Thursday, November 19th, 2009 Military Occupation and Empire-Building in Cold War Asia: The United States and Korea, 1945-1955

Description

The American occupation of Korea between 1945 and 1948 has been the subject of a number of dissertations, books, articles, and book chapters over the past several decades. Most authors have examined the occupation either as a self-contained era of Korean history and Korean-American relations or as part of the wider story of the origins of the Korean War. This paper will examine the history of the occupation in a new light. In particular, the 1945-1955 period will be treated as an extended, though interrupted, American occupation of southern Korea. An examination of the interplay between Korea and the United States within a wider framework of extended occupation offers us an excellent opportunity to analyze how Cold War dynamics impacted Koreans and Americans, and how, in turn, the diplomacy of these two states shaped the broader parameters of conflict in East Asia.

Steven Hugh Lee is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of two books, “Outposts of Empire: Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, 1949-1954” (McGill-Queens Press, 1995) and “The Korean War” (Longman, 2001), and a co-edited volume, with Yunshik Chang, entitled “Transformations in Twentieth Century Korea” (Routledge, 2006). He is currently working on two book projects: a global history of the twentieth century (Blackwell Press), and a study of warfare in East Asia since the late nineteenth century (Cambridge).