North Korea's Juche Myth

North Korea's Juche Myth PDF Author: B. R. Myers
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781508799931
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
For decades the North Korean regime has preached a virulent race-nationalism to its own people. At the same time, however, it has succeeded in making outsiders believe that it is guided by a solipsistic, inward-directed ideology of self-reliant communism. This in turn has nurtured the wishful assumption that the regime no longer has serious designs on South Korea. In this book, his follow-up to The Cleanest Race (2009), B.R. Myers shows that although the myth of Juche has done great service for the regime at home and abroad, the ideology's content has never played a significant role in policy-making or domestic propaganda. The North Korean nuclear program must be grasped in the context of the regime's true ideological commitment, which is not to self-reliance, but to "final victory" over the rival state.

North Korea's Juche Myth

North Korea's Juche Myth PDF Author: B. R. Myers
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781508799931
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
For decades the North Korean regime has preached a virulent race-nationalism to its own people. At the same time, however, it has succeeded in making outsiders believe that it is guided by a solipsistic, inward-directed ideology of self-reliant communism. This in turn has nurtured the wishful assumption that the regime no longer has serious designs on South Korea. In this book, his follow-up to The Cleanest Race (2009), B.R. Myers shows that although the myth of Juche has done great service for the regime at home and abroad, the ideology's content has never played a significant role in policy-making or domestic propaganda. The North Korean nuclear program must be grasped in the context of the regime's true ideological commitment, which is not to self-reliance, but to "final victory" over the rival state.

The Cleanest Race

The Cleanest Race PDF Author: B.R. Myers
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1935554972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Understanding North Korea through its propaganda What do the North Koreans really believe? How do they see themselves and the world around them? Here B.R. Myers, a North Korea analyst and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, presents the first full-length study of the North Korean worldview. Drawing on extensive research into the regime’s domestic propaganda, including films, romance novels and other artifacