Author : Yonhap News Agency, Seoul
Publisher : M.E. Sharpe
Page : 1264 pages
File Size : 10,39 MB
Release : 2002-12-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9780765635235
This is a timely and comprehensive guide to one of the most volatile, misunderstood, and potentially dangerous states in the world, and one of great strategic importance to U.S. interests in Asia. Featuring a detailed "who's who" section, it covers politics, the economy, the military, education, and culture, and provides numerous vital statistical data.
Author : Adrian Buzo
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 548 pages
File Size : 22,51 MB
Release : 2020-11-22
Category : History
ISBN : 0429803990
The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary North Korea presents a comprehensive picture of contemporary North Korea, placed in historical context and set against the overlapping fields of politics, economy, culture, society and foreign relations. Spanning a period of significant transition for North Korea, this volume provides accurate analysis and applications of both historical and institutional perspectives. The volume’s chapters are representative of the growth in North Korean studies that has occurred since the 1990s, in parallel with the growing maturity of the field in South Korea, as well as with far greater levels of access to North Korean sources. The volume is divided into five Parts, each reflecting an emergent area of debate and research: The political perspective The North Korean economy Foreign relations Society Culture This is the first anthology of North Korean studies to demonstrate a clear understanding of North Korea as North Korea, as opposed to a dimly perceived and threatening rogue state. It features both Korean and non-Korean contributors, many working from primary source material. As such, this handbook will prove a valuable resource to students and scholars of Northeast Asian studies, modern Korean history and politics, and comparative politics more broadly.
Author : Benjamin R. Young
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 25,21 MB
Release : 2021-04-06
Category : History
ISBN : 1503627640
Far from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in the Third World shaped the worldview of many North Koreans and helped them imagine a unified anti-imperialist front that stretched from the boulevards of Pyongyang to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the beaches of Cuba. This book tells the story of North Korea's transformation in the Third World from model developmental state to reckless terrorist nation, and how Pyongyang's actions, both in the Third World and on the Korean peninsula, ultimately backfired against the Kim family regime's foreign policy goals. Based on multinational and multi-archival research, this book examines the intersection of North Korea's domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea's developmental model appealed to the decolonizing world.
Author : Paek Nam-nyong
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 40,47 MB
Release : 2020-05-05
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0231551401
Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage. The novel delves into its protagonists’ past, describing how the couple first fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated over the years. It chronicles the toll their acrimony takes on their son and their careers alongside the story of the judge’s own marital troubles. A best-seller in North Korea, where Paek continues to live and write, Friend illuminates a side of life in the DPRK that Western readers have never before encountered. Far from being a propagandistic screed in praise of the Great Leader, Friend describes the lives of people who struggle with everyday problems such as marital woes and workplace conflicts. Instead of socialist-realist stock figures, Paek depicts complex characters who wrestle with universal questions of individual identity, the split between public and private selves, the unpredictability of existence, and the never-ending labor of maintaining a relationship. This groundbreaking translation of one of North Korea’s most popular writers offers English-language readers a page-turner full of psychological tension as well as a revealing portrait of a society that is typically seen as closed to the outside world.
Author : Jieun Baek
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 42,7 MB
Release : 2016-11-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0300224478
“A crisp, dramatic examination of how technology and human ingenuity are undermining North Korea’s secretive dictatorship.”—Kirkus Reviews One of the least understood countries in the world, North Korea has long been known for its repressive regime. Yet it is far from being an impenetrable black box. Media flows covertly into the country, and fault lines are appearing in the government’s sealed informational borders. Drawing on deeply personal interviews with North Korean defectors from all walks of life, ranging from propaganda artists to diplomats, Jieun Baek tells the story of North Korea’s information underground—the network of citizens who take extraordinary risks by circulating illicit content such as foreign films, television shows, soap operas, books, and encyclopedias. By fostering an awareness of life outside North Korea and enhancing cultural knowledge, the materials these citizens disseminate are affecting the social and political consciousness of a people, as well as their everyday lives. “A fine primer on the country, based on extensive interviews with defectors.”—Times Literary Supplement “A fascinating book.”—The New York Times “[A] timely and cogent book.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “A fascinating and intelligent overview of the ways that information is liberating North Koreans’ minds.”—Robert S. Boynton, author of The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project “A fascinating, important, and vivid account of how unofficial information is increasingly seeping into the North and chipping away at the regime’s myths—and hence its control of North Korean society.”—Sue Mi Terry, former CIA analyst and senior research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University
Author : Victor D. Cha
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 11,55 MB
Release : 2018-09-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0231548249
Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang’s Nuclear North Korea was first published in 2003 amid the outbreak of a lasting crisis over the North Korean nuclear program. It promptly became a landmark of an ongoing debate in academic and policy circles about whether to engage or contain North Korea. Fifteen years later, as North Korea tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and the U.S. president angrily refers to Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man,” Nuclear North Korea remains an essential guide to the difficult choices we face. Coming from different perspectives—Kang believes the threat posed by Pyongyang has been inflated and endorses a more open approach, while Cha is more skeptical and advocates harsher measures, though both believe that some form of engagement is necessary—the authors together present authoritative analysis of one of the world’s thorniest challenges. They refute a number of misconceptions and challenge the faulty thinking that surrounds the discussion of North Korea, particularly the idea that North Korea is an irrational actor. Cha and Kang look at the implications of a nuclear North Korea, assess recent and current approaches to sanctions and engagement, and provide a functional framework for constructive policy. With a new chapter on the way forward for the international community in light of continued nuclear tensions, this book is of lasting relevance to understanding the state of affairs on the Korean peninsula.
