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Patrick Chung, "Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
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I was groomed to become one of his wives. This week on Disorder, the podcast that orders the disorder, an Epstein survivor tells me her story and what justice looks like for her. I want to see action, and I am demanding action. Do not just talk the talk. You need to start walking the walk now. It's one of the most powerful interviews I've ever done in over 20 years as a journalist. Search disorder in your podcast app to listen right now. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Patrick Chung about his book titled Standardizing Empire, the US Military, Korea and the Origins of Military Industrial Capitalism. Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2026. This book helps us understand where today's US led capitalist world economy comes from. And so obviously we have to go back in time from today. And the book takes us into the Cold War period, kind of the early Cold War. Right. So we're looking, for example, at the Korean War, which happens in the 50s, and there's a bunch of things that happen there. Obviously, yes, it's a war. There's like kinetic firefighting, battlefield things going on. But as this book explains, there's a lot of other things happening that maybe don't get as much sort of media attention around construction projects, around the ways in which goods and services are produced and contracted and moved around that actually have a massive effect, even if they do kind of go under the radar for a lot of attention. So clearly we have a number of things we get to discuss. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Hi, Miranda. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to connect with you and the readers. And I'd like to say that was a really lovely introduction to what I'm trying to do in the book.
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Well, I'd like to stay on the theme of introductions, in fact, with you introducing yourself a little bit, and then maybe tell us about why you decided to write this and kind of any more particular questions you're asking within this project. I mean, give us your introduction.
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Yeah. So I am an assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland, College park, where I teach both military history as well as global US History. And I think both of those things touch upon sort of my research interests to give you a little sense of the origins of this book. I will admit I'm pretty surprised that I ended up focusing so much on the US Military originally. I was interested in telling a story about post war South Korea and the post war South Korean economic miracle. I had more of a diplomatic focus. So I thought I would be looking at not the U.S. military, but sort of U.S. sort of diplomats as well as U.S. sort of non state actors in the kind of civilian realm of things. But what really happened over the course of my research is that the US Military's presence in Korea. Korea really became inescapable in all of the records that I looked at. And once I started making these connections to the US Military, it just kind of spread everywhere. In a lot of ways, I was surprised just how often the US Military's sort of influence were felt in places I never expected. Right. So I'm happy to talk about a lot of the examples that I cover in the book, but one that, like immediately struck me is being in South Korea and thinking about my time in South Korea is the way in which the highways look so much like those in the United States. And it became so clear to me as I looked at the history of the U.S. military, its sort of involvement in the Korean War, but also just as critically, its subsequent stationing there. The US Military has been put permanently deployed in South Korea since the outbreak of the Korean War. So sort of, given its physical presence there, the outsized influence that US Military sort of strategic priorities, as well as I'll talk about more funding for South Korean development, it makes sense, those sort of connections. So I think a pleasant surprise. But as I got more into it, sort of the US Military just being everywhere in South Korea in a lot of ways influenced sort of the direction of the project.
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That is interesting. It's always intriguing to hear about kind of how projects develop, because, I mean, no finished book sort of ends up in the same place that people think it will when we start investigating. So thank you for that introduction there. And I think that lets us then get into the beginning of the book. And so you start the book with the Han River Bridge incident. Can you maybe give us a brief outline of what this is and crucially, why you decided to start the book with this?
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Yeah, of course. So shortly after the Korean War began with the sort of entry of North Korean troops into South Korean territory, the city of Seoul was pretty quickly sort of overrun by North Korean forces. So sort of in the early morning hours of June 28, 1950, the decision was made to start blowing the sort of river crossings across the Han river as a way to sort of slow down the North Korean advance as well as get South Korean sort of Civilians and troops further south behind sort of the front lines. It was sort of chaotic, as you can imagine. The sort of initial attack by the North Korean forces was not something that was anticipated or sort of the scale of the attack wasn't anticipated. For years at that point, there had been sort of skirmishes along the border, but the sort of protracted nature of this attack was unexpected, particularly by sort of the. The journalists that ended up covering it. So I opened the book with the recollections and articles produced by US Correspondents who were stationed in Seoul and actually took place part in this evacuation. And one of the key kind of sort of incidents in the evacuation was a miscommunication that led the main sort of bridge out of the city of Seoul, the Han River Bridge, to be exploded before it was supposed to be. So there were hundreds of deaths, as well as sort of a lot more people left behind on the wrong side of the bridge than originally anticipated. For me, I started with this incident because I think encapsulates and touches upon a lot of the key themes of the book, just sort of broadly speaking, I think the Han river has become kind of closely associated with the South Korean economic miracle. So one of the titles of this historical phenomenon is called the Miracle on the Han river, which is a riff off the miracle on the Rhine river, which speaks to these rapid economic developments that occurred in South Korea and Germany respectively. So in a lot of ways, I kind of want to immediately kind of sort of riff off of that kind of larger historical kind of sort of nomenclature, but also I think kind of deeper into it, kind of looking at the sort of one, the destruction of the bridge, but also the subsequent revolution, construction of the bridge. Highlights on one of the key kind of themes or threads that I trace throughout the book is the way that the sort of the U.S. military, I think one of the key transitions it makes during the Cold War is becoming a permanent global force. So what I mean by that is not just the fact that the US Military has bases everywhere. I think that's something that people don't miss. That's sort of something that many people know. But what I think is often overlooked is the large amount of economic processes required to sustain that global presence. Right. And one of the things that I sort of noted is how much the US military was involved in Korea, around the world in these large infrastructure development projects. So these included things like the Han River Bridge. Right. And sort of the reason is pretty straightforward, right? You need to move large amounts of people, goods, war material, in order to sustain a permanent military presence anywhere. So I think the Han River Bridge also kind of represented an opportunity to look at this process whereby the US Military wasn't just fighting wars. Right. It wasn't just about combat. It was about this sort of logistical side of things that involved critical infrastructures like the bridge. And then I think the final thread that the Han River Bridge incident allows me to sort of tap into, and it's related to the second point that I raised about infrastructure development, is the fact that these projects, reconstruction projects, help us understand this vast network of contractors that came to take part in the US Military effort to kind of maintain its global posture. Right. And the Han River Bridge in particular was worked on by one of the key kind of companies and contractors I follow in the book, which is the Hyundai Construction Company. So many people listening probably associate it with automobiles, and that's definitely kind of become a major part of that company's sort of sort of global profile. But it really began as a construction company and specifically a construction company for military projects. Right. And during the Korean War, it was able to really sort of transform itself from a very sort of mom and pop shop. It actually, before the invasion was sort of consisted of an auto garage, an auto repair garage, and it really was during the Korean War that moved into construction. Over the course of sort of Korean War combat, which takes place around three years, it becomes one of the larger construction companies in South Korea. Korea. And sort of off the sort of momentum generated by those wartime US Military contracts, Hyundai actually finishes the reconstruction of this bridge. Right. So I think, sort of talking about the Han River Bridge and its subsequent kind of role in Hyundai's history, as well as that of sort of South Korea more broadly, were kind of the reasons why I thought it was a good way to start the book.
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Book, yeah. It certainly brings together a whole number of different things that I'd love to get into in a bit more detail. So the first being, of course, that, yes, obviously that particular bridge is specific to Korea. But this idea you're talking about, that kind of the military, for example, bases might be the most sort of top layer of visibility, but there's all these things sort of happening underneath. So, for example, if we look at the mutual security program that you also go on to discuss that, I mean, kind of, again, top layer says it's about mutual security. Right. But that there's all these other things underneath it. Can you tell us about those?
