An Ally and Empire

Book excerpt: With this pioneering and ground-breaking work, Prof. Park firmly establishes himself as a leading expert on US-ROK relations in addition to his pre-eminence in the field of modern Korean history. It is a deeply insightful book which reveals the deep and constant involvement of the United States in South Korea's major political events in the context of the Cold War. Avoiding the one-sided perspective of American execution of its Korea policy, Park succeeds in locating reciprocal interactions in mutual relations by fully utilising the vast corpus of historical sources extant in both countries.