The Forsaken Hills A Novel of the Korean War

List of books about the Korean War

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He interviews veterans and survivors, both American and Vietnamese, as well as archival material from the US Nation Archives that paint a much darker like definite war crimes--setting up kill zones and kill quota which marks any within that zone as a target picture that things that lead to My Lai were more the norm than the expectation. Do I mind I ask for your source, not because I don't believe you but because I find it odd that the interpretations are so different. I can't check my VN reading list in English now because I'm not home. His thesis was that two types of mass civilian casualties must be distinguished: He mentioned My Lai as the worst example of the second type, numbered another few masacres by US and South Korean forces, and concluded that besides those few examples most of war crimes were perpetrated on individual level, relatively rarely.

Now, it's possible that he simply counted civ casualties in kill-zones as collateral damage. The difference in perspective also counts: That makes a certain sense, different perspective on the same issue. I assume the source is not available in English? The few recorded incidents on the american side were highly publicized and those involved in my lai were eventually tried and at least one was sentenced to life in prison. Only one person was convicted, and he served only 3. He was a lieutenant, not surprising that nobody of higher rank was charged even though abuses were rampant.

Look, I understand that when you take men to war and leave them in battle for hundreds of days and dehumanize the other side, there will be atrocities like the My Lai, or Nanking for that matter. All war is a crime. South Korea was a rural backwater compared to the more industrialized North. Hardly any serious cultural differences existed between the North and South to suggest a natural division. Please source that specific claim. I don't remember Patterson suggesting anything like that. What South Korea had that South Vietnam didn't were two factors.

That way, he was able to build up the Viet Cong. That's 2 , the South Koreans didn't face a local communist insurgency in support of the North. The Americans didn't have to go village to village in South Korea trying to root out an insurgency, and thus turning the population against them. Korea did face a communist insurgency in Cheolla-do and Cheju-do, but it was mostly snuffed out before the invasion, so it wasn't a military factor in the war, and the brutal anti-insurgency operations were less connected to the US. Beyond this point my expertise is limited, but I suspect the shift to conventional warfare after the insurgencies were suppressed made the war more legitimate to the public and the UN.

You have got to be kidding. There was plenty of well documented opposition to Rhee throughout his time in government. How in the world are you justifying saying there was no opposition? There was in fact a communist uprising in the South, but it happened in , and was put down by the South Korea government, with aid from the US.

This led to a harsh series of purges of communists and even socialists in South Korea with many of the accused fleeing to the North , so it may be that this potential network had been destroyed by the time of the June, invasion. It's little known, but the North actually tried to land a ship filled with commandos in Busan on the night of June 25, , but was engaged and eventually sunk by a sub chaser. Sorry, but if the South was that far behind the North in industry, doesn't that also imply significant cultural differences?

I ask as someone almost totally ignorant of the Korean War, but generally the growth of industry results in drastic changes in standards of living and general daily life patterns. A faster movement of peoples, increased economic benefits, urbanisation, ecological shifts and damage. It seems odd that the South could be a "rural backwater" but also lack any significant cultural differences as a result. Level of industrialization does not correlate with culture. They shared a language, history, customs All the things you associate with industrialism take time to develop, but still don't amount to fundamental differences.

Are you suggesting that Los Angeles must belong to a different country than Modesto because of cultural differences? Not at all, but we're not talking about a city and its countryside. Are you going to tell me that there is no significant difference between New Orleans and the surrounding bayous and marshes? Or that the Rust Belt has the same interests or Detroit in its peak was culturally identical to The surrounding countryside? What about in Raleigh, NC, or London, which have measurably different political views than the more rural counties surrounding them?

I'm not suggesting that the North and South were so culturally different that they wouldn't both be Korean, I'm sure the similarities there far outweigh the differences. It's just that urban environments rise around industry, and people living in urban environments have historically had different sets of priorities than their rural countrymen. Can you see why I'm curious as to how Korea might have avoided this?

A "rural backwater" in the South having near identical principles, politics, and way of life to a more industrialised North? I really know very little about Korea, I do not even know the timescale of Korean industrialisation and how quickly it occurred. These things do totally take time, and if it simy happened too quickly for those distinctions to evolve that makes sense to me, but I'm genuinely curious about the details of that distinction!

I really don't understand your point. I'm saying that that is anachronistic non-sense. There's no way to look at South Korea and assert that it was destined to succeed while South Vietnam was destined to fail. Both were weak client states of the Americans.

