Bruce Cumings
Encyclopedia
Bruce Cumings is the Gustavus F.
and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago
and the chairperson of the history department. He specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international relations
in East Asia
.
volunteer in South Korea
for less than a year before going to Columbia University
in 1968. He joined the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
at Columbia after Mark Selden
formed a chapter there, and published extensively in its journal, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. His father conducted research for the Central Intelligence Agency
. He is married to Meredith Jung-En Woo
the Dean
of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia
. Together they have two teenage sons; additionally, Dr. Cumings has a daughter from his first marriage.
His research focus is on 20th century international history
, United States
and East Asia
relations, East Asian political economy
, modern Korean history, and American foreign relations. He is interested in the "multiplicity of ways that conceptions, metaphors and discourses are related to political economy and material forms of production", and to relations between "East and West".
In summarizing the culpability of various actors for the tragedy of the Korean War
Cumings writes that:
He is presently completing a book entitled Industrial Behemoth: The Northeast Asian Political Economy in the 20th Century, which seeks to understand the industrialization of Japan, both Korea
s, Taiwan
, and parts of China
, and the ways that scholars and political leaders have viewed that development.
Cumings writes in his book North Korea
: The Hermit Kingdom, "I have no sympathy for the North, which is the author of most of its own troubles," but alludes to the "significant responsibility that all Americans share for the garrison state that emerged on the ashes of our truly terrible destruction of the North half a century ago."
In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae Jung Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by South Korea. The award is named in honor of Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President of South Korea
Kim Dae Jung
. The award recognizes Cumings for his "outstanding scholarship, and engaged public activity regarding human rights and democratization during the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship ended in 1987." Around the time when he received his award Cumings met President Kim at his home in Seoul
. "They discussed the North Korean nuclear program, the Korean-American relationship, and what can be done to improve Korean attitudes toward the United States."
Professor Cumings has been a frequent contributor to the New Left Review
. His articles include "The Last Hermit", "The Korean Crisis and the End of ‘Late’ Development", and "The Abortive Abertura: South Korea in the Light of Latin American Experience", and he also written several reviews. In 2003 Cumings alleged that the United States had "occupied" South Korea for 58 years and disputed the contention that North Korea had cheated on the October 1994 Agreed Framework.
Socialist Review
has also praised Cumings' work in "A Different Hymn Sheet" by saying: "This is a good read for anyone looking for an introduction to this member of 'the axis of evil', especially given the lack of books on the subject which aren't hysterical denunciations from the US right or hymns of praise from Stalinists."
, amongst others, has argued that Cumings has a pro-North Korea
bias. Hollander cites Cumings' discussion of the North Korean prison system, noting that "in a triumph of selective perception, he manages to interpret the most damning indictment of the North Korean gulag
available--The Aquariums of Pyongyang
, by Kang Chol-Hwan
and Pierre Rigoulot
--as providing support for his views of the system. As he sees it, the book is 'interesting and believable' because it is not the 'ghastly tale of totalitarian repression that its original publishers ... meant it to be.' But it is precisely and resoundingly that, as any reader without a soft spot for North Korean tyranny would readily discover. Cumings writes that "conditions were primitive and beatings were frequent [in the camp described in that book] but the inmates also were able to improvise much of their upkeep on their own ... small animals could surreptitiously be caught and cooked." He delicately refrains from mentioning that these small animals were mostly rats, and a regular part of the narrator's diet. That book makes abundantly clear that hunger and malnutrition were endemic; inmates stealing food or trying to escape were executed. Cumings also fails to mention these public executions the inmates were obliged to attend, stressing instead that families were commendably kept together and that "death from starvation was rare." In any event, he suggests, these deprivations are put into the proper perspective by our "longstanding, never-ending gulag full of black men in our prisons"--which should disqualify us from "pointing a finger."
Historian Allan Millett has argued that Cumings' "eagerness to cast American officials and policy in the worst possible light, however, often leads him to confuse chronological cause and effect and to leap to judgments that cannot be supported by the documentation he cites or ignores."
Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, professor of North Korean literature B.R. Myers
lambasted Cumings arguing that, in North Korea: Another Country, "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".
Although Cumings has been described as a "revisionist" by Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
scholar Kathryn Weathersby, U of Georgia historian William W. Stueck , New York Times book critic Dwight Garner
, Francis Marion
historian Scott Kaufman, former Bradley
historian Lester H. Bradley, Cal State
history department chair James Matray, and Douglas Macdonald of the Strategic Studies Institute
, Cumings himself has rejected the label.
