Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean peninsula. But The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War presents an entirely new narrative, shifting the perspective from the boundaries of the battlefield to inside the interrogation room. Upending conventional notions of what we think of as geographies of military conflict, Monica Kim demonstrates how the Korean War evolved from a fight over territory to one over human interiority and the individual human subject, forging the template for the US wars of intervention that would predominate during the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond.
Kim looks at how, during the armistice negotiations, the United States and their allies proposed a new kind of interrogation room: one in which POWs could exercise their “free will” and choose which country they would go to after the ceasefire. The global controversy that erupted exposed how interrogation rooms had become a flashpoint for the struggles between the ambitions of empire and the demands for decolonization, as the aim of interrogation was to produce subjects who attested to a nation’s right to govern. The complex web of interrogators and prisoners—Japanese-American interrogators, Indian military personnel, Korean POWs and interrogators, and American POWs—that Kim uncovers contradicts the simple story in US popular memory of “brainwashing” during the Korean War.
Bringing together a vast range of sources that track two generations of people moving between three continents, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War delves into an essential yet overlooked aspect of modern warfare in the twentieth century.
Awards and Recognition
- Winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History
- Winner of the James B. Palais Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies
- Winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize for Best First Book, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
- Winner of the Distinguished Book Award in U.S. History, Society for Military History
- Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
Monica Kim is assistant professor of history at New York University. She lives in New York City.
"Compelling. . . . A specific, targeted, and nuanced exploration of how the Korean War and Cold War-era battlefield moved inside and became a new ‘struggle of political legitimacy waged within human psyches, souls, and desires.’"—Kirkus
"Breaks interesting new ground."—Julian Ryall, South China Morning Post
"Kim’s book opens the door on private battles that make war an intimate encounter."—Sandra Fahy, European Journal of Korean Studies
“It is rare to encounter an extraordinary first book like this one: imaginative, completely original, and beautifully wrought with a convincing set of capacious arguments. It will require scholars to fundamentally rethink how we write the history of the Korean War and the international history of the mid-twentieth century.”—Mark Philip Bradley, University of Chicago
“Ingeniously focusing on POW interrogation rooms run by the North Koreans and Chinese, the United States, and the Indian-led Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, this brilliantly researched book makes a compelling argument about the ways in which postwar and postcolonial states sought to govern their nations and the larger world not only by brute force, but also through the management of interiorities. A truly rare combination of conceptual sophistication and gripping storytelling.”—Takashi Fujitani, University of Toronto
“The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War is a deeply researched and insightful book. Drawing on a parade of fascinating characters, surprising scenes, and recently declassified material, Monica Kim casts a fresh, innovative light on the Korean War and shows how the ideological struggle in prisoner-of-war camps and their interrogation rooms became the final front line of a pivotal American conflict.”—Charles J. Hanley, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and coauthor of The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War
“This is a stunning book about POWs in the Korean War and the crisis that ensued when the United States insisted that the repatriation of prisoners be voluntary. Kim locates in POW camps and interrogation rooms a pivot in the stakes of modern war, in which the United States linked decolonization and global power to the creation of liberal subjects. The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War changes how we think about the Korean War, the Cold War, and war itself.” —Mae Ngai, Columbia University