It's only knowing subsequent history that tells us that South Korea becomes an industrialized basically developed country, while South Vietnam falls to the North. The cultural point is a minor one. Like the differences between the N. Vietnam, those between N. Korea were political not cultural. If anything, the cultural distinction between the Vietnams was stronger. Tonkin and Cochinchina were ruled as separate colonies for decades. I'm sorry, i must not have been clear enough, my question was totally outside the range of OPs question!

I was specifically asking you about Korea during the war. Simply, if the South was that far behind the more industrial north, what circumstance would have led to prolonged cultural unity? Historically, the growth of industry in a particular region tends to lead to an increase in urbanization, which then results in significant cultural differences between the industralized and non-industrialized regions as the people living in each then have separate priorities. It's like the political trouble in Italy, where the industrial North somewhat dislikes the south, because the agricultural south is seen as lazy and piggybacking off the work of the North while drinking wine all day.

Or In the northeast US during the industrial revolution, where populism became popular in factory towns, but struggled in rural environments. I genuinely don't know much about Korean history, and I'm just curious as to what circumstances would have prevented this divide. The Japanese occupying forces, from the s to the s, concentrated their industrialization efforts in the North. After the division between Soviet and American occupation, the North kept most of the resources and the industry while the South had far more people.

But 30 years is not long enough to create massive cultural gaps between the two areas. The cultural differences between regions in Italy go back over a thousand years and hundreds in America. My understanding of the subject is limited, but I was under the impression that neither North nor South Korea was all that industrialized in I have heard from several sources I believe it was in Korea's Place in the Sun, by Bruce Cumings that the North was somewhat more industrialized, but that neither place was very well off economically.

Oh yes, they were both very poor. Korea has different cultural areas, but they're not divided by the 38th parallel. The South contains Seoul and Pusan which is a major port for trade with Japan and the world, so it was not exactly the middle of nowhere. I made another comment about insurgent groups in the South, these areas were and are still mainly agrarian and susceptible to promises of land reform and so on from the North.

For people who aren't familiar with the history, the outcome of the war influenced attitudes after the withdrawal from Saigon in , but a significant portion of the US deeply opposed the war over the preceding decade. Opposition existed to even the earliest US involvement, and spread over time. I think it's fair to say that significant US involvement began around , escalating in '62 and '63 with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in August and the rapid passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution a few days later representing the US's full involvement as a "war".

Opposition to US involvement in Vietnam started with organizations that were anti-war in general, and opposed what they described as "American imperialism" in particular. This civil rights activity in part inspired the student Free Speech Movement which became organized in the fall of Thus, there was a wave of organization around progressive principles coming together at exactly the same time that the US became involved in and escalated the war in Vietnam, and opposition to the war became intertwined with these other movements from very early.

These progressive movements represented a minority of the US population, so one way to narrow or focus ones questions would be to look at the question, "How did opposition to the US war in Vietnam move from being held primarily by a left-leaning minority and become more widely adopted by a large part of the US population during the later stages of US involvement and subsequent to the withdrawal, by a majority of the population? How is that so much more different than South Korea's situation though?

South and North Korea were both set up as temporary states in preparation for national elections in When this failed, both states were established in with war breaking out shortly after. Likewise in Vietnam, after refusing to engage in national elections, the Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed in It was clear early on that South Korea was also far from a democratic state. Rhee's South Korea was also corrupt, unpopular, and very likely would have been voted out had he not had so much undue control. I don't generally like to correct spelling on reddit but since this is a proper name and people may not know the actual person involved, I need to hop in here and say that it's Ngo Dinh Diem.

Also of note, and this is entirely anecdotal, my South Korean exchange student roommate from college always talked about how much everyone in Korea loves America for helping them out in the war, etc. I do believe South Korea for the most part wanted the US there, whereas Vietnam for the most part did not. I think that makes a difference. Gotta chime in here and say your last point is not necessarily true.

Many South Vietnamese wanted the US to intervene, and were horrified and angry when Kissinger became diplomatic with the Chinese, because that would mean that the US would pull troops from, and wind down their involvement in Vietnam. As the war wound down, and LBJ failed to get congressional support for increased funding for the war, South Vietnamese were in constant fear that the communists would come in swiftly. South Vietnamese who did flee are generally supportive of US intervention, and Republicans, to be more specific, because they were the party that had publicly supported the war in the first place.