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Yeah, of course. So the mutual security program emerged during sort of the latter phases of the Korean War, and In a lot of ways, its main purpose was to streamline US Foreign assistance programs. And I think one of the things that I get into a little bit more in the book, but I think might be a little too much for our conversation, is that this is a very sort of complicated process that has different manifestations depending on where the assistance is going. But if you look at sort of the kind of foundations of the mutual security program, the goal was to reorient and streamline U.S. foreign assistance through the flow of U.S. tax dollars abroad to ensure kind of the militarization and national security capabilities of the United States and its allies. So mutual security, as the term kind of suggests, sort of prioritizes sort of strategic and sort of, by that, I mean sort of military sort of priorities when it comes to U.S. foreign assistance. So what I found to be so significant in South Korea is that a lot of sort of what would previously have been separated into military assistance and sort of civilian developmental projects actually kind of became streamlined under this sort of mutual security framework. Right. So what sort of is happening then in Korea? But also I use Korea to talk about sort of the globe more broadly is the way in which sort of US Foreign assistance becomes militarized. A lot of the projects that are actually receiving funding are kind of being justified by sort of its ability to sort of enhance either the US Military's capabilities to operate in Korea or whatever nation receiving mutual security program funding, or the capabilities of sort of the allied militaries involved. Right. So I think in a lot of ways, what the mutual security program does is really kind of develops and shifts economic development priorities towards those that are aligned with the sort of US Military and kind of, more broadly speaking, the US Military's sort of deployment and transformation as a global force. And I think kind of to give. I know that's, like, very abstract, but I think what I kind of do in the book is, like, show that what this means, I think on the kind of initial surface level, makes it seem like I'm talking about kind of funding just military bases and weapons transfers or kind of projects that have an immediate kind of military valence to them. But what I found is in places like South Korea, but in much of the world. So if I want to situate you in kind of time and place here, it's sort of less than a decade after the end of World War II. So sort of much of the world is sort of recovering still from the kind of devastation of the war. So sort of what sort of the US Military presence and sort of the kind of ability, what it's entering to in a lot of ways are kind of capital poor, sort of under kind of developer reconstructing sort of economies, right? So what's happening in a lot of ways is the US Military as it's globalizing, it's sort of finding itself kind of entering into areas desperate for investment, desperate for infrastructure, desperate for sort of products, right? That sort of the US Military's sort of expansion is sort of enabling, right? So in South Korea, this means that Mutual Security Program funding is going not only towards sort of the actual construction of US Military bases, but also a lot of the sort of critical utilities infrastructures that will enable these bases to operate, right? So one of the things I look at extensively is the recreation of water systems in South Korea, right? So if you think about a military base, it's really not of much use if it's not going to be able to get a steady supply of water, right? And what happens in Korea following the Korean War is sort of a real deficit when it comes to the ability to produce a consistent supply of clean water. So what you see is a US Mutual Security Program funding kind of coming in, rebuilding a lot of these systems, right? Rebuilding sort of water plants as well as sort of water kind of distribution systems. And what sort of once I kind of went down that rabbit hole is you kind of see just how far reaching this process is because you have a waterworks project that requires all sorts of different sort of materials. The one I focus on is pipes. But sort of the US Military as kind of one of the largest kind of overseers of these types of projects, not only in Korea, but in much of the world following sort of World War II and then the Korean War, the military in essence becomes sort of the world's largest kind of consumer of sort of countless products, right? That would go into sort of waterworks projects, road paving projects, port redevelopments. So in a lot of ways, sort of those two things together, kind of the US Military becoming a global kind of actor, sort of creating this military base network alongside the kind of funding reorganization that occurred under the Mutual Security Program, in a lot of ways made this sort of US Military at the center of sort of a new global economic system that's sort of this huge circulation of capital as well as goods, contracts, what have you, right? And sort of that is what I kind of entitle military industrial capitalism, which is in the title, like this new economic system that emerges in a lot of ways to cater specifically to the US Military's transformed role and sort of global physical presence during the Cold War.
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that's a really helpful phrase to explain kind of this network and the dominance really that you're explaining was a huge feature of this. So if we look then at kind of factors that are influencing kind of what the US Military is doing and what some of these decisions are being made. Obviously, as you mentioned, there's a clear kind of military aspect to it, but obviously also a political one. We've talked about it in terms of sort of geopolitics so far. Is there also a US Domestic political angle? I mean, for example, do presidential elections or congressional pressure, does that impact any of these things happening abroad?
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Yeah, and I think that's what's so interesting about this story and how in a lot of ways this is kind of a story that is just as much as about sort of the United States as Korea. I think one of the things that a lot of people kind of assume about the Cold War and I kind of fell into this as well. Going into my research is sort of seeing equating the Cold War as a blank check for all things US Military. Right. It's sort of this idea that kind of the Cold War happen. The US Military in a lot of ways could do whatever it wanted, particularly in terms of budgets, as an oversimplification, but that really wasn't the case. I think what struck me is how contested this process was within the United States. Even kind of after kind of the first initial kind of successes of the Korean War, sort of during sort of the initial deployment of the UN sort of the Incheon sort of landing and sort of the UN it advance far into North Korea, especially sort of after the entry