Re: Korea Divided

[Andrew Frank]

Cynthia, I totally agree! I am a fan of any presenter that uses Choco-Pies as an incentive! I too was very surprised that the Soviets granted the North Koreans so much autonomy and both the Soviets & Americans spent so much time cracking down on suspected "sympathizers" of captialism/communism, respectively. The map that Dr. Jung Kim used I also found very enlightening in explaining the constant shifting of power and how "destined" the war was, with all the factors at play. I think an effective lesson would be having students work to debate who truly was "to blame" for the Korean War (the U.S. for dividing Korea? the USSR for advancing socialism? Korea itself for not forming a coalition government in 1948?). It would help students break their illusion of America constantly being a "benevolent" force in global relations, by revealing America's great instances of ignorance. (A powerful example would be sharing how the U.S. slaughtered a ton of Korean civilians, simply because they couldn't distinguish between North & South Koreans.)