon’s enemies list. Ever since then, right up until yesterday, I have Koreans coming to me asking me to sign one of my books saying that when they were students my work meant a lot to them. It’s very gratifying to me and it also represents a kind of a democratic impulse of opening archives and trying to tell the truth.
FZ: Yogi Berra, Richard Pryor and Nietzsche frequently come up in your writings. Is there are reason these non-Korean authorities frequently appear?
BC: A lot of scholars think I shouldn’t do that but I think these things are funny so I say them.
