Rather, Cumings places the war as an important landmark in the longer journey both for Korea and the U.S., taking them from where they were nearly a century ago to where they are now.
On the Korean side he illustrates the war as being part of Korea's colonial history with many domestic scars between Japanese resistors and collaborators far from healed by the time the war starts.
On the U.S. side, the role of the military industrial complex and U.S. global military strategy reach their true turning points (with some very interesting asides into U.S. domestic politics and the Red Scare.)
Cumings focuses largely on atrocities his (American) audience is likely unfamiliar with - meaning there is little focus on violence perpetrated by North Korea. I would argue his choices are appropriate given the intention of the book. There is an unfortunate tendency for conversations on this or similar topics to become a numbers competition; to justify one's own side's actions by arguing one's opponents have a higher civilian body count; or more horrifyingly, arguing that calls for justice and recognition use inflated numbers and since other accounts record, say, only hundreds of dead instead of thousands, no response or atonement is necessary.
My reading of this book is not that Cumings is looking for justice or apology on the part of his U.S. readers. Rather, his purpose seems to be reminding his readers of a war that American consciousness has largely forgotten.