Gustavus Franklin Swift
Gustavus Franklin Swift founded a meat-packing empire in the Midwest during the late 19th century, over which he presided until his death...
and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and the chairperson of the history department. He specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international relations
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
in East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
.
Biography
In his youth, Cumings was a Peace CorpsPeace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
volunteer in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
for less than a year before going to Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1968. He joined the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars was founded in 1968 by a group of graduate students and younger faculty as part of the opposition to the American war in Vietnam...
at Columbia after Mark Selden
Mark Selden
Mark Selden is a Coordinator of the open access journal The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, and Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton University. He graduated from Amherst College with a major in...
formed a chapter there, and published extensively in its journal, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. His father conducted research for the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
. He is married to Meredith Jung-En Woo
Meredith Jung-En Woo
Meredith Jung-En Woo is the Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. She began her post on June 1, 2008....
the Dean
Dean (education)
In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...
of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
. Together they have two teenage sons; additionally, Dr. Cumings has a daughter from his first marriage.
His research focus is on 20th century international history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
relations, East Asian political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
, modern Korean history, and American foreign relations. He is interested in the "multiplicity of ways that conceptions, metaphors and discourses are related to political economy and material forms of production", and to relations between "East and West".
In summarizing the culpability of various actors for the tragedy of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
Cumings writes that:
He is presently completing a book entitled Industrial Behemoth: The Northeast Asian Political Economy in the 20th Century, which seeks to understand the industrialization of Japan, both Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
s, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, and parts of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, and the ways that scholars and political leaders have viewed that development.
Cumings writes in his book North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
: The Hermit Kingdom, "I have no sympathy for the North, which is the author of most of its own troubles," but alludes to the "significant responsibility that all Americans share for the garrison state that emerged on the ashes of our truly terrible destruction of the North half a century ago."
In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae Jung Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by South Korea. The award is named in honor of Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President of South Korea
President of South Korea
The President of the Republic of Korea is, according to the Constitution of the Republic of Korea, chief executive of the government, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the head of state of the Republic of Korea...
Kim Dae Jung
Kim Dae Jung
Kim Dae-jung was President of South Korea from 1998 to 2003, and the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. He came to be called the "Nelson Mandela of Asia" for his long-standing opposition to authoritarian rule.-Early life:...
. The award recognizes Cumings for his "outstanding scholarship, and engaged public activity regarding human rights and democratization during the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship ended in 1987." Around the time when he received his award Cumings met President Kim at his home in Seoul
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
. "They discussed the North Korean nuclear program, the Korean-American relationship, and what can be done to improve Korean attitudes toward the United States."
Professor Cumings has been a frequent contributor to the New Left Review
New Left Review
New Left Review is a 160-page journal, published every two months from London, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes, it is associated with Verso Books , and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social...
. His articles include "The Last Hermit", "The Korean Crisis and the End of ‘Late’ Development", and "The Abortive Abertura: South Korea in the Light of Latin American Experience", and he also written several reviews. In 2003 Cumings alleged that the United States had "occupied" South Korea for 58 years and disputed the contention that North Korea had cheated on the October 1994 Agreed Framework.
Praise
At the University of Chicago, Cumings "won the John King Fairbank Book Award of the American Historical Association, and the second volume of this study won the Quincy Wright Book Award of the International Studies Association."Socialist Review
Socialist Review
The Socialist Review is the monthly magazine of the British Socialist Workers Party. As well as being printed it is also published online.-Original publication: 1950-1962:...
has also praised Cumings' work in "A Different Hymn Sheet" by saying: "This is a good read for anyone looking for an introduction to this member of 'the axis of evil', especially given the lack of books on the subject which aren't hysterical denunciations from the US right or hymns of praise from Stalinists."
Allegations of a pro-North Korea bias
Cumings has been described as "the left's leading scholar of Korean history" and Paul HollanderPaul Hollander
Paul Hollander is an American scholar, journalist, and conservative political writer. He is known for his criticisms of Communism and left-wing politics. In 1956, he escaped to the west from his native country. He has a Ph.D in Sociology from Princeton University, 1963 and a B.A. from the London...
, amongst others, has argued that Cumings has a pro-North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
bias. Hollander cites Cumings' discussion of the North Korean prison system, noting that "in a triumph of selective perception, he manages to interpret the most damning indictment of the North Korean gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
available--The Aquariums of Pyongyang
The Aquariums of Pyongyang
The Aquariums of Pyongyang, by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, is an account of the imprisonment of Kang Chol-Hwan and his family in the Yodok concentration camp in North Korea....
