Books About the Korean War and Its Aftermath

Books About the Korean War and Its Aftermath

This article relates to The Young Will Remember

Eve J. Chung's historical novel The Young Will Remember explores the history of the Korean War through the perspective of a Chinese American journalist who finds herself in North Korean territory after a plane crash. Falling between World War II and the Vietnam War, both of which were heavily publicized in American media, the Korean War has often been referred to from a US perspective as "the forgotten war," though this international conflict is a key part of American history and has never been forgotten by many. The books below provide further exploration of both the war and its ongoing effects.

Skull Water (2023) by Heinz Insu Fenkl

This novel of Fenkl's follows teenage Insu in 1970s South Korea alongside the wartime memories of his "Big Uncle." BookBrowse reviewer Jennifer Hon Khalaf writes, "Skull Water is a particularly complex 'war novel' in that it shows not just the events of the Korean War, but also its impact upon a subsequent generation…Furthermore, the novel touches upon the gendered violence that women suffer during war, as well as the economic implications of rebuilding a country."

The Kinship of Secrets (2018) by Eugenia Kim

This 2018 novel, reviewed by our First Impressions readers, features two sisters who are separated as toddlers: Inja stays in Korea with relatives while her parents move to the United States with their other daughter Miran, intending to return for Inja, but this plan is upended by the outbreak of the Korean War. The girls reunite as teenagers, after having had very different childhoods. Reviewer Wanda K noted, "I found that the novel offered a great opportunity to learn a piece of history through the eyes of people who lived through the era; I was swept up in the family and their attempts to cope with the situation that years of political unrest put them in."

If You Leave Me (2018) by Crystal Hana Kim

Crystal Hana Kim's debut novel tells the story of sixteen-year-old Haemi, who is forced to flee her home after the onset of the war, and finds herself caught between her feelings for a childhood friend, Kyunghwan, and an opportunity for marriage to his wealthier cousin Jisoo. Starting in 1951 and ending in 1968, the book covers both the war and its fallout in Korea.

Haunting the Korean Diaspora (2008) by Grace M. Cho

This sociological exploration of the ongoing traumatic effects of the Korean War on Koreans living in the United States, specifically in terms of sexual relationships between Korean women and American soldiers, won the American Sociological Association's 2010 Asia & Asian America Section Outstanding Book Award. Cho, also the author of the memoir Tastes Like War (2021), examines the overlapping situations of Korean sex workers who served American GIs and Korean military brides.

War Trash (2004) by Ha Jin

In this PEN/Faulkner Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Jin writes about the Korean War from the perspective of a Chinese soldier, a bookish man named Yu Yuan, who fights for North Korean forces and ends up in an American POW camp, where he longs to return to his mother and fiancée in China.

The Foreign Student (1999) by Susan Choi

Choi's first novel tells of a romance between Chang, a Korean refugee and student at a Tennessee college in 1955, and Katherine, a New Orleans heiress. As Chang and Katherine are drawn to one another, they are each dealing with their separate traumas—Chang having experienced the war in Korea and Katherine having been preyed on sexually by an older man beginning at the age of fourteen. The Foreign Student explores trauma in general as well as US imperialism in the larger context of American culture and race relations.

Filed under Reading Lists

This article relates to The Young Will Remember. It will run in the June 10, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.