Like many other wars, “the Korean war is multiple wars” (p. ix); it not only involved many participating countries but also encompassed diverse motives and narratives. It started as a civil war between the two Koreas but later developed into an international war. And though the Korean War officially ended in July 1953, the conflict still goes on along the borderline and in the minds of the Korean people. Multiplicity of the war narrative is a natural result of contestations among its participants, especially survivors. As such, the questions of who started the war and how it should be remembered have become fields of another war. The opposing forces in the war, however, try to make its narrative as simple as possible by counterposing the “virtuous us” and the “evil them.” This is exactly what the official state narrative of South Korea (and North Korea) purported: the war started in...

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