The storytellers of Korean nationalism: Book Review of David Fields, Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism and the Division of Korea

Author

Wen-Qing (WEI Wenqing) NGOEI, Singapore Management UniversityFollow

Publication Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1-2021

Abstract

As author David Fields notes in Foreign Friends, the received wisdom about the division of South Korea is that American “men with little knowledge of Korea” undertook at the close of the Pacific War to split the Korean peninsula along the 38th parallel, with the United States occupying the south and the USSR the north. This “wholly American action” supposedly gave no consideration to Korean aspirations (169). But this received wisdom is inaccurate, Fields argues, because the histories of Korean nationalism and the United States were intimately intertwined well before the Pacific War.

Keywords

Korean War, American Exceptionalism

Discipline

International and Area Studies | Political Science

Research Areas

Humanities

Publication

Diplomatic History

Volume

45

Issue

1

First Page

208

Last Page

210

ISSN

0145-2096

Identifier

10.1093/dh/dhaa038

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP): Policy L

Citation

NGOEI, Wen-Qing (WEI Wenqing).(2021). The storytellers of Korean nationalism: Book Review of David Fields, Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism and the Division of Korea. Diplomatic History, 45(1), 208-210.

Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3218

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhaa038