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can possibly produce. >> for more information, visit studentcam.org today. >> next, we hear from monica of "thehor interrogation rooms of the korean war: the untold story." she analyzes the unauthorized tactics used by the u.s. and its allies. the wilson center and the national history center cosponsored this. >> welcome to the seminar, a provide.e try to ostermann.ian i direct the policy center here havee wilson center and i

the honor of cochairing this c arnesen,lleague eri from washington university. this is a joint initiative between the national history center and the history and public hollis program here. we are in our ninth year. again to see many of you for future sessions. the lepage center for public interest, as well as the george washington history department. we also want to thank a number

of anonymous donors who make these meetings possible and we welcome contributions from all .f you in our audience details are in the back of the flyer. the heavyeople who do lifting behind the scenes. , the assistant director of the national history center -- are you here today? where are you? thank you. as well as our talented interns, who you will meet during the q&a . they will help with microphones.

we finally want to acknowledge that today's session is by theored, cohosted wilson center korea foundation center for korean history and public policy. the director is here and we are grateful for the center's cosponsorship. before we begin. i will ask eric to introduce our featured speaker today. ask everyone to turn off your mobile devices. put them on silent so we can have a good, thoughtful discussion. with that, eric? arnesen: thank you. it is my pleasure to welcome our isaker, monica kim who

currently at the new york city department of history. she is the author of " interrogations of the korean war: the untold history." it was published by princeton university. a member of the editorial collective for radical history review, she has published in asia and critique, east asia and warfare. her work is supported by fellowships from fulbright and andwilson managing center today she will be speaking on the subject of that new book, the interrogation rooms of the korean war. professor kim? kim: thank you so much. it's actually incredibly meaningful to hear about all the different communities that have

come together to make this kind of gathering possible and i'm really looking forward to the q and a discussion about the book. to 2020,ook ahead which seems significant to all of us in this room. it holds significance in terms of the korean war. next year, the korean war will conflict.70th year of without any official end, the korean war is the one hot war that continues until this day. thelso take for granted cease-fire that was signed in july 1953. militarized zone in korea is only one side of evidence of the

korean war. i am going to turn to the 1953 cease-fire, namely the one issue that effectively delayed the signing of the cease-fire for over 18 months. theagenda items at negotiating table, including the decision about where the cease-fire line would he had been settled except for one. the prisoner of war repatriation issue. the u.s. representatives put a new proposal on the table. one for voluntary reap rates creation. -- voluntary repatriation. today i will examine what i consider to be a fundamental shift in the character of the korean war at the beginning of 1952, with the u.s. introduction of the voluntary repatriation

proposal where the civil war affectively stopped being waged over the violation of a border to the violation of the individual human subjects, the prisoner. humana contestation over interiority. it has often been a footnote in the korean war, but by moving into the interrogation room, i represents a critical legacy of the korean war where it is not simply a vestige of the cold war, but a demonstration of the year resolution of mid century conflicts. rather than the cold war binaries between communism and

anti-communism i will be focusing on sovereignty and the workings of racial ideology multiplee pacific and wars. in other words, i am interested in parsing how the legacy of the .ngoing war in forms today telling the story of the korean roomrom the interrogation on asents the cold war scale in compassing asia and other global scale that new delhi and geneva, switzerland. it provides a different mapping of the war and its significance to the usual map that centers on the 30th parallel. it's the more traditional visualizing of the korean war

conflicts. by considering the p.o.w. issue, we end up with a map of the war on the korean peninsula which looks like this. often considered to be a marginal and peripheral figure in the war, the p.o.w. would in theter the spotlight world. .irst, there are the camps five undermp number control.ean there are about 3500 p.o.w.'s. with the kidnapping later called a mutiny i the u.s.

army, and i will in by examining let'sst infamous memory, say, from the korean war, something that is rather ironic in thehe war's status united states. i will be examining the experiences of u.s. p.o.w.'s in kim number five. we will move to kim number five by way of examination of why the interrogation room became a subject of intense debate and. so, let's begin. 7, 1952 off the southeastern coast of the peninsula, six pows kidnapped the brigadier general. the mutiny quickly

reverberated through the highest ranks. the u.s. army sent in troopers, percussion grenades. for an event that captured , thetion across the globe mapping itself occurred in rather undramatic fashion. in the early afternoon, the brigadier general met with six european pows who were meeting with him to discuss certain complaints they had. they talked through the barbed

wire fence as you can see. p.o.w.'s this , aticular fellow right here rather large man of considerable strength walked slowly through the gates to allow a truck full of tents to go through and he stretched his arm, pretended to god.nd grabbed they literally carry him in two the compound. the whole affair only lasted a few minutes. after they carry him into the unfurl a large sign and it said, we have captured. -- he made the sign in english -- he will not be harmed. if you shoot, his life will be in danger. u.s.he reaction from the

press was pretty immediate. sent the u.s.ase into an absolute frenzy. order to freey the general held by red p.o.w.'s. echoed a similar sentiment. why have the p.o.w.'s, who are now characterized as bearing -- being oriental communist fanatics, why were they -- why have they captured the commander? communistslosed the had asked for 1000 sheets of paper, presumably riding paper and that had been sent to the islands. so, the request for 1000 sheets

of paper points us in the direction toward understanding why the kidnapping invited such widespread anxiety. signal that the script of warfare was no longer predictable or stable. as they defined and redefined the laws of war in the aftermath of the devastation, the official outbreak of the korean war revealed an undeniably curious situation. it appears states were no longer waging war anymore. when the press asked if the u.s. was at war, truman replied simply "we are not at war." and he said the u.s. was involved in a police action.

we must remember war was a privilege accorded only to recognized state. only sovereign entities could engage in a legitimate extension involving twog recognizable states and nowhere was this laid more bear than at negotiation tables at the 30th parallel. the united nations, which was clearly not a nationstate, into the conflict and this would be a rolled the united nations would not take up again until the first of war. as for china and north korea, the united nations did not recognize either states. bass, to define what was legitimate warfare was to define who was a legitimate states.

skype -- officials to theribed the situation as communists are talking. this was not about the events of the war which were in the center of the struggle for the stakes of rec edition in the war. kidnapped dog spotlights. the representative for the united nations together a proposal for voluntary beatriation and pows would whether theyse" wanted to return to their

homelands upon the signing of the cease-fire. a u.s. military interrogation room -- this was going to be a free of what they called will. 1949, they called for mandatory repatriation. we need more discussion here. it was due to this debate that the interrogation room became the flashpoint of a heated international controversy. as the interrogation room came under scrutiny, this became a measure of the respective states's legitimacy and this is what was really stunning for me and my research, but you have this moment in 1952 where different states and organizations are actually

putting forward the argument that there interrogation room was going to be the most efficacious in terms of democratic processes. i found that very stunning. and that's really out my deeper dive into this material began. my book reveals how the global visions of the u.s. secretary of state dean addison, indian president nehru, the south korean president, and the north were contingent on thousands of acts of disciplining, subjects. the book opens up in u.s. occupied south korea and internmenterican camps and it follows 4000 japanese interrogators to korea. it traces the postwar journeys of p.o.w.'s by the united

nations to india, brazil, and argentina and finally maps out the movement of p.o.w.'s through the interrogation network through pow camp's. obviously i will not be touching on all of this during my talk today, but if you have questions about the other interrogation rooms i would be very happy to engage with that. let's begin with how this became the central issue on the armistice negotiation tables. of 1951, the newest addition by the truman administration to basically the national security council, the joint chiefs of staff, etc., etc., truman had created something called these psychological strategy war and the mandate was to create the vision, the holistic

psychological warfare for the united states. so they had already honed in on the p.o.w. as a possible sites on which to configure the cold war aims of the u.s. administration. the figure all of the p.o.w. would this centrally divide a purpose for u.s. military involvement. it was already a difficult task to mobilize mass support behind what truman conceded was a police action under the united nations. since one could not fashion a compelling figure of the enemy, they fashioned a figure of rescue. the p.o.w.. there were two. figures, one under soviet occupation in the north.

this essentially created a competition between which type decolonization was valid, effective, and democratic. the u.s. and the united nations declared the southern republic of korea of the only sovereign state on the peninsula. to have them to choose not to repatriate to the northern dprk would be to evaluate the american project through militarization in the south. so they propose to call the p.o.w.'s essentially political refugees, allowing the united states to adhere to the principal, if not the letter, of the law like the geneva convention. what is important to note is from the outset, the u.s. emphasizes individual choice is

at stake and the u.s. interrogation room, of all places becomes exemplary of democratic governance. voluntary repatriation is considered freedom of choice and he says that mandatory forcedation would be repatriation. he goes so far as to say this is a bill of rights for individuals . so, the act of saying yes or no in the interrogation room is essentially framed as a moment of liberal individual choice. but there is something puzzling here. truman is essentially arguing the u.s. is going to have some sort of authority because it's going to be able to know the

desires of the p.o.w.. but how could the u.s. military claim to know the desires of these p.o.w.'s. who were they? there were 50,000 that claim to be from the south originally. people who were drafted or had journey -- joined the northern korean army. and think about this. if you were a south korean soldier and taken as a pow by the north korean army, but later on when the u.s. military is given the greenlight to cross over the 38th parallel and if you have those north korean the u.s.rrendered to military, what ended up happening is the u.s. military looks at the south korean p.o.w.'s and said, ok, we don't know what to do.

so, then, everybody became ..o.w.'s you had south korean military officials as p.o.w.'s and that is important to note. another thing that is important to note -- after the entrance of forces,ese volunteer there becomes a new informal policy where the u.s. military is allowed to roundup entire villages. so then you could actually have three generations of a family behind of barbed wire fence. this is important to know because it is a population for which the u.s. military would say yes or no. obviously for this kind of complicatedit is

and it really highlights how in 1952 the parallel is not considered a natural, permanent border. it is showing how permanent this order is on the ground where they are considering home or what they are fighting for in terms of a legitimate state on the ground. when we go into the interrogation room of the u.s. beitary, it turns out to less concerned about the concernednd much more interrogator. naval interpreter.

gained --ecture at the heart of that was a --plate while the process was not as it might not be as easy as eating coconuts. there are six steps in a simple process. get the coconuts. its.sure there is milk in .hen you cut it open

and you give it to the thirsty party. primary the central concern is how good was the ?nterrogator they claim to know the desires motivations was of thee rationale american ability to govern. the simple yes or no fit all too well within the knowledge of the naïve oriental. to talking about interrogators, this gives us a frame for thinking about the 1950. war not starting in

ad thinking about transpacific and trans war frame for the korean war. -- they grafted and recruited translators for the korean war. approximately 400,000 were in and the majority spent their adolescence in the internment camps of world war ii behind large wire. journaliste press

and you can see that there are theiple people involved in interrogation. you have the lieutenant from thesiana who is the head of team. the team included six men in total. who did the policeman the initial interrogation. you have a south korean army lieutenant who had grown up in china and in japan, so he is manager and. and you have the you first lieutenants from salinas, california and also a private who is from honolulu. i found this particular ap archivaln the same

folder and this never actually made it to press. i believe the u.s. military officials decided to's and hevice in part because essentially reveals the labor involved and the numerous variables in the production of a single interrogation report and i would argue the most important variable is the desire to fill his whole -- his own role in hierarchylized her -- of labor. whoever was on the team, that marked as white or caucasian. let me introduce you to sam me a miyamoto.am when he arrived he was thesected -- in

repatriation screening rooms he did not have -- this is the one time he does not have a white u.s. military intelligence officer and it's here that he to persuade a pow to was able not repatriate but to assimilate as a citizen subject of the u.s.. here, his own consent to participate in the u.s. project instructive to be for the postcolonial prisoner. of2007, i conducted a series oral history interviews with mia -- miyamoto. he recollected that almost without fail, korean communist pows would usually sit on the ground before they entered a

u.s. military interrogation room. when they noticed it was him, they did not sit on the ground and wanted to ask him a question. this is how he described the encounters. know, you wants to are in a concentration camp, your own government put you into a concentration camp, why are you not fighting with us? very notably replied i am here because i was ordered to come here. i did not come here by choice. i was ordered to join the army and i am ordered to study the korean language. and i am ordered to come here and talk to you about this. so inside the u.s. military interrogation room, we have a reluctant interrogator, and we have a defiant korean p.o.w. our ideasy challenge

of what might happen in an interrogation room during the korean war. that oriental decolonization had been accomplished by the u.s. in , and in terms of japanese internment, that japanese americans had also accepted that history. during the kidnapping, one important in and -- important demand they were making was bring us back to the island. the cessation of the repatriation interrogation room. the reason they were asking for that is they were claiming the u.s. was forcing subjects of the dprk to renounce the state's

sovereign claim over them. to 1976.return for the three days he was in the p.o.w. compound, he had to attend multiple meetings. formed thelectively prisoner of war representatives association. active writing was central to the project of the pows, and this is where, when the p.o.w. demand for thousands of sheets of paper it's -- is significant for us to take notice. it created a bureaucracy that would approach the p.o.w. as the subject of estate not as a wartime category and force the international community to ask what type of political

collective body the dprk was. and to argue that it was a legitimate state. having us think through compound 76 as being a space of diplomatic association. pows were aware of their position on the international stage and now they claim the ability to govern the pows themselves. it was this claim that became -- transgression that u.s. military leaders would label as a mutiny. once it was clear that the kidnapping had been carefully advance, pows had prepared a tidy room and placed a guard there, and they would maintains there to dodd's prestige. dodd went to theatrical performances as a guest. p.o.w.not eat the

rations. he received separate food through a barbed wire fence. and they arranged to have a doctor examine him. who had served as the compound doctor, not a member of the representative association. littleys seems a startled in his photo. in his interrogation, he gives us this story. he went to the tent in the compound to examine dog, and dodd, andrived -- once he arrived, the general was taking a bath in a tub made of an oil drum. the gentleman was finished bathing, i looked at his knees and observed they were healing.

leaving, the general gave me a pack of cigarettes. so, it's a scene where dodd is being bathed by three pows, and the type of medical attention he received really toes the line between surveillance of his body and special services to elite guests. dodd was a prisoner, but there is no reversal of the binary hierarchy of power between the commander and p.o.w.. p.o.w. carefully marked both dodd's body and the space of the compound itself to establish and assert dodd's authority. , during the war, the u.s. said pows had not

committed a mutiny in the chinese and korean camps. the proposal for voluntary claim pows were able to execute free will without duress. this later becomes a double edge sword for the u.s. because after ,he planning of the cease-fire 21 american pows choose to stay in china. with a proposal for voluntary p.o.w. repatriation, the u.s. has turned in historically vulnerable figure into a of theal subject international community, one who made a choice and is under the united nations. however, when confronted with these 21 pows who chose to stay in china, the u.s. military,

government, and public had to neutralize these pows and the potential disability of their politics by rendering them again as vulnerable subjects. brainwashinghere becomes the term the grabs the media spotlight. what does interrogation look like under north korean interrogators? after his release from the north korean and chinese pow camps, richard, a sergeant in the u.s. army, recalled a korean major who was responsible for individually questioning every , for english-speaking -- p.o.w..years he was an english-speaking korean, 25 years of age. pows would have to give their

name, serial number, and the respective incomes of their parents. that, he posed questions that people would hear the end of many interrogations to come. state your hopes and desires. he was sincere and appeared to have no hatred from america. after posing this final question, the major once explained his own hopes and desires. again, this is according to a p.o.w., the major stated that individual hopes and desires were for americans to live in freedom and koreans to live in peace. i have chosen to focus on north korean rather than chinese interrogators because there is a critical difference that comes out in the archives. chinese interrogators were much more interested in technical and

whichal investigation, makes a lot of sense. many chinese troops were on the ground. however, with north korean interrogators, they were more interested in establishing what you might call a more horizontal relationship with the u.s. p.o.w. and what i consider to be a form of internationalism. of example, in december 1951, which is one year later interrogation, another pow named sheldon talks experiencing a different kind of interrogation, more extensive by north korean interrogators. two korean lieutenant colonel's, one named kim, took him to a korean home outside the camp, telling him they just wanted to have a talk with him on general matters pertaining to life in the u.s. and korea.

they give him cigarettes, tea, brandy. they sing home sweet home, home on the range, my old kentucky home, and you are my sunshine. , he says to the u.s. military interrogator he thinks kim sang the songs because he was educated by u.s. missionary at some point. at some point, the conversation takes a turn toward controversial political subjects such as the worker's plight in the u.s., the success of communism in korea, why not in the u.s., etc. he quotes marx and engels as a more information from kim and son. at the end of the sensitive interrogation, they bring foss back to the camp, and as they are walking back, according to

turns to him and says don't tell the chinese about what just happened. the chinese did not understand the problem. and they were not as clever as they thought they were. kim also emphasized that north korean communists were closer to the desires of world developments. he insisted and advised foss to make sure he went to a university upon return to the u.s. and to study political science. in the university that was recommended to him was the university of new mexico. in the portrait of these oriental interrogators as i'm ,oing through the archives something stunning starts emerging, which is that the chinese and north korean interrogators themselves had attended universities in the united states. ties with thenger

oss during world war ii. i think it's really the make the u.s.that military very nervous. at theof books available library with camp number five illustrates pretty extensive knowledge about literature in the west that deals with class and race. military, theys. had to create a summary of findings based on all of the interrogations that the u.s. counterintelligence corps was , and while returning pows they had to publish a report. in the report, it's very clear the thing that is puzzling them the most is the oriental

interrogator. thatsay while it's true some physical measures were employed, these consisted chiefly of isolation and a small space, a few sharp blows, relatively mild beatings, and this all far it's fun -- this tortures far short of commonly associated with oriental captivity. here, what's troubling the military officials is that if the chinese and north korean are asgation rooms described, up carious proximity -- a precarious proximity occurs between the interrogation rooms of the americans and the north .oreans and the chinese it's a lesson in the anatomy of subduction and subversion and the art used in oriental

interrogation techniques were not outright torture, but were not rational and appealed to basic desires. the target of desires is key to understanding how race and class played an important role in the reliance on the idea of brainwashing. the targets were usually soldiers of color or from the working class. indeed, the three p.o.w. singled out from the u.s. military as potential menaces to the u.s. included an african-american, a filipino, and a japanese-american. the u.s. military attempted to astray u.s. nationalism irrational desire. thus, the utility of the frame of brainwashing. the investigation report juxtaposes this with what they considered rational behavior exhibited by pows in the camps.

klan.ample, the ku klux the u.s. military evaluation of all the interrogations concludes organization, which was formed in most of the camps and which included a few well-meaning individuals who sent anonymous notes with a also administered to progressives and informers. when an american pow like african-american clarence adams, one of the 21 who decided to stay in china, when he announces after signing the cease-fire that he is not repatriating to the u.s. as an act of protest against jim crow in america, you can understand how the experience of threatening violence by white supremacy was neither a threat nor distant for

american pows in camps along the river. glance, it appears the incorrectlyy theorizes the oriental interrogator, but i think the deeper anxiety at the heart of the inquiry was that the oriental interrogator might have correctly theorized the american p.o.w., soldier, or citizen. fear,t, the underlying whatne question, would be if the oriental new the american better than he did himself? in all of u.s. foreign policy history, this is -- the korean what ishe catalyst for often called the blueprint of the national security state for u.s. cold war ambitions.

a statement made by secretary of 1953,dean atkinson in reflecting back on u.s. involvement on the korean thensula into 1950, and quote goes, and i think a few of know, "korea came along and saved us." impetus tous the .mplement korea moved a great many things from the realm of theory and right into the realm of actuality and urgency. remarkable about these lines of interrogators as pows is the shift on global politics during the korean war. through the interrogation room, both ordinary and exceptional, we see how individual persons

became the terrain for warfare -- in the mid 20th century during the postcolonial war that was sufficiently not a war. the interrogation room, we can extend the significance of the war much further than it being a one time flashpoint. interrogation also was not a one-time event. it was a landscape people had to navigate over and over again. we can extend the history of 1952 the intelligence and interrogation networks ic,blished by the u.s. north korea, the japanese californiacamps in and beyond, but also someone like clarence adams who opted to stay in china. he decides to come back to the new -- to tennessee.

he is hounded by the fbi. he is called before the house un-american activities committee. he is hounded by the kkk. he's unable to find work in .emphis he sets up a chops of a restaurant in memphis. -- chop suey restaurant in memphis. where is the ongoing korean war and its legacy in our every day? thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you so much. now, we open for comments and questions, ground rules are simple. please wait until you are called on. wait for the microphone to reach you.

identify yourself before you ask the question. start ask the cochair to with what is perhaps the basic , to elaborate on some of the themes of the talk that you go into a great deal in your and thee meaning behind uses to which voluntary repatriation is put. could you take us a little bit arrivedo how the u.s. at this policy that turns out to be so sticky in negotiation? what informed that thinking? ?hat is it really about the role of individualism where the individual can define vis-a-vis the state where he or .he wants to go and it's a double edge sword. at the end of the paper, it talks about those from the american side who do not go back either, and this proves to be a

propaganda bonanza for north korea. somethinged off as the americans were really pushing ended up hurting them in the propaganda realm. >> thank you. so, the voluntary repatriation historians have thought about this is a real propaganda ploy, and it is. however, it really touches upon where the war is called a police action and not really a war. conductinghat intervention on behalf of an individual on the ground is perhaps the element here where the force of

, they are not going to be considered official wars , but they are missions on behalf of an individual on the ground. 1952, this is a moment where that kind of hallmark happens. also for the voluntary , they areon proposal thinking about the p.o.w. because they are looking ahead to the san francisco peace treaty conference. there are concerns globally that the u.s. does not have the same kind of support as it did in 1945. p.o.w., ano create a individual who the u.s. was , this was going to be considered a possible power and u.s.

promises of liberalism. >> thank you. lots of material here. let me start off by asking a little bit about your sources. the colton international history project is obsessed with archival sources. we are going to hear a little more about the archival source for your work. maybe you can tell us how you came to the subject. i came to the book through the archives.

i knew that going and i wanted to write a history of the korean war that was more bottom-up than top-down. as a second generation korean american, i was obsessed not inis war, but it was textbooks. it was not spoken about in my family. but it was everywhere. i understood it was a huge part of why we're in the united states. so thinking through how global geopolitics, which we often think about is happening at very elite levels, that actually ordinary people are navigating and understanding global .eopolitics themselves interrogation became a place to that navigation.

because i wanted to have a startedp perspective, i with the inspector general of the u.s. army who investigates soldier complaints. i am focused, as i think we all would be, on the content of interrogation reports and summaries. and then one day i noticed that interrogator was miyamoto. that's when i realized that i had entirely taken for granted what was happening in the interrogation room, what language it was in. they sounded like japanese american names. entireso opened up an line of inquiry for me.

i am lookingime, for different kinds of interrogation reports, having a sense of, for example, there are investigation case files into the camps. there are over 300 of them in terms of investigations into murder, suicide, harm, injury. that became one place to sort of understand what was happening in the pow camps. doing that clear by is that the u.s. military interrogation room was not the only time a p.o.w. would be interrogated. it's very important for me in of book to show an ecosystem interrogation, where you would have paramilitary youth groups organized in the pow camps and creating their own interrogation

rooms. something about that density of experience and how people are negotiating that was very important. another thing was a lot of s, asom of information act you know from your work at the national security archives. what happened with the work of archivists at the national years, overter nine 1000 interrogation case files and the u.s. counterintelligence corps interrogating u.s. pows returning from north korea and chinese pow camps about their experiences of interrogation, so it was a roomful of bins. i decided ok, if i really go through and see certain kinds of

patterns or things that are surprising, because there is a lot of space for u.s. pows coming back, they know if they say anything coming back at all sympatheticd been or really learned something, from chinese instructors at the camps, they could be marked for the rest of their lives. however, many prevalent things came to the fore and that's what i was really looking at. >> let's open it up. who would like to start? hold on. the microphone is coming. was there any fallout from the u.s. experience of involuntary repatriation after world war ii? myself that very same

question. assume it you would is truman's concern over that very question that spurs involuntary repatriation proposals. however, when you look at psp decision-making, this is less about what is happening in terms of western europe and the creatingand much more an individual or a subject that is going to rally and american consensus for u.s. involvement, continued involvement in the korean war. >> i am from the carnegie

endowment for peace. thank you for your information. an inside about not just political decisions but also the human beings and interrogators. -- in 1953n was made , the south korean president decided to release many anti-communist pows from korea. it's not about repatriation but political decisions. it would become the fundamental for relations between the two countries. what do you think about his decision? i have an entire chapter dedicated to that question. it's a very important question. be soose who might not

familiar with all of this, because the south korean military was under the aegis of the u.s. and united nations was no southe korean delegate at the table. really use the pow issue articulate certain of u.s. limits in terms ambitions vis-a-vis what was happening in the korean conflict. it's also an important thing you bring up. -- so, itcides to basically happens at midnight, right? it's midnight and the south korean military all over the peninsula at different camps cut .pen barbed wire fences it's the anti-communist pows who come out.

it's the story of the moment that this is sigman reid being nationalistic, etc., but if you look closely at who is helping coordinate that very mission, let's say, there are anti-communist south korean youth groups who have organized , and theyse pow camps have the same history as the anti-communist youth groups like the young men's association who were very close in working with u.s..s. pic during the military operation. on the one hand, it's a continuation of that kind of close collaboration and the kind of power that it really shows how much power paramilitary had occupation, and they are now considered an

extension of his own military. doing that was an assertion of his own kind of sovereignty over his own military. >> i am a junior scholar here at the wilson center. recastingask about repatriation as voluntary. i have been working for a , and i wanted to could talk about the legitimizingd intervention and repatriation at

the geneva refugee convention in 1961, and if there are direct to laterns repatriation regimes on a global voluntaryd on repatriation. >> thank you so much. one of the surprising things when you go a little further into, for example, something like the red cross archives, with the discussion around the 1949 geneva convention, there was a whole discussion, absolutely, about repatriation post-1945.oldiers the u.s. delegate and soviet opted not to allow

voluntary repatriation. mandatory repatriation had to be the case. case -- corian war case, it korean war gets a little difficult to peel back the layers. voluntary,ssue about individual choice, insight being a cover -- ends up being a cover for what is actually happening on the ground. parallel is not operating as a discrete boundary between two separate states in two separate goals. what's really happening is on -- powsnd, people themselves are arguing that actually, we appeared w's. our state has a kind of claim to us -- we are pows.

our state has a kind of claim to us. and the choice continues, the 38th, what parallel has thrown into relief. peninsulathe korean at that point thinks decolonization has actually finished. there is no agreement about what liberated, sovereign, post -- statekorean status is. by moving to voluntary and individual choice, it really bypasses a more critical, structural, imperial element of everyone's experience. >> i'm a little confused.

in your talk you talk about the japanese interrogators who were american. were the same people interrogating both camps in the north and south, and you talked the 21 who decided not to repatriate to the u.s. how many on the other chose not to be repatriated? >> let me start with the numbers question. numbers question doesn't quite get at full story. pows, those who could theyriate to north korea, repatriated over 90%. you could say the same thing in terms of south korea. the propaganda win for the

is more in terms of chinese pows. however, historian named david chang is coming out with a book specifically looking at the chinese pow experiences. he discusses about how the not test whether or not to go to china at the end -- about the choice of whether or not to go to china at the end of the cease-fire was very much on the political line that had been built in in the communities. for the interrogators so, the japanese-american interrogators were working for the u.s. military. the u.s. military, because of chinese and then asian exclusion the 1800s,d in there's not a large korean american community to draw upon

.nce the korean war breaks out that's why they turn to the japanese-americans, because they reason that well, korea was colonized under the japanese. many of them probably remember japanese. perhaps they would talk in japanese. that's why they turned to the japanese-americans. ask them to quite a few were drafted for the war. as you can imagine, for korean pows about five years after liberation, they are not necessarily so keen on speaking japanese in the interrogation room, but that's kind of the larger structural reason why the u.s. turned to japanese-americans.

>> were you able to find any related to the rationale? >> yes. it does appear in documents. there is a whole discussion again, you mentioned the racial hierarchy that's .appening the japanese-american interrogator was not considered asbe as loyal or as reliable a white caucasian interrogator, but the japanese-american interrogator was more loyal and reliable than a korean civilian translator, so you would always see a kind of matrix of different configurations of people being employed for the interrogations. >> thank you.

>> thanks for that really interesting introduction. first of all, for me, it was so fascinating to hear from your research, this interesting dimension about ethnicity, japanese interrogators, multiple both at theaning, individual level and what that meant for the state, absolutely fantastic. found that this is a massive contribution. of all these big themes, what is your take away? i get that it is a contribution to knowledge and we are looking complicated relationship

between the individual and the interrogator, and this brings a whole different level of peace, and iar and get that almost on a sort of truism level, the policy of and some level of hope would support the ideology that people believed in , that north koreans were all all of those things which quite rightly challenge , but what isiews your big take away from this, as howthese insights apply to

we think, for instance, knowledge gained from defectors -- for instance, about knowledge gained from defectors? what is the big take away? once i goty for me, deep inside the writing with all the research, one of the things that really came to the fore for me was writing a history of the korean war and taking very seriously the stakes of decolonization, and not necessarily being just within the cold war binary of the u.s. and soviets. point,probably at this it seems kind of obvious once you're on the ground, right? in. i was really interested first of all, when you think

rooms, a lotgation of the outrage coalesces around torture. i was much more interested in figuring out what kind of doescape, let's say, interrogation actually create on the ground in terms of warfare and people's experiences? as i was going further and further into that, i then realized that ok, interrogation rooms and the kind of reliance person, theidual interrogation room is not supposed to produce information. it's supposed to produce a subject -- a certain kind of subject. -- a certain kind of project. and the u.s. is absolutely right there in terms of that project.

there is this self transformation in terms of positioning yourself as an individual vis-a-vis the collective. see is that, what i kind of logic, let's say. you can see that operating also on the level of, for example, the kind of different strategies that start developing. b as they ares really concerned about the pow issue, they are also saying ok, in order to impact what's going on, we are also going to create a leaflet campaign where ground -- wen the will leaflet bomb different civilian sites and people can choose whether or not they leave the site before the bombing happens.

because the u.s. bombing of north korea was so devastating, as i was doing more work to realize the language of how thatness, seeing also helps facilitate the development of something like , this is when i was like, ok, there is something going on here in terms of interrogation rooms, that has to do with the kind of fashioning of warfare that is really a hallmark, i think, of the united states, especially in the latter half of the 20 century.

quick i am -- >> i am a student at george washington university studying international affairs. thank you for being here. i enjoyed your book and i intend to finish it. the colduestion, with war being discussed as a proxy for u.s. interests, i understand that manifested to a certain degree in interrogation rooms because both sides were trying choose theirers to own identity and way of life. could you talk more about how the interrogation rooms in the korean war itself shaped north and south korean identities? colonization,e there were not two koreas. how did interrogations create two koreas?

>> thank you for that question. i think the best way to approach that question is to think about the legacies. the people involved are having to negotiate and anticipate different types of powers. after the war, how will they do that and how does that impact and political relations play out? ,ow, firm -- for south korea one thing i have realized was that forsearch camp, when they were released, they all knew that at some point they wanted

buttay in south korea, there was a lot at stake because being pows, they were always going to be marked as suspicious. for those of them who were not from south korea, they didn't to show other people they were reliably communist or reliably anti-communist. so, one of the things it was very important for me to take a i'm -- so, i mentioned the youth groups. in the p.o.w. camps, they

created almost their own kind of system of interrogation that was in play with u.s. military interrogation. and what began happening was that they incorporated practices . with the high-stakes of thinking about what's happening with -- in the lead up to 1950 under u.s. military occupation, there was unbelievable civilian massacres occurring, and the whole line between how you were treated as a communist or anti-communist was precarious. aws began to use tattooing as way to mark themselves as being reliably anti-communist, so even beyond the barbed wire fence they would be considered anti-communist, or you could look at this practice as a way to possibly punish people and to prevent them from going to the

dprk, to north korea, because they would be tattooed up as such. i bring this up because the way the u.s. military portrayed the tattooing practice was that it was barbaric. they don't understand rational political governance. this is why they are resorting to tattooing. but actually, this is coming out of their experiences under u.s. military occupation and the support of the paramilitary youth groups that extend into the p.o.w. camps of the u.s. -korean war. i know that doesn't quite address the fullness of what you are asking for, but i think that is one way for me to think through how are people -- this is one way we can see people on the ground negotiating and understanding global

geopolitics. according to them, what is the global geopolitics post-cease-fire? and also, according to global geopolitics, what is considered the possible opportunity for thinking about peace on the korean peninsula? >> how much control did the u.s. over theactually have camps themselves? there's a whole operation here with these youth groups. and clearly, they were somewhat allied with the united states. the north koreans, the chinese also control their sectors and discipline their populations. does the united states military impose a greater

degree of control and order because they can't? the flip would be what's going on on the others of the 38th thellel -- other side of 38th parallel. we don't get as clear a picture and what you write about that. but we have different groups of american prisoners. you refer to the kkk disciplining those american pows who might be more sympathetic. clearly, the north koreans and chinese don't have control fully over their p.o.w. population either. so this is just something i was wondering if you could reflect on. >> it's a great question. >> you are right, it doesn't really seem like the u.s. military has that much control, but that's precisely the point. , which hadc

developed incredibly close relationships with these paramilitary youth groups during the u.s. occupation is replicating precisely that relationship here. the u.s. cic, counter intelligence corps, is very much not only in touch with the paramilitary youth groups in the p.o.w. camps, but they have actually placed people there, right? they considered to be important conduits. so, you are right that there is no absolute control at all, but just like during the u.s. military occupation when there wasn't control over the paramilitary youth groups, they would provide the kind of information that i think was something along the lines of only 89 american intelligence

during the available u.s. military occupation, which is just not enough for covering all of north korea. so, they really relied on these groups. another thing is that this also opens up another legacy during the occupation, which is that they u.s. cac helped korean counterintelligence at the end of the occupation, which develops later on into the korean cia. these longer legacies that are and may be the u.s. doesn't control the korean cia deep,, but there is a embedded relationship there. north ofof the u.s. the 38th parallel, the north korean and chinese guards and instructors -- what was so

frustrating for the u.s. military psychiatrist about u.s. pows was that there was no fence around any of these camps near .he ali river -- yalu river they kept asking, why didn't you try to escape? think they might have stuck out a little bit, maybe, if they snuck into a korean village. they were hedging their bets on that one. what's interesting again about the north korean and chinese interrogators and inspectors is that, you are right, they didn't want to have perfect control because at the end -- in the end, it ended up being a project about persuasion and opening a political solidarity, political propaganda. exerted a they had

lot of control, it would've been difficult for them to argue for that. >> you have only been able to touch on some of the many issues in the book. just fyi, the book is available for purchase outside of this room, where you can read about the subjects covered and many more. next monday, october 7 at 4:00 p.m., we welcome paige mcadams -- gage mcadams who will be talking about the global idea of the communist party in a "2019:ation titled melancholy, remorse in a year of anniversaries." thek you to the students of seminar, and of course, thank you to monica kim. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its

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