of Chinese Communist forces sort of in October 1950, and sort of the devolution of the conflict into a stalemate. You see sort of immediately kind of public backlash against not only the war. I think in a lot of ways there was a specific kind of opposition to spending so much money in Korea, which is a place that very few people in the United States had much of a familiarity with, but I think in a broader sense, kind of a backlash against this huge increase in military spending that the war kind of unlocked. Right. And then I think I kind of want to bring us back a little bit to that immediate post World War II period. Kind of before Cold War tensions really escalated in the year or so in the years leading up to the Korean War, there was very much sort of this excitement amongst the American public to return back to normal. Right. I think World War II represented this sort of massive transformation in US society and the US economy that's sort of geared towards supporting the military in the war effort. And kind of with the end of World War II, there was this idea that there would be a back to sort of a peacetime economy, Right. Where sort of the military wasn't so central. So I think that sort of thread remains even after the Korean War, even after sort of the Cold War becomes more thoroughly entrenched. There's sort of throughout the process, particularly around presidential elections, this becomes really apparent when kind of military spending is seen as a kind of form of overreach by the federal government. I think one of the things that helps Eisenhower in his sort of of initial election was through the promise to get out of Korea. Right. And what he sort of pursues during his presidency is to not necessarily do away with the Cold War sort of military buildup, but sort of do so in a more efficient manner. And I think that leads me to Talk about and sort of following some of these threads, sort of this sort of push and pull between sort of supporting the US Military's globalization and sort of pushing back against sort of how central a role it plays in the increasingly plays in the U.S. sort of economy, U.S. society was sort of efforts by the U.S. military to impose standards. So this is another thing I was very surprised played such a prominent role in the book. And it sort of actually made its way way into the title of the books. Standards are something that sort of you might also know as specifications where US Military contracts. So the US Military, as I talked about in sort of providing much of this sort of infrastructural and developmental support for its operations abroad and for its allies, we're signing kind of countless contracts for various goods, various services. So in South Korea, where you had sort of complete devastation when it came to sort of its ability to produce sort of construction materials, it had to import everything, right? So the US Military was overseeing this massive sort of import program where it was signing contracts with countries around the world to bring various goods like nails, pipes, other construction equipment, and at the same time, also signing contracts with service providers like construction companies. And what I sort of notice about sort of what changed over time in South Korea is that you get this increasing focus on two things in contracts. One is sort of price, sort of the ability to sort of provide goods at scale for the lowest price is something that you see often kind of emphasized by US Military sort of procurement officers. So those are the US Military personnel in charge of contracting. So you have sort of an increased focus on price and also like an increased focus on sort of enforcing standards. Right? So standards are kind of can be seen as a way of or guidelines or sort of a contract to provide a good or service to a specific type of sort of specification. So sort of certain size, certain performance level, right? So it's just a minimum requirement for a contract to be fulfilled. And what's so important about this and sort of bringing it back to your question about sort of local and domestic politics in the United States is with the election of Eisenhower, you have this emphasis on efficiency and how it sort of enters into my story is that the US Military responds by kind of streamlining its contracting processes, right? So one sort of obvious way is that it sort of opens bidding and awards contracts to the companies that could sort of produce at scale for the cheapest price. But it also sort of manifests itself in this attempt by the US Military to standardize its procurement of all sorts of goods. And services. Services. Right. So sort of using standards as a way to ensure a certain level of quality, but also what you see happening kind of on the other side is sort of the enforcement of standards leads to kind of these transformations in how goods are produced and services are provided. Where like you see kind of a centralization occurring in a lot of industries as they sort of become sort of ingrained and enmeshed in the US contracting practice. Right. And in the long run what happens is sort of the centralization that you see occurring amongst contractors actually I think sort of benefits the US Military because you have companies that can produce larger amounts of products in the standardized way for cheaper. Right. So I think kind of the way that sort of domestic politics and sort of concerns about sort of U.S. military spending, sort of the federal government sort of expansion really has actually kind of wide reaching consequences. If you look at sort of the way it impacts the way the US military is sort of operating, particularly sort of in the economic sphere around the world.
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That's a really interesting aspect to all of this. So thank you for taking us through it. And obviously many of those things are like quite attention getting, even if we haven't quite figured out the implications of those links until you've explained it. One aspect of all of this though that you discuss in the book is deeply not attention getting. Kind of by design, shipping containers are not things that usually draw headlines. And yet they're really a big part of all of this in terms of why some of these companies become a big deal, how these sorts of standards get expanded into different places beyond South Korea. So maybe focusing on some of the companies or looking at shipping containers, can we talk about sort of how this all expands even further?
