1976 crisis: Bruce Cumings duped by US Gov't disinformation?

18 August 1976 Poplar Tree incident

Was Bruce Cumings duped by U.S. government disinformation?

Posted 020506
Last revision 020506
Copyright © 2002 by Hugo S. Cunningham

Original Source:
Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1997; cloth, 527 pages, $35.
Chapter 10, p. 481:

New source:
Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, Revised and Updated, Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), 2001; paper, 521 pp.
Pp. 74-83.

My earlier comment, based only on Cumings, was as follows

(the 1976 poplar tree incident)--Two US soldiers, sent to clear a tree that obstructed the view in the Panmunjom truce zone, were hacked to death by a North Korean soldier. The US commander later sent in enough forces to clear the tree safely, in what BC presents as war-mongering hysteria. Especially revealing is this quote (paragraph 2): "A Washington informant, whom I cannot name, told me [that US General] Stillwell ... was fearful that back in Washington Henry Kissinger might want to start a war, in order to further the lame-duck Gerald Ford's chances in the upcoming election." This kind of loony-toon conspiracy-mongering looks fine in an Oliver Stone film, but in the scholarly world, it reflects poorly either on BC's veracity, or on the quality of the people he cultivates as "informants."

1. (A clarification)

2. Disinformation?

This quote sounds plausible, and suggests a nugget of truth behind what I derided as Prof. Cumings's "conspiracy-mongering." The original "conspiracy-mongers" would be US officials following up on Kissinger's suggestion. Apparently one of them, knowing of Prof. Cumings's connections to Korea's far Left, as well as his eagerness to believe the worst about US policy, used him as a conduit for psychological pressure on the North Korean regime.

So do I owe Prof. Cumings an apology? No. He wrote his history 21 years after 1976, plenty of time to realize (1) he had been taken, and (2) there were good-faith reasons why US officials thought a strong answer to the provocation was necessary (even if BC did not agree with those reasons).
(A "Wag-the-dog" scenario of unnecessary, electorally-calculated war, despite its abundant Hollywood pedigree, would have been difficult to get away with in the 18 August 1976 incident, when so many officials, some leak-prone, were involved in decision-making.)

Return to HSC review of Bruce Cumings's Korea's Place in the Sun