All this is also anecdotal. Although I will say I am a first generation Vietnamese American who has a pretty firm grasp of the complications of the war, and the post-war attitudes of the Vietnamese. Just saw the mod post about anecdotal "evidence" not being allowed. I'm not going to delete what I said, but yeah The continued to funnel money and supplies into the government long after they knew that none of it was being put to good use. Is perhaps the most worrying part to see for me, so I'd like for you to provide some sources for these statements, in particular the statement that the South Vietnamese government lacked popular support.

I'm not personally claiming it had popular support, but I am not going to say that the population of South Vietnam was hostile towards it. I think it is inaccurate. A Narrative History, the South Vietnamese reps refused to sign the Geneva Accords calling for nationwide elections arguing that the treaties legitimized the Communist victory over the French. Power in the South consolidated around Ngo Dinh Diem who turned out to be an inept figure of suppressed his political opponents, not distributing land to peasants as was promised and allowing widespread corruption.

It was Diem who refused to join the elections in and the Eisenhower's administration "viewed its only option was to 'sink or swim with Diem. You seem to be conflating the issue of popularity with the Eisenhower administration with Diem's popularity with the people living in Vietnam during this time, which was what HClay77 was talking about. Ho Chi Minh may have been regarded as popular, but he was also as OP notes a brutal autocrat, so I have to wonder how genuine his supposed legitimacy was. I also came across this article by John Prados which suggests that about 5 times as many Vietnamese left North Vietnam to go south as left South Vietnam to go north in the exchange facilitated by the Geneva Accords.

That suggests to me that at least in the beginning there was at least some support for the South, if only as a bulwark against Ho Chi Minh. I've actually written on this topic previously here! There are two schools of thought when it comes to the academic study of the Vietnam War: The orthodox is that which grew out of the war itself: The orthodox school is based around the opinion that the American intervention in South Vietnam is unjustified and that the South Vietnamese nation was not a legitimate nation.

The revisionist school is based around the idea that the intervention was justified and that South Vietnam is a legitimate nation. The revisionist school try to present the often neglected South Vietnamese perspective that has been overlooked by the orthodox school. Since by your own terminology HClay77's account is orthodox, isn't the onus on you to provide some citations supporting your objections?

We must note that South Vietnam, unlike any of the other countries in Southeast Asia was essentially the creation of the United States. Without the threat of U. I am particularly asking about the popular support, which I point out in the above post. I don't disbelieve the Pentagon Papers, but I also realize that it is a primary source which needs to be treated as such.

Scholarship on the Vietnam War has come a long way since. Well, that Pentagon Papers quote demonstrates pretty clearly that DoD analysts did not belive "that SVN was a viable, independent and preexisting state. I am asking about popular support, not about whether or not South Vietnam was a viable, independent and pre-existing state, a discussion which is still active in academia. My own personal recommendation about a book which presents the case of South Vietnam out of a contemporary revisionist perspective is Mark Moyar's Triumph Forsaken: Hey, while we are on the topic of perspectives that are often neglected, I wonder if you might be able to answer a question I have had for a bit.

Although I suppose in this thread maybe just do you have any readings on the Hmong involvement in Vietnam? Tiako, I'll do some research into it and write up an answer. It's a very interesting perspective and their co-operation with the Green Berets is definitely something that should be emphasized. What is your problem with this supposed "Orthodoxy" on their part regarding the war if it can be considered as valid of an academic take as a "revisionist" one?

I don't have a problem. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I respect it since it's all a question of interpretation. I am simply asking for a source regarding a particular claim. Also, according to Department of Defense sources the US forces suffered some 36, deaths and , soldiers wounded in the Korean war, while in Vietnam the US suffered 58, deaths and , wounded.

I would imagine this was a factor in how the public perceived the war. Was South Korea really a legitimate state? I mean, America flew in their leader on MacArthur's personal plane, and he never truly had the support of the majority of South Koreans. And most of the leaders in his cabinet were holdovers from Japanese occupation. It's almost trivia, but not only was South Korea a much more legitimate state than South Vietnam in the eyes of the international community, but also the Korean War was directly sanctioned by the UN and so it had an air of direct legality that the Vietnam War never had.

This was in a period when the UN was still taken very seriously by American politicians -- they had only recently been instrumental in founding it. The US fought in Korea as the primary power in a real multinational force with allied ground forces from a quite wide range of countries including most of the major Western allies from WWII. In Vietnam the only countries that directly supported the United States were either only notionally democratic as in the case of Thailand and South Korea or were entirely regional as in the case of Australia.