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Yeah, And I think like the shipping container, I think I'm not the first one to talk about this. Right. And a lot of scholarship, particularly sort of a book called the Box, really like tells the history of the shipping container. But I decided to sort of focus on it in one of my chapters because it really does bring to the fore the implications of this very kind of, like you said, kind of invisible process why standards are so important. So for me, the story, the shipping container is really significant because one of the kind of industries where South Korean companies has sort of emerged as a sort of leader during the Cold War was in shipping. And the company that really kind of is leading the way for much of the Cold War period is called the Hanjin Corporation. If you haven't heard of it, you might have heard of a subsidiary, Korean Airlines is a subsidiary of Hanjin. But what was interesting, Sorry, following the story of Hanjin is kind of the way you kind of see the kind of the long term consequences of this sort of process that I've been talking about so far of like, infrastructure development, the mutual security program. Hanjin, like Hyundai, was a US Military contractor during the Korean War. It began kind of as like a truck. And essentially the founder of the company, Cho Jong Hoon, kind of used the truck to turn himself and Hanjin into a transport logistics company for the US Military during the Korean War. And similar to Hyundai, following the end of the war, it continues its relationship with the US Military and in a lot of ways expands into sort of other sort of transportation fields. Right? So it uses kind of the capital, access to equipment and technology to sort of start a bus transportation company in South Carolina, Korea, and sort of it continues to expand kind of domestically in South Korea under kind of its ties, keeping up its ties with the US Military. But then it has a real big sort of breakthrough into kind of shipping, particularly sort of transoceanic shipping following the Vietnam War, where sort of it also acts as a U.S. military contractor. So one of the things that happens is sort of it sort of established ties with the US Military, as well as a diplomatic agreement that's reached between the South Korean government, which by the time of the Vietnam War, was led by President Park Chung Hee, a military dictator who sort of, in a lot of ways, is overseeing sort of the initial kind of rapid economic development in South Korea. One of the key things that the park government does is it negotiates an agreement with the US Military that in exchange for sending US Troops to the Vietnam War. So Lyndon Johnson was looking to create more of a sort of multinational coalition. The park government is kind of one of the most eager participants. It sort of sends U.S. troops or sort of promises to send South Korean troops to sort of help the US War effort in Vietnam in exchange for a series of economic concessions, as well as the continued assurance that the escalation of the war in Southeast Asia would not necessarily mean the reduction or acute reduction of US Military support on the Korean peninsula. So as part of this negotiated agreement between the South Korean government and the US Government, South Korean companies were to have preferred access to military contracts. And one of the companies that was able to sort of benefit from this was the Hanjin Corporation. Like it did during the Korean War, it served in South Vietnam as a logistics firm. So it helped sort of not only sort of unload cargo in South Vietnamese ports, but Hanjin drivers actually brought equipment from these logistical stations and the ports to the front lines. What was really significant, though, about its participation in South Vietnam was it gained access to sort of a new technology, or not new, but sort of increasingly kind of important technology within sort of the shipping industry, which was the intermodal shipping container. So this is something that you've probably seen, these large shipping containers that you probably see on highways. But what's sort of notable about them is that they not only are on these trucks, but because there are sort of specialized cranes as well as sort of specialized connections on the boxes. Container boxes themselves are intermodal, so they can be moved from sort of the cargo ships to trains, to sort of trucks as well. So in a lot of ways, it's a new sort of efficient way to move large amounts of goods. It's sort of a technology that kind of was picking up steam during the 50s and 60s, but really became widespread, in part due to the US military's decision to adopt containers as its main form of shipping during the Vietnam War. And I think one of the things that really stuck out to me in my research is what that meant in terms of scale. According to some of the reports, sort of US army estimates, about 60 to 70% of all transoceanic shipments during phases of the Vietnam War were actually kind of the movement of goods to and from Southeast Asia by the US Military. So a huge amount of goods are being transported to support the buildup and then sort of combat in South Vietnam. So sort of the US Military's decision to adopt shipping containers was sort of, in part the response to its incredible logistical needs, but also kind of led to the wider adoption of container ports. Because if you think about all of the kind of points in which sort of things are produced and shipped and transshipment points for kind of this flow of goods into Southeast Asia, it requires adopting containers, and specifically the containers that are being used by the US Military. Right. So you have this huge kind of incentive for a large amount of sort of shippers to sort of adopt container shipping. So what you see is sort of the rapid containerization, particularly in the Pacific following the Vietnam War, as a result of this US Military decision to containerize its logistics. And I kind of use this. This example of Hanjin to sort of highlight the sort of implications of this process. Because one of the things that happens is Hanjin gets a sort of a firsthand look at what the future of shipping is, right. By operating in South Vietnam. The founder of Hanjin sort of has in multiple sort of Recollections, talks about seeing the future of shipping, looking at these sort of container operations in South Vietnam. The company quickly, sort of using its experience in Vietnam, moves into container shipping. And it's sort of one of the leading proponents of it in South Korea following the Vietnam War, sort of during the 1970s. It helps sort of fund the containerization of one of the ports in Incheon and sort of it kind of, in a lot of way, paves the way for the South Korean sort of economic miracle. Right. So what South Korea is known for in the 80s and 90s is exporting goods. I think, rightly so, a lot of the kind of companies making the goods get a lot of the attention. But Hanjin and other South Korean shipping companies make that process possible by kind of actually literally taking the goods and transporting them to global markets. Right. And sort of as a result of this process, Hanjin, by the end of the Cold War, early 2000s, becomes one of the largest shipping companies in the entire world. Right. So I think Hanjin, in a lot of ways, and the container and its relationship with the container helps, I think, highlight one of the, like, many different examples of sort of the ways U.S. economic activities has all sorts of sort of downstream effects and plays a role in sort of so many different kind of trajectories for various economic actors, whether they be multinational corporations. I also sort of focus on sort of its impact on labor and workers of these various corporations and around the world as well. Yeah.
