Name______
Date______Period______
A Cold War Reading Adventure
Today I’m taking you on a “reading adventure” across the timeline of Korea. Read the instructions carefully; they will guide you from text to text and require you to answer questions about the readings. You’ll notice that some questions are very basic and require only a bullet list, while other questions approach the reading from an unexpected angle and require more thoughtful, complete responses.
Adventure #1: We’ll start out in our lame textbook reading about the basic causes of the conflict. Read pages 773-778 and answer the following questions in the space provided.
1. What action starts the war?
2. Explain how America’s decision to defend South Korea is related to a cartoon of Uncle Sam walking blindfolded across a log.
3. Explain the clash of philosophies between General MacArthur and President Truman after China entered the war. How does this relate to the essay question you answered on your last exam about “rules of war?”
4. What was the status of the borders at the end of the cease-fire? In other words, did anyone gain or lose territory? Explain.
Adventure #2: Now that you have a basic sense of what the war was about, let’s turn to the document set for some deeper analysis. Find the article called “Korea, The Forgotten War.” If you were interested in learning more about the history of the conflict and the nasty conditions in which the Americans fought, you could read the whole article. But I just need you to read the final section called Two Nations, Still at War, and answer the following question:
5. After reading about the options being considered during the Korean War, why might it have been a good thing for humanity’s sake that MacArthur’s philosophy of total war was not pursued?
Adventure #3: Finally, jump to the next article called “Korea’s Dangerous Divide.” The original version of this National Geographic article was about 9 pages in length. Here I’ve included excerpts of the best parts. This article is a first-person account of life at the DMZ some fifty years after the cease-fire. Read these three pages and follow the journalist as he witnesses some of the bizarre and spooky realities of life at one of the world’s most dangerous places. As you read, use the back of this sheet to make a bullet list of the most interesting/memorable/intriguing/impressive details in the article.
Were digging that article? Don’t you wish you could find out more about the DMZ? Well, if you want to read the article in its entirety you can get it from Mr. Sobotta. Also, you can check out National Geographic’s official website for great multimedia exploration of the DMZ
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0307/feature1/index.html