Author : Heonik Kwon
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 37,58 MB
Release : 2012-03-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1442215771
This timely, pathbreaking study of North Korea’s political history and culture sheds invaluable light on the country’s unique leadership continuity and succession. Leading scholars Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung begin by tracing Kim Il Sung’s rise to power during the Cold War. They show how his successor, his eldest son, Kim Jong Il, sponsored the production of revolutionary art to unleash a public political culture that would consolidate Kim’s charismatic power and his own hereditary authority. The result was the birth of a powerful modern theater state that sustains North Korean leaders’ sovereignty now to a third generation. In defiance of the instability to which so many revolutionary states eventually succumb, the durability of charismatic politics in North Korea defines its exceptional place in modern history. Kwon and Chung make an innovative contribution to comparative socialism and postsocialism as well as to the anthropology of the state. Their pioneering work is essential for all readers interested in understanding North Korea’s past and future, the destiny of charismatic power in modern politics, the role of art in enabling this power.
Author : Felix Abt
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
Page : 357 pages
File Size : 32,75 MB
Release : 2014-05-28
Category : History
ISBN : 1462914101
Business in North Korea: a paradoxical and fascinating situation is interpreted by a true insider. In 2002, the Swiss power company ABB appointed Felix Abt its country director for North Korea. The Swiss Entrepreneur lived and worked in North Korea for seven years, one of the few foreign businessmen there. After the experience, Abt felt compelled to write A Capitalist in North Korea to describe the multifaceted society he encountered. North Korea, at the time, was heavily sanctioned by the UN which made it extremely difficult to do business. Yet he discovered that it was a place where plastic surgery and South Korean TV dramas were wildly popular and where he rarely needed to walk more than a block to grab a quick hamburger. He was closely monitored and once faced accusations of spying, yet he learned that young North Koreans are hopeful--signing up for business courses in anticipation of a brighter, more open, future. In A Capitalist in North Korea, Abt shares these and many other unusual facts and insights about one of the world's most secretive nations.
Author : Andrei Lankov
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 12,84 MB
Release : 2014-01-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0786451416
The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea for over 60 years. Most of that period has found the country suffering under mature Stalinism characterized by manipulation, brutality and tight social control. Nevertheless, some citizens of Kim Jong Il's regime manage to transcend his tyranny in their daily existence. This book describes that difficult but f existence and the world that the North Koreans have created for themselves in the face of oppression. Many features of this world are unique and even bizarre. But they have been created by the citizens to reflect their own ideas and values, in sharp contrast to the world forced upon them by a totalitarian system. Opening chapters introduce the political system and the extent to which it permeates citizens' daily lives, from the personal status badges they wear to the nationalized distribution of the food they eat. Chapters discussing the schools, the economic system, and family life dispel the myth of the workers' paradise that North Korea attempts to perpetuate. In these chapters the intricacies of daily life in a totalitarian dictatorship are seen through the eyes of defectors whose anecdotes constitute an important portion of the material. The closing chapter treats at length the significant changes that have taken place in North Korea over the last decade, concluding that these changes will lead to the quiet but inevitable death of North Korean Stalinism. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Author : Wendy E. Simmons
Publisher : Rosetta Books
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 43,58 MB
Release : 2016-05-03
Category : Travel
ISBN : 0795347227
“You remember Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun? Yeah, this really isn’t like those. It’s better” (San Francisco Chronicle). Most people want out of North Korea. Wendy Simmons wanted in. In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it’s never been seen before. Even though it’s the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border. But Wendy’s initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia. Before long, she learned the essential conundrum of “tourism” in North Korea: Travel is truly a love affair. But, just like love, it’s a two-way street. And North Korea deprives you of all this. They want you to fall in love with the singular vision of the country they’re willing to show you and nothing more. Through poignant, laugh-out-loud essays and ninety-two never-before-published color photographs of North Korea, Wendy chronicles one of the strangest vacations ever. Along the way, she bares all while undergoing an inner journey as convoluted as the country itself. “Much of the humor and poignancy comes from the absurdity of a fun-loving free spirit taking a vacation that’s more rigidly scripted and controlled than a presidential motorcade . . . Simmons’ photos—including an eerie image of a classroom full of schoolgirls playing accordions—further illustrate the bizarre nature of a country that, whether for good or bad, has been carefully controlled for generations.” —San Francisco Chronicle “An irresistible read . . . A rare and fascinating look at the tourist’s North Korea in a work that is humorous, appalling, and very sad. A highly recommended and revealing glimpse into a secretive land.” —Library Journal
