A Radical History of the Korean War (CRES 153)

UC Santa Cruz 2026 Summer Session

Online asynchronous lectures + optional synchronous discussion section

In this course, we will examine how the United States, by seizing the Korean War in order to consolidate its global hegemony, created a formidable infrastructure of unfreedom and imperial violence, including the national security state, the military-industrial complex, the Cold War university, and the global empire of bases, all of which persist to this day, haunting U.S. interventionist wars in the present. Through the lens of people's struggles against fascism and imperialism, we will retrieve from history's ashbin the many forms that anti-imperialist opposition to the war have taken, including the international solidarity actions of Black radicals who in the early Cold War era denounced U.S. war intervention as imperialist aggression, linking "police action" in Korea to a rising domestic police state. With guest lectures by historians, culture workers, and antiwar organizers, this course enables us to help build a people's archive of the Korean War.

For more information, please email Christine Hong at cjhong@ucsc.edu.

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About Summer Sessions:

Summer Session is a great way to catch up or get ahead. All students pay the same tuition rate, and this summer you will pay for only 10 credits, no matter how many you take.

Financial aid is available for eligible students — including loans, Summer Pell Grants, and the Summer University Grant.

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Published: Wednesday, May 27, 2026