In response to this Atlantic Magazine article on Korea’s Great Beloved Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il, Chalmers Johnson (serious author of a number of books on foreign and defense policy) writes a letter to the editor, copied here entire:
The sheer viciousness of B. R, Meyers’s personal attack on Bruce Cumings (“Mother of All Mothers,” September Atlantic) moves The Atlantic ever closer to the standards of fascist journalism. Cumings is easily the most distinguished historian working on modern Korean affairs in the United States today. To suggest differences in political approach to North Korea between Cumings and Selig Harrison is simply embarrassing, since both authors come to the same conclusions. Myers’s condemnation of any attempts to understand North Korea puts him in a class with Undersecretary of State John Bolton and other know-nothings who have been in change of American foreign policy since 2001. Even though George W. Bush told Bob Woodward that he loathes Kim Jong Il, it was Cumings who first noted what Bush and Kim have in common: neither would have amounted to anything without their daddies.
The article preview snippet comments all by itself:
bq. “Instead Cumings went on to write an account of postwar Korea that instances the North’s “miracle rice,” “autarkic” economy, and prescient energy policy (an “unqualified success”) to refute what he calls the “basket-case” view of the country. With even worse timing than its predecessor, Korea’s Place in the Sun (1997) went on sale just as the world was learning of a devastating famine wrought by Pyongyang’s misrule. The author must have wondered if he was snakebit. But now we have a new book, in which Cumings likens North Korea to Thomas More’s Utopia, and this time the wrongheadedness seems downright willful; it’s as if he were so tired of being made to look silly by forces beyond his control that he decided to do the job himself. At one point in North Korea: Another Country (2004) we are even informed that the regime’s gulags aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be, because Kim Jong Il is thoughtful enough to lock up whole families at a time.”
Just another useful idiot shilling for evil regimes – but that species is a dime a dozen in Western academia.
And of course, nothing like Chalmers Johnson to demonstrate in public exactly how unwise it is to leave history to the “professional” historians. If this is the best they’ve got to offer, maybe we ought to be rethinking the field.
Kudis to The Atlantic for exposing Cumings.
Having read Johnson’s book, I have to say that I find his work pretty thinly sourced and poorly argued. This letter is also pretty odd.
I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, but isn’t it premature to condemn Cumings on the basis of a contested review, without reading the primary material?
Andrew- What was cited in Joe’s post was not failure of interpretation, which might be forgiven in any historian, but rather failure to gather objective facts correctly, which since the days of Herodotus has been the prime duty of a historian. That is why simply citing a few zingers like Joe did is sufficient backup to AL’s original to convince me.
These are errors on the order of magnitude such as characterized history as practised under Stalin, where political opponents conveniently were erased from Soviet history with regularity by Stalin’s historical hacks.
I’m not condemning Cumings (although the points in the review, if true, mark him as indefensible…); I’m amazed that someone who claims to be a serious commentator on American issues would wrote a letter like this. Johnson is channelling Hesiod, and the next time someone brings up one of his books as a basis for argument, they’ll find themselves somewhat discounted…
A.L.
Goes to show Hitler had at least one good idea. Send academics to the Eastern Front.
‘Adolph’ –
Can we send the trolls first?
A.L.
“Myers’s condemnation of any attempts to understand North Korea …”
What I don’t understand is how Chalmers Johnson, who frets himself to death over “Militarism”, can have warm sticky feelings for a slave nation that spends a whopping 30% of GNP on its military.
Coming up with alternative historical explanations of misunderstood situations is always historically exciting, assuming that you have your facts straight. Recall the Emory fellow who made up the gun ownership data in order to put out his views on gun ownership trends and implications across the whole of US history? Same difference.
“Even though George W. Bush told Bob Woodward that he loathes Kim Jong Il, it was Cumings who first noted what Bush and Kim have in common: neither would have amounted to anything without their daddies.”
“Even though” ! 🙂 “Even though Warum told Joe Blow that he loathes Kim Jong Il, it was Cumings who first noted what Warum and Kim have in common: both eat breakfast in the morning.” Uh oh, Warum’s in trouble… 🙂
A bit of rather involved logic here: what has W got to do with anything here? Talk about “the sheer viciousness of personal attack”. 🙂 Otoh, it kinda dovetails with Myers’s line “… Cumings is more a hater of U.S. foreign policy …” in the sense that Johnson’s incoherent ramblings betray someting similar.
Btw, the review itself is available here.
The Present Day Walter Duranty? I presume?
Tom Roberts,
…which since the days of Herodotus has been the prime duty of a historian.
You haven’t read Herodotus apparently. 🙂
Joe Katzman,
…but that species is a dime a dozen in Western academia.
Hyperbole is apparently your forte.
___________________________
Chalmers Johnson is not a historian. He is a political scientist (he was in Berkley’s Political Science department after all).
Now, whatever might be said of his current work (which as far as I can tell is far outside of what he has traditionally done, and fairly polemical in nature), his book MITI and the Japanese Miracle remains a must read for understanding modern Japan.