People’s Forum presentation co-sponsored by Monthly Review and the Korea Policy Institute.
The Korea Policy Institute’s Christine Hong and Martin Hart-Landsberg talk with the writers of the book’s new introduction, Tim Beal and Gregory Elich.
By Tim Beal and Gregory Elich
For a book on contemporary events to have a new edition seventy years after the first is a rare achievement. Izzy Stone’s The Hidden History of the Korean War has a continuing relevance for three major reasons: it is a tour de force of investigative journalism; the Korean War was a pivotal event in post-1945 history; and the combination of the two—the method of investigation and what it revealed of machinations behind the official curtain of obfuscation—can be brought to bear on a wider scale in order to understand what has happened since then and what is happening around us now, and into the future.1 There is a certain constancy in human affairs. Deceit, deception, and manipulation are characteristics of power, perhaps especially of modern “democratic” political power—what country does not claim to be adhering to democracy? In addition, the international framework fixed in place by the Korean War, dubbed the “Cold War,” is still with us despite superficial detours into rapprochement. In 1952, when Hidden History was first published, the United States was in hot war with North Korea and China, and in cold war with the Soviet Union. In 2022, when this edition is being issued, the United States is in proxy war with the Russian Federation, successor to the Soviet Union, and in cold war, perilously close to turning hot, with North Korea and China. In the United States itself, the flailing president is struggling to stay afloat in a turmoil that his administration had a major role in producing, and the political climate is increasingly intolerant of dissent, redolent of McCarthyism.2 Stone would find the situation in 2022 sadly, depressingly familiar.
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Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Gregory Elich to discuss South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to the US and what might be on the agenda with regard to South Korea’s involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, the potential for South Korea to be a bigger part of the US tech war against China as tensions between the US and China escalate, and how this visit may impact inter-Korean relations as the US prepares for a conflict in East Asia.
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Hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Gregory Elich to discuss ongoing military drills between the US and South Korea, which are testing the potential bombing and invasion of North Korea, how this fits into the recent slate of military exercises in the region, and how that reveals the absurdity of calling these drills “defensive,” how these drills fit into US preparations for war with China, and how North Korea is being framed as an aggressor by the US press despite the aggression from the US.
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Christine Hong: Manifestations of Unending War: Korea
Gregory Elich: Yoon’s Project to Reshape South Korea
Christine Hong discusses the historical and current impact of U.S. militarism and geopolitical objectives in the Asia, with a focus on the Korean Peninsula. Gregory Elich discusses Yoon Suk Yeol’s anti-labor domestic policy and his expanding relationship with Western military alliances.
This episode of Guerrilla History is a continuation of our Sanctions as War miniseries, and is our first case study of the series. In this episode, we hear the simultaneously heartbreaking and infuriating story of the sanctions on Yugoslavia from Gregory Elich.
By Gregory Elich
Culture and Liberation: Exile Writings, 1966-1985. ed. Christopher J. Lee, Seagull Books, Kolkata, 2022. 624 pp., $45.00 hb
Since Alex La Guma passed away in 1985, his name has generally faded from public memory, at least in the Western world. Yet during his lifetime, La Guma was a well-regarded novelist, short-story writer, and South African anti-apartheid activist.
Presentation by Simone Chun, Tim Beal, K.J. Noh, and Gregory Elich, discussing how the Biden-Yoon Summit signals a shift toward raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula in particular, and the Asia-Pacific in general. Live program originally shown on May 23, 2022, the day after the summit.
By Gregory Elich
Little more than half a year has passed since Belgrade hosted the Non-Aligned Summit on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the movement’s founding, and Serbia is increasingly under fire for upholding the organization’s principles.
In this segment of By Any means Necessary, Sean Blackmon and Jacqueline Luqman are joined by Gregory Elich to discuss the upcoming general elections in South Korea and the geopolitical contours that affect the race and US involvement in the peninsula, how South Korea’s proximity to North Korea and China impacts the stakes of the election and US interest in the eventual winner, and current president Moon Jae-In’s myopic focus on a peace declaration that would have little effect on the potential for peace on the Korean peninsula.
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