Korean Studies

BOOK REVIEWS133 that affect current environmental problems. There seem to be so many contradictions and tensions overlooked—between Korean and Western values, the layering ofTaoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and Christian belief systems, the emergence of modernist definitions of progress, as well as the long-standing philosophical distinctions between conservation and preservation, between economic growth and development. Moreover, Eder does not relate the environmental predicaments to the issues of sustainable development that many countries have now started to address. The problem of environmental degradation in Korea is complex, and interesting lessons should spring forth from such an analysis. Unfortunately, Eder's book merely scrapes the surface of the problem and provides little, if any, new scholarship on the broader conditions of society in Korea. In the end, Eder places a great deal of faith in nongovernmental organizations and "civic democracy" as Korea's hope for the future. He provides some interesting description and analysis of various organizations, and shows how they have gained prominence in recent years. While the environmental movement has grown somewhat, its popularity seems small in comparison to the public's passion for golf and consumptive lifestyles. The larger looming question, which remains to be answered, is whether the increase in individual freedom and democracy will lead to a strong environmental consciousness and ultimately a cleaner environment. Eder deserves praise for focusing attention on these issues and questions. And, in the end, he is probably correct in observing that "Korea has often been underestimated." Karl E. Kim University of Hawai'i Dark Moon: Eighth Army Special Operations in the Korean War, by Ed Evanhoe. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995. 196 pp. $27.95. White Tigers: My Secret War in North Korea, by Ben S. Malcom with Ron Martz. Washington, D.C: Brassey's, 1996. 244 pp. There is an aspect of warfare, called in current U.S. military parlance "special operations," that involves clandestine actions carried out behind enemy lines. During the Korean War, both sides conducted such operations. Chinese and North Korean agents infiltrated into the south and large bands of guerrillas, most of them the remnants of units cut off during retreat, operated in the southern mountains. South Korea carried out its own program of training and infiltrating agents while the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), receiving 134KOREAN STUDIES, VOL. 21 its guidance from the national level and operating on a regional basis in East Asia, recruited and trained North Korean refugees for insertion into the north to collect intelligence, conduct guerrilla warfare, and assist in recovering aircrews and escaped prisoners of war. Each of the military services had its own program of special operations: the Air Force to recover downed fliers, the Navy to reconnoiter and prepare sites for amphibious landings, and the Army to collect tactical intelligence and to support its ground combat operations. Many of the documents bearing on American military special operations during the Korean War have now been declassified and personal memoirs are beginning to appear. The two books under consideration are among the more useful of these accounts. Both are reliable, readable, and based on personal experience supplemented with reference to the declassified records. The author of Dark Moon, Ed Evanhoe, was assigned to the Eighth U.S. Army's Miscellaneous Group, the staff section that planned and coordinated Army special operations and partisan warfare. He spins a complex tale of overlapping, often poorly coordinated, activities by a multitude of agencies that endured a seemingly endless process of renaming and reorganizing. Although he makes some confusing chronological jumps and provides a maddeningly inadequate index, Evanhoe guides the reader deftly through a labyrinth of units, code names, and command relationships. He describes the CIA's organizational structure in Japan and Korea (although he says little about their actual operations) and touches on U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Korea (ROK) government clandestine activities. But as the subtitle indicates, the focus of the book is on guerrilla warfare directed by the Eighth U.S. Army (the senior United Nations Command ground force headquarters in Korea). That effort consisted initially of short-term infiltrations for intelligence collection and a few commando-style raids. In early 1951, however, after the...