One may say what they will about the politics involved in both cases, but the perception as a result of the much broader coalition with a vested interest was dramatically different. In this sense it's not entirely dissimilar to the journalistic and legal judgements on the first and second wars between Iraq and the United States. Perhaps this is similar to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hadn't even realized it when I made my original post since I was thinking mostly about the analogy between Gulf War I and Korea. This is just not a good answer at all. Not only are the details your explanation relies on wrong, but it isn't even an explanation as such, because public opinion turned against the Vietnam war in , while the details of the background of the South Vietnamese state were obviously not different in from before.

How does that show increasing support over time? That seems to show decreasing support over time. A "mistake" means that it was a bad idea; not a mistake means it was necessary. No, I agree with you. While I don't have the breakdown by age which would point to the generational aspect that HClay77 mentions , the numbers as-a-whole show declining support for the decision to go to war. However, this history is being forgotten at an alarming rate, with support for the Vietnam War increasing in generations born later and later after its end.

I just checked Gallup and some other polls.

If you leave me : a novel, Crystal Hana Kim

Opposition has only increased over time. I suggest you edit this portion or cite a source. I would add that the draft had a large role in making it unpopular. I'm pretty sure the 60's would have been quite different and nowhere near as rebellious without the draft affecting college aged kids. Of which an independent commission of three countries all agreed the North made those fair national elections impossible, and that the delegates from the South, not being signatories to the Geneva Conference were not bound to.

Again, how is there a legitimacy issue? The dictatorial South Korean regime was set up along the same lines as the South Vietnamese. He was much more popular than his Southern counterpart, Ngo Dinh Diep, who was also autocratic and led an extremely corrupt South Vietnamese SVN government, without popular support.

Of which an independent commission of three countries all agreed the North made those fair national elections impossible. Can you explain just how the commission reached that conclusion, and which three countries the members of that commission belonged to? This I really don't understand, and sounds more like legalistic hand-wrangling, than anything.

If one party is not bound by the Geneva Accords, then the Geneva Accords are really nullified. That's a statement I'd like to see backed up by sources. In hindsight, we can see that dominoes didn't really fall, but how would policymakers have known that prior?

I really appreciate your summary, especially for someone so young. Especially the point that the war is being forgotten, that we are becoming more accepting of it. Now, the theory of monolithic Communism, which was also key to the domino theory of one country's fall engendering a worldwide collapse of free societies into Communist control, was demonstrably false. The Domino Theory held that if Vietnam fell, so would the rest of Indochina and then, ultimately, India. As it turns out, Vietnam became and remains communist but India is certainly not. In the communist states in the whole world were very monolithic, this was before China broke up with the USSR.

Besides, after the Vietnam war, two neighboring states turned communist: So, the facts seem to prove that the domino theory had some fundamental truth. An the dominoes weren't just local, right after the US retreated from Vietnam two African countries became communist, Angola and Mozambique.

How much did the American failure in Vietnam influence the strategic decision by the Soviet block to pour enough support on the communist movements in Africa? Cuba helped directly by sending troops to Angola, "boots on the ground".

People who bought this also bought...

On the other hand, the Tito-Stalin split and the rise of the nonaligned movement could have and maybe should have suggested that nominal communists could be independent actors. And what about the repeated denunciations of Tito and Yugoslavia by North Vietnam precisely for that independence from Moscow? How many other nations in Eastern Europe? And one shouldn't forget Cuba. Before the revolution there were many analysts that thought Castro would be non-aligned, yet he went straight into the Soviet domain after.

You just gave me a thought, and that is I wonder how much Cuba becoming communist in the 50s influenced American fears about communist agitation. I would assume that having a nation so close - both geographically and politically - turn communist wouldve had a powerful effect on the American psyche. That would have been a factor contributing to it, of course, but there were others. The atom bomb spying case was another factor. Also, the s was a period when several colonies in Africa and Asia achieved independence and the Soviet Union influenced many groups that were fighting for independence.

Angola and Mozambique had nothing to do with the US leaving Vietnam. They were colonies of Portugal, and each fought independence wars against the Portuguese. Political revolution in Portugal led to both becoming independent in , and the factions that fought the colonial Portuguese vied for control of their respective countries in very long and brutal civil wars. They didnt just "become communist" countries.