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Do we want to maybe talk a little bit about that in terms of impact on labor and workers?
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Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, if there is another kind of origin point of this story and this project, one of the things I was really interested in looking at and sort of what interested me about the South Korean economic miracle were kind of these narratives of sort of South Korea's sort of rapid economic growth occurring in the 70s and 80s and sort of side by side with that, you have sort of narratives of the sort of deindustrialization of the United States. Right. So as South Korea was entering into all of these sort of traditional, critical sort of heavy industries like shipbuilding, automaking, you kind of have sort of sort of on a par, on a parallel path, manufacturing in the United States sort of being hollowed out. Right. So you have studies of deindustrialization, offshoring of operations, the breakdown of the working class. So one of the things that I kind of was looking out for from the start of this project is if there is a way to talk about these two phenomena in a similar frame. And one of the things that sort of occurred to me and sort of what became clear to me is rather than necessarily like a direct connection, I think it's easy to assume that, oh, the East Asian economic miracle kind of occurred because jobs were being sort of filtered into those countries out of the United States. But that's really kind of not what happened. One of the things that I sort of note in the project and sort of kind of knew from the outside is that the sort of jobs and the sort of good jobs that people associate with kind of the golden age of US Manufacturing were not the ones that were sort of fueling South Korea's economic growth. It was actually sort of much lower paid, non union South Korean workers up through kind of the 80s were among the lowest paid in sort of the developing world and sort of the working hours was among the largest. So in a lot of ways there was sort of a kind of immiseration occurring on both sides of sort of the Pacific, South Korea and the United States. And sort of a lot of what my book seeks to do, and one of the reasons why it has sort of a pretty expansive chronology, the way kind of the book is organized, is I have three chapters looking at kind of that period that I think is critical for understanding those sort of larger structural processes that I've been describing occurring between the Korean War and the Vietnam War. And then the second half of the book kind of traces three kind of case studies of these very prominent Korean corporations to highlight some of the long term consequences. And sort of one of my choice to do that is to kind of highlight this connection between the sort of workers in the United States and South Korea and their relationship with the U.S. military. And sort of, I think if I were to sort of put it in a simplified form, is I think in a lot of ways this was not necessarily sort of a pre planned conspiracy in a lot of ways, but kind of, if you look at kind of the kind of immediate incentives the US Military had, sort of pointing back to those congressional controversies that we talked about earlier, the US Military was really seeking to do kind of a huge monumental task, sort of building out this functional military based network that spans the entire globe. And it was seeking increasingly to do that in the most efficient way possible, right. Because of sort of the domestic US political debates. So one of the things that it really promoted was kind of competition as well as sort of development of these sort of allied nations and their sort of capabilities. And one of the things that leads to kind of their Emergence is like their engagement with the US Military, but also kind of the cheap labor. Relatively speaking, one of the things that the US Military is also doing kind of partially for ideological reasons, sort of, I think labor activism in many places becomes sort of associated with communism, but also like in a practical sense, the US Military is very much rewarding sort of contractors, increasingly, sort of a large number of whom are in places like South Korea with sort of efficient production, right? So one of the ways in which companies often achieve efficient production is having sort of cheap, non unionized workers, right? So this is all sort of to say that the US Military created this system of military industrial capitalism to maximize productive efficiencies. And what you see happening kind of following Vietnam is sort of multinational corporations, in a lot of ways, kind of build off of a lot of these sort of production processes, as well as sort of labor sort of pools. And what's sort of really striking to me is that sort of the US Military kind of helps promote a very sort of austere form of capitalism sort of in South Korea. But in the sort of subsequent decades, particularly during the post Cold War era, many of the companies that kind of are the beneficiaries of this system, like Hyundai, for instance, are able to then kind of bring back these types of sort of working environments, productive processes to the United States. And sort of what I end the book with is talking about the way Hyundai in a lot of ways kind of developed a lot of its sort of approaches to workers in this environment in South Korea. That one that the US Military really kind of promoted and supported a sort of more sort of economically sort of development rather than sort of labor rights. So it has this system of sort of efficient production and sort of its sort of ability to sort of operate in that way kind of enabled it to sort of expand globally, but also increasingly invest in the United States, where sort of over the course of the 70s and 80s, you have sort of an erosion of sort of organized labor. You have sort of shifts in productions away from more sort of pro labor states, sort of kind of the Rust belt. If you sort of imagine