Podcast: Book launch: ’The Korean War: Australia in the Giants’ Playground’ - Mr Cameron Forbes, aut

The Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, son of the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung, has begun handing control of an impoverished nation, a huge standing army and a nascent nuclear capability to his third son, Kim Jong-un.  Scholar Andrei Lankov describes the dynasty as perhaps the most perfect Machiavellians of the modern world. Sixty years ago Australia was part of a United Nations force which prevented the North Korean Stalinists from seizing the whole of the strategically important peninsula.  The Korean War – the Cold War’s hot war - has been described as the substitute for World War III.  It was a brutal affair with perhaps four million dead and American talk of using the atomic bomb again.  It shaped the great ideological confrontation, spurred the arms race and revived militarism. Cameron Forbes travelled to Korea and China, and interviewed Australian, Chinese, Korean, Turkish and American veterans to produce his latest book 'The Korean War: Australia in the Giants’ Playground'.  On a geostrategic level it examines the byplay between the two tyrants, Mao and Stalin, and the conflict between Truman and MacArthur.  It traces Australia’s gaining of the alliance with the United States, which was paid for in blood and which led us into Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr Cameron Forbes has been foreign editor, Europe and Asia correspondent for ‘The Age' and Washington correspondent for ‘The Australian'.  He has reported on wars, civil wars and rebellions in the Middle East, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Burma, Portugal, Northern Ireland, Bougainville and Afghanistan.  Mr Forbes has received a number of awards, including the Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year Award and the United Nations Association Media Peace Award.