Did Moon Jae-in, former president of South Korea, call the Korean War a war between the U.S. and China? No, that's not true: In a Facebook post, he was referring to the name of a book titled "1950 U.S.-China War," which was based on a documentary aired by a national broadcaster three years earlier.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by @2songys on June 28, 2023. It opened with a screenshot of a Facebook post by Moon, with three lines from it highlighted and enlarged over the rest of the text. A caption on the top and bottom of it read (translated from Korean to English by Lead Stories staff):
Moon's B.S. summarized: North Korea is not at fault
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Jun 30 17:40:30 2023 UTC)
In the highlighted lines of the post, originally published on the 73rd anniversary of the Korean War, Moon writes (translated from Korean to English by Lead Stories staff):
≪1950 U.S.-China War≫ shows that the Korean War was an international war. It is the geographical condition that is the fate of Korea.
The rest of the text is blurred out in the screenshot, but in the original post, it can be seen that he clearly states it is the title of a book. He gives a quick summary and his recommendation, but does not support or adopt wording as his own or mention North Korea. A full translation of the post by Lead Stories staff is as follows:
The 73rd anniversary of the Korean War.The reason we commemorate a devastating fratricidal war is to learn a lesson from the painful history of tragedy. It is a resolution that there should be no more war on this land.≪1950 US-China War≫ shows that the Korean War was an international war.
From the origins of the war to the armistice, it is a book that shows how the international powers surrounding the Korean peninsula has shaken up our destiny.
It's like a documentary-like book, with visual materials that make it easy to read and immersive.The international forces that played a role in the Korean War is the geopolitical condition that is the fate of Korea. Turning this geopolitical condition into an advantage for us is the most important strategy for national security.
On this anniversary of the Korean War, I recommend this book, with the Korean War in my thoughts.
The video is a clip from an episode of a current affairs commentary program that features a panel of predominantly right-wing pundits that aired on June 27, 2023 on Channel A, a cable TV network. The audio briefly mentions that it is a book recommendation but connects irrelevant pieces of information to make the statement more inflammatory. It says (translated from Korean to English by Lead Stories staff):
Rather than how North Korea attacking South Korea out of its ambition for reunification being the essence of the war, the viewpoint that it was a proxy war between the United States and China that became the fate of Korea has been the subject of much controversy.
The book is based on a documentary aired in July 2020 on the national broadcaster KBS, which reinterpreted the Korean War as the starting point of the U.S-China tensions today. It was written by the same team that produced the documentary.
