Search results

North and South Korea's leaders are both scions of ruling families with a history of mutual hostility. Still, there is cause to hope that the South's Park Geun-hye will try what is long overdue: clear-headed, sustained engagement with the North.

History looms large in Northeast Asia today. This is not only because of ongoing "history wars" over Japanese aggression in the World War II era and enduring territorial disputes in the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. History is especially visible because, for the first time, the leaders of all four states in the region (China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea) are scions of former national leaders. Chinese President Xi Jinping's father Xi Zhongxun was a guerrilla comrade of Mao Zedong and vice prime minister of the People's Republic of China. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a prime minister in the late 1950s. South Korean President Park Geun-hye is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the military strongman who oversaw South Korea's "economic miracle" in the 1960s and 1970s. And North Korea's Kim Jong-un is the son and grandson of the North's first two Supreme Leaders. It is not yet clear what influence heredity will have on relations among the four "princelings" (as the Chinese would say) who govern Northeast Asia. However, history is already playing an important if ambivalent role in inter-Korean dynamics. Adapted from the source document.

Examines the implications of the landslide victory of Lee Myung-bak in the 19 Dec 2007 presidential elections in South Korea. The historically low turnout for the election & Lee's rapid loss of support following his inauguration & the allegations of corruption that immediately plagued his presidency are explored. The political context in which Lee now struggles is analyzed in the context of a shift in left-right politics, public protests against the dictatorships of the 1970s-1980s & the rise of the democracy movement, the economic crisis of the late 1990s, & the aftermath of a decade of rule by the center-left wing. Lasting contradictions in South Korean politics are identified, & argued to be reflected in shifting attitudes & relations toward the US. Adapted from the source document.

The unfinished war, 1950-1953 -- Post-war reconstruction and a declaration of self-reliance, 1953-1955 -- A singular path : North Korea in the socialist community,1956-1963 -- The anti-imperialist front, 1963-1972 -- Breaking out : engaging the first and third worlds, 1972-1979 -- A new generation and a new cold war, 1980-1984 -- The sun sets in the east, 1985-1992 -- Epilogue : tyranny of the weak, tyranny of the strong

North Korea, despite a shattered economy and a populace suffering from widespread hunger, has outlived repeated forecasts of its imminent demise. Charles K. Armstrong contends that a major source of North Korea's strength and resiliency, as well as of its flaws and shortcomings, lies in the poorly understood origins of its system of government. He examines the genesis of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) both as an important yet rarely studied example of a communist state and as part of modern Korean history. North Korea is one of the last redoubts of "unreformed" Marxism-Leninism in the world. Yet it is not a Soviet satellite in the East European manner, nor is its government the result of a local revolution, as in Cuba and Vietnam. Instead, the DPRK represents a unique "indigenization" of Soviet Stalinism, Armstrong finds. The system that formed under the umbrella of the Soviet occupation quickly developed into a nationalist regime as programs initiated from above merged with distinctive local conditions. Armstrong's account is based on long-classified documents captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War. This enormous archive of over 1.6 million pages provides unprecedented insight into the making of the Pyongyang regime and fuels the author's argument that the North Korean state is likely to remain viable for some years to come

Written by an interdisciplinary and international team of Korean scholars, this textbook provides an up-to-date and comprehensive account of rapidly changing Korean society.

Korea in Japanese visions of regional order / Takashi Inoguchi -- Russian views of Korea, China, and the regional order in Northeast Asia / Alexander Lukin -- Civilization, race, or nation? Korean visions of regional order in the late nineteenth century / Hahm Chaibong -- Trade, dependency, and colonialism: foreign trade and Korea's regional integration, 1876-1910 / Kirk W. Larsen -- From Japanese imperium to American hegemony: Korean-Centrism and the transformation of the international system / Bruce Cumings -- Japanese colonial infrastructure in Northeast Asia realities, fantasies, legacies / Daqing Yang -- A socialist regional order in northeast Asia after World War II / Stephen Kotkin and Charles K. Armstrong -- Japan's Asian regionalism and South Korea / Chung-in Moon and Seung-won Suh -- Regionalism in Northeast Asia Korea's return to center stage / Gilbert Rozman -- Inter-Korean relations in northeast Asian geopolitics / Samuel S. Kim -- Japan's multilevel approach toward the Korean peninsula after the Cold War / Tsuneo Akaha -- Korean and China in Northeast Asia: from stable bifurcation to complicated interdependence / Jae Ho Chung -- Korea in Russia's post-Cold War regional political context / Evgeny P. Bazhanov -- Environmental regime-building in Northeast Asia: Korea's pursuit of leadership / Shin-wha Lee -- The Korean wave: transnational cultural flows in Northeast Asia / Jung-Sun Park -- Epilogue: Korea, Northeast Asia, and the long twentieth century / Charles K. Armstrong.