The communist and anti communists fought for control for decades. Both civil wars outlasted the Cold War itself. Didn't the tactics used by US troops for example things such as strategic hamlets and things like Operation Phoenix, and overall the general treatment of the US and ARVN troops towards Vietnamese civilians also cause people to view the Vietnam War in such a negative way? The 10, Day War is also an excellent and highly informative source, focusing less on military conflict and more on the policy-making aspects of the war. I think from today's point of view it's also important to note that modern Vietnam is a relatively successful state friendly with the US, so there is no "see that's what happens when you let the commies win in Vietnam" example.

On the other hand, North Korea is led by an almost cartoonishly evil dictator and is behind an iron curtain of mystery and starvation. Do you think the fact that the American side in the Korean War was a "UN force", whereas in the Vietnam War it was a largely American force, played a role in the latters unpopularity? Now, the theory of monolithic Communism, which was also key to the domino theory of one country's fall engendering a worldwide collapse of free societies into Communist control, was demonstrably false, and many policymakers knew that.

I get that the domino theory wasn't correct but were they being willfully ignorant or just dishonest about that? Fascinating bit about the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the US was actually considering intervening by dropping nuclear bombs on the Vietnamese. Thankfully, that didn't happen. Also add that American leadership didn't believe in a successful outcome as established in the record of the LBJ phone records.

What they said in public was not reasonably truthful. Agreed, but I think the present perception of the Vietnam war is also colored by the present perception of the Korean war. In the present, we see a relatively vibrant, mostly-democratic, economically successful country in South Korea, while North Korea is intractably hostile.

I think these facts in the present influence peoples' perceptions of the history; it's easier to justify the Korean War because it was at worst a stalemate, and at best a demonstration of the importance of the war. Note that I'm not trying to justify or advocate, only to explain one part of why many people see these two wars quite differently.

There's also the fact that, while North Korea remains a place no sane American would want to go, Vietnam, where we supposedly 'lost', is a beautiful vacation destination where Americans can go freely. Well, I think you can partially chalk that one up to the fact that Vietnam wasn't being run by a guy trying to be the poor man's version of a Japanese Emperor, who was heavily reliant on the support of a now defunct state, after the war. You know your comment got me thinking. There's a lot of research on public opinion during lengthy wars, but to my knowledge not much on current public opinion of past wars.

Some of the key factors that affect public opinion of war is the difference between the administration's message and the reality on the ground shown by the media. Another key factor is of course success in achieving the goal of the war. So looking back on Korea we can see that Truman's message about the danger of communist North Korea was pretty spot on.

This Kind of War

Also while it lead to a standstill given the economic disparity between the two Korea's, as you mentioned, the war was a success. Now looking at Vietnam, virtually nothing Kennedy, Johnson, or Nixon said about the war is viewed positively and did not fit the reality on the ground. Also none of the goals were achieved and communism didn't spread in a domino effect.

Anyway purely speculation but it would be an interesting combination of history and public policy to research it. We've already have 8 comments which had been deleted for breaking our rules. Unless you can answer this question in-depth and be prepared to answer follow-up questions and source requests , please refrain from writing. We're not interested in your personal opinion or personal anecdotes.

For more information, please read our rules or get in touch with us directly through mod-mail. As far as I can tell, the Korean War came at a time when people were a bit war weary after WW2 and did not really want anything to do with the Korean War. It was not a spectacular war like Vietnam with helicopter combat and the suchlike, but more a form of trench warfare that stalemated fairly quickly around the 38th parallel. To me, it is a highly interesting war, but I think to the majority of Americans, it was not. Also, it was not shrouded in secrecy and dirty dealings like Vietnam.

It was a genuine war very early on in the Cold War Russia did not even have a nuke when it started , unlike Vietnam which was after the chaotic events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Moreover, the social climate was different. The s were a time of prosperity and generally, people were happy.

The s saw the rise of the peace movements and Civil Rights movements. People were challenging the government in multiple ways and when the shady dealings around the start of the war and the operations into Cambodia and Laos came to light, it caught on with the American public. I'd also like to know why they turned out so different, what'd we do differently in Korea?

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It was my understanding that the People's Volunteer Army Chinese was much larger than the Korean People's Army which makes sense, given the population of China vs. Korea , and that China essentially assumed command of the War effort. I'm sure you know this, but some other readers might not be aware of the role China played in the Korean War--it isn't exactly something you learn much about in school. I don't know of any widely published book that addresses all of the different UN contributors, but I drew these examples from That as well as McArthur's aggressive desire to push the war through North Korea and into China but I may be wrong on that.