that shift happening to the southeastern United States, which does not historically have the same amount of sort of labor productions. And what you see is companies like Hyundai, but also sort of Japanese automakers, German automakers, who have a lot of similar stories as the one I talked about with Hyundai in South Korea, investing in the southeastern United States, right? So in these states that don't have robust labor productions, you have these foreign corporations investing in these huge manufacturing plants. So Hyundai opened a huge auto work, auto sort of production facility sort of in Montgomery, Alabama, was this sort of its first sort of major investment. So in a lot of ways, they are sort of operating in the ways that they did in South Korea, but in the United States. Right. So Hyundai and more importantly, a lot of Hyundai's subcontractors in Alabama have been criticized for its treatment of workers. And then that's sort of, I think, a really circuitous way of connecting the two countries. But, like, that's sort of what I found, right? That not this simple story of labor and jobs leaving one place to another, but rather through this emergence of this global system that centered on the US Military at first, but eventually became more about creating sort of efficiencies and global scale that sort of relied upon sort of cheap labor. And you're starting to see increasingly, and I talk about this sort of in the latter phase of the book is the kind of unintended consequences of a sort of early Cold War U.S. policy. Right. So sort of the emergence of overseas competition, sort of the decline in industrial power of the United States. It's in a lot of ways the end, the unexpected end consequence of the sort of military, industrial, capitalist world order that I talked about about in the sort of early phases of the book.
- [47:47]
B
Yeah. Very interesting to see how that plays out across decades. Are there any other big takeaways you hope readers get from all of this?
- [47:54]
A
I think one of the things that I think two, I know I've been rambling, so if there are things that if you need me to stop, I will. But two, I think, important takeaways. I think kind of like historiographically, one of the kind of big interventions I wanted to make is talking about military industrial capitalism rather than military industrial complex. I think the latter term is much more sort of widely used. To the best of my knowledge. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one sort of using military industrial capitalism. To me, I think that move is important for two reasons. One, I hope I've tried to sort of relate in my responses to your questions that I think this is more of a process rather than a sort of group of a concrete, static group of economic actors. I think when we talk military industrial complex, there's sort of a kind of tendency to think about sort of political military economic elites, particularly sort of in the United States that have sort of a shared interest and sort of the continuation of war, as well as sort of defense spending generally. Right. So you sort of associate, like weapons companies, specifically, like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman for sort of like the military industrial complex. What I kind of wanted to do by sort of moving away from that frame of sort of complex to capitalism is to talk about how this is a much more sort of structural development. Right. And sort of, in a lot of ways, I like military industrial capitalism because it enables you to talk about a range of actors, many of whom you would not necessarily immediately associate with military industrial complex. Right. So I mean, Hyundai for one. I don't think many people would sort of immediately jump to that company being a part of the military industrial complex. But I think I show in the book that Hyundai would not be Hyundai without sort of a sustained engagement with the US Military and sort of a sort of a vested interest in the perpetuation of a globalized US Military sort of posture. Right. And then, and I think that gets me to kind of like the second takeaway point is sort of thinking about military industrial capitalism. And the other term I use in the book is sort of US Military empire as not necessarily strictly bound to the nation state. I think one of the things I had to grapple with as I wrote this book is that you have the US Military doing things that don't necessarily in the long run, promote US Interests broadly wrought, if that makes sense. I think what sort of. I've came to think about sort of military industrial capitalism and sort of the US Military kind of in a broad sense is increasingly kind of like a platform, right? It's sort of a network in which sort of not just US actors, not just US elites, but sort of a transnational collecting collection of actors are able to, at various times for. In various contexts, for various reasons, gain access to capital, gain access to markets, gain access to technology. Right. But it's not necessarily kind of ultimately sort of neatly aligned with sort of the US State or kind of the US Sort of population per se. Right. It's sort of more of an economic system and a sort of series of relationships that are closely tied to the fact of the US Military being this sort of global institution. But I think one of the things that really struck me is that a lot of the things I talk about the US Military doing and the US Military empire enabling ultimately have these negative consequences for different people in the United States. States. Right. So particularly workers are the ones that I highlight in a lot of ways, getting the short end of this. The stick of this history that I'm talking about. But I think there's sort of a lot more to be sort of parsed beyond what I've looked at as well.
- [52:30]
B
Well, that's definitely, I think, some good takeaways there. What, may I ask, are you working on now that this book is out in the world? Do you have any things currently on your desk you'd like to give us a second sneak preview of?
- [52:41]
A
I think I have two projects that I'm working on. One smaller and kind of an outgrowth of one of the chapters in the book. So one of the chapters, I think I talked about the two other case studies, Hanjin and Hyundai. The third one is Posco, which I think people, particularly outside of South Korea, would be less familiar with. But it is one of the world's largest steel makers. And it began as a public private enterprise that was begun under the Park Chung Hee regime. I kind of talk about it as this really interesting example of a company that, excuse me, was not necessarily directly involved or contracting with the US military, but in a lot of ways was still a participant and beneficiary of US military capitalism. So I highlight two factors. The way in which its sort of initial foundings or the capital and technology that was initially sort of used to begin Posco operations were kind of tied to sort of companies that had direct ties with the US military. So Japanese steel makers, for instance, were critical to Posco's founding, and they had sort of direct ties through military contracts to the US military. But also Posco, as a producer of steel, in a lot of ways was providing the key material for companies like Hyundai that were sort of direct beneficiaries of military industrial capitalism. So I think in a lot of ways, Pasco is an interesting example of the ways in which military industrial capitalism didn't always necessarily entail a direct relationship with the US military. But one of the things that I only briefly get to talk about in the book is Pasco investing in a steel mill in the Bay Area outside of San Francisco and a town very kind of appropriately named Pittsburgh, but without the H. So Pittsburgh was the location of a sort of long established steel plant that was sort of owned by US Steel when it was sold, or sort of there was sort of a joint venture established, sorry, with Posco to sort of modernize its operations during the late 1980s. So I kind of briefly mention in the book to kind of talk about sort of Pasco's emergence as this leading steel maker. But I started do a little bit of digging a little too late to sort of include in the book about sort of the plant there. And there are these, like, really fascinating images that were taken during the grand reopening of the plant that had sort of the founder of Pascal, Park Dae Jun, as well as the president of US Steel, as well as former President Gerald Ford, kind of as like the key kind of celebrants at this event. And I was just like fascinated by like what Gerald Ford was doing there and sort of sort of what his kind of a role in this sort of outside foreign investment. Kind of at a time where there's sort of concerns not about Korea necessarily, but definitely Japanese sort of incursions into the US Economy, sort of what was happening with that event. I kind of want to dig further into and also looking at what life was like in the factory for the workers. I think one of the things that I'm really interested in is like there's these narratives of deindustrialization, of offshoring, but there's also kind of this persistence of a lot of these production facilities under foreign ownership. So what was it like? Right. And I think in a lot of ways this is going to help me kind of engage more directly with kind of discourses around sort of the idea of sort of neoliberalism, poor Fordism, what that kind of actually looked like, and what kind of understanding companies like Posco will contribute to our understanding of it. So that's sort of one kind of project, I think, maybe like a journal article. I think the second book, it's still really kind of underdeveloped at this point, but I have sort of done a little bit of an initial look at kind of the South Korean semiconductor industry. And one of the things that I think I talk a lot about in the book is sort of traditional heavy industries, sort of Hyundai with the shipbuilding, auto manufacturing, Pasco with steel, Hanjin with sort of shipping. But the other part of South Korea's sort of economic rise, and I think the one that's more prominent now is sort of its sort of high tech sector. Right. So I think in a lot of ways there's connections between the story that I told, but definitely differences. So sort of looking at sort of the development of the South Korean semiconductor industry, what I do kind of think that I might contribute to it, the sort of existing literature a lot's been written about it is looking at, again, labor. I'm really interested in the fact that kind of a lot of the semiconductor conductor production facilities, the early ones, at least in South Korea, had two specific types of workers involved. So one is sort of on the management side. So there's sort of a group of elite, sort of upper class male Korean workers who had sort of studied abroad, particularly in the United States, and sort of had higher degrees, who, like, came back to South Korea to kind of sort of take part in sort of the technical and management position. So there's this one sort of worker archetype, and then on the other is you have sort of a large population of rural, poor female factory workers. Right. Who in a lot of ways, during the 70s, sort of went into these burgeoning industrial centers in order to sort of make money not only for themselves, but their families. So I kind of want to look at kind of this. This convergence at semiconductor plants of these two labor forces. And one of the things that I kind of wanted sort of show and sort of see is the US Military's role in kind of producing these sort of distinct groups. Right. So some of the research from this book, I think, definitely sort of suggests that the US Military played a role in the creation of these two labor streams. And that's sort of kind of the initial kind of kernel of what I'm seeking to do in the second project.
- [59:35]
B
Yeah, it definitely seems like there might be some interesting things to explore there. So best of luck with it. And of course, while you're doing it, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Standardizing the U.S. military, Korea and the Origins of Military Industrial Capitalism, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2026. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [59:56]
A
Thanks,
- [60:03]
B
Sam.