, by Kang Chol-Hwan
Kang Chol-Hwan
Kang Chol-Hwan is a defector from North Korea. As a child he was imprisoned in the Yodok concentration camp for 10 years; after his release he fled the country, first to China and eventually to South Korea...
and Pierre Rigoulot
Pierre Rigoulot
Pierre Rigoulot is a French historian. The author of L’Antiaméricanisme, he contributed to Stéphane Courtois' The Black Book of Communism and helped Kang Chol-Hwan write The Aquariums of Pyongyang. In 2006, he prefaced France Intox published by Editions Underbahn.-External links:*...
--as providing support for his views of the system. As he sees it, the book is 'interesting and believable' because it is not the 'ghastly tale of totalitarian repression that its original publishers ... meant it to be.' But it is precisely and resoundingly that, as any reader without a soft spot for North Korean tyranny would readily discover. Cumings writes that "conditions were primitive and beatings were frequent [in the camp described in that book] but the inmates also were able to improvise much of their upkeep on their own ... small animals could surreptitiously be caught and cooked." He delicately refrains from mentioning that these small animals were mostly rats, and a regular part of the narrator's diet. That book makes abundantly clear that hunger and malnutrition were endemic; inmates stealing food or trying to escape were executed. Cumings also fails to mention these public executions the inmates were obliged to attend, stressing instead that families were commendably kept together and that "death from starvation was rare." In any event, he suggests, these deprivations are put into the proper perspective by our "longstanding, never-ending gulag full of black men in our prisons"--which should disqualify us from "pointing a finger."
Historian Allan Millett has argued that Cumings' "eagerness to cast American officials and policy in the worst possible light, however, often leads him to confuse chronological cause and effect and to leap to judgments that cannot be supported by the documentation he cites or ignores."
Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, professor of North Korean literature B.R. Myers
Brian Reynolds Myers
Brian Reynolds Myers is an American associate professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea, a contributing editor for the Atlantic, and an opinion columnist for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal...
lambasted Cumings arguing that, in North Korea: Another Country, "Cumings likens North Korea to Thomas More's
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
Utopia
Utopia (book)
Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...
, 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".
Although Cumings has been described as a "revisionist" by Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies , a division of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's leading and most prestigious graduate schools devoted to the study of international affairs, economics, diplomacy, and policy research and...
scholar Kathryn Weathersby, U of Georgia historian William W. Stueck , New York Times book critic Dwight Garner
Dwight Garner (critic)
Dwight Garner is an American journalist, now a literary critic for The New York Times. Prior to that he was senior editor at the New York Times Book Review, where he worked from 1999 to 2009...
, Francis Marion
Francis Marion University
Francis Marion University is a state-supported liberal arts university located six miles east of Florence, South Carolina, USA...
historian Scott Kaufman, former Bradley
Bradley University
Bradley University, founded in 1897, is a private, co-educational university located in Peoria, Illinois. It is a small institution with an enrollment of approximately 6,100 undergraduate and postgraduate students and a full-time faculty of approximately 350....
historian Lester H. Bradley, Cal State
California State University, Chico
California State University, Chico is the second-oldest campus in the twenty-three-campus California State University system. It is located in Chico, California, about ninety miles north of Sacramento...
history department chair James Matray, and Douglas Macdonald of the Strategic Studies Institute
Strategic Studies Institute
The Strategic Studies Institute is the U.S. Army's institute for strategic and national security research and analysis. It is part of the U.S. Army War College. SSI conducts strategic research and analysis to support the U.S. Army War College curricula, provides direct analysis for Army and...
, Cumings himself has rejected the label.
External links
- Faculty Profile on the University of Chicago's website.
- Endgame in Korea - 2002 article by Cumings
- Archive of articles published in the The Nation.
- Wrong Again - 2003 article about US policy on North Korea published in London Review of Books
- "We look at it and see ourselves" - Review of two North Korea books, December 15, 2005. London Review of BooksLondon Review of BooksThe London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
. (Accessed January 1, 2007). - Audio interview with Electric Politics June 16, 2006, 98 minutes.
- Interview at the Pritzker Military LibraryPritzker Military LibraryThe Pritzker Military Library is a research library for the study of military history in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded in 2003 by COL James N. Pritzker, IL ARNG to be a non-partisan institution for the study of "the citizen soldier as an essential element for the preservation of...
April 24, 2008.