Well, that really depends on what point in the war we're talking about. Early in the Korean War, N. The most important is probably the relative high quality of N. Korean troops--many of whom were veterans of the Chinese Civil War Hastings --vs. Even when the UN forces in Pusan modern: Busan had more men and more guns than the Koreans, the Battle of the Pusan Perimiter very nearly became America's Dunkirk.

Of course, that was pretty much the end of N. Korea as a major player in the war. The battles near Pusan exhausted the DPRK supplies, and led to the death of many of its best soldiers. Korean troops attacking Pusan. As for why MacArthur decided to push past the 38th parallel and move to the Yalu I'm not even going to attempt an answer. That man is a complete enigma to me. I had the impression that North Korea used tanks pretty liberally in the initial invasion, and the US forces had a problem by having only weak bazookas that pretty much couldn't penetrate the armor -- is this a false impression?

Task Force Smith was an example of weak anti-tank weapons in the early war, but I believe the original statement applies to balanced forces which both have adequate artillery, tanks, infantry, etc. Korea has very steep mountains which make tanks less effective when the other side has sufficient countermeasures.

It's definitely worth saying that while combat use of helicopters in an armed capacity and to deliver troops was widely-introduced in Vietnam, helicopters saw their first major battlefield use in Korea as medevac and SAR vehicles. It's not so much what we did, as what Vietnam and NK did. I'm going to list out some of the comparisons given by my source below, if you want the in depth analysis I suggest heading straight there: For starters, North Korea was fought in the traditional sense, with clearly defined boundaries and areas of land were won and lost.

In comparison, Vietnam was one huge "search and destroy" mission, in which the objective was not to gain land and push back aggressors, but literally seek out and kill as many of the enemy as possible, in an attempt to keep the south Vietnamese peaceful and allow democracy which, shocker, didn't go so well. Also agreeing with another commenter, the people were behind the Korean war as it was seen as "more legitimate" with the UN resolution. This didn't align with the Vietnam war, as we never officially declared war on the north Vietnamese, and it was a dragged out process which for the first time, was televised throughout the world, so the true atrocities of the war could be seen.

It's hard to win a war when the people's hearts and minds are not behind it. Let's not overlook The Pentagon Papers as contributing to the distrust and lack of support in Vietnam. That war was not only unpopular, but the US Forces Army, mostly simply and continuously lied to the American public. Not a great way to build popular support. American war goals in Vietnam were substantively different from our war goals in Korea. American use of military force in Vietnam was guided by incorrect assumptions about Vietnam's history, culture, and leaders.

American leadership incorrectly applied the lessons of history, as they saw them, to the novel situation in Vietnam. I recommend reading "Dereliction of Duty,"- a history of the lead-up to the Vietnam Conflict in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations written by a DoD historian with access to their archives. This is where I got most of my analysis. In Korea, military force was used to achieve territorial integrity and political independence for South Korea. We didn't want to stay in Vietnam forever, and we weren't prepared to do so. The idea was, we'll bomb 'em, and kill a lot of 'em, and the losses in personnel and materiel would induce the Communists to give up their plans for a united Vietnam.

We vastly overestimated the efficacy of airpower and underestimated the resilience and determination of the Vietnamese. American policymakers saw the conflict by their own lights, judging the conflict as a battle between competing ideologies. But Vietnamese civilians saw little difference between American "support," for South Vietnam and French colonial domination of Indochina. The Vietnamese tradition of independence was not properly understood, to America's great disadvantage.

McNamera was a technocrat and approached problems from an engineer's subject position. Focused on finishing school, Kyunghwan doesn't realize his older and wealthier cousin, Jisoo, has his sights set on the beautiful and spirited Haemi, and is determined to marry her before joining the fight. But as Haemi becomes a wife, then a mother, her decision to forsake the boy she always loved for the security of her family sets off a dramatic saga that will have profound effects for generations to come.

Richly told and deeply moving, If You Leave Me is a stunning portrait of war and refugee life, a passionate and timeless romance, and a heartrending exploration of one woman's longing for autonomy in a rapidly changing world. Label If you leave me: Library Locations Map Details. Des Plaines Public Library Borrow it. About Patron Services Guides Events. Carousel Grid List Card. Copy to clipboard Close. Cite Data - Experimental. Data Citation of the Item If you leave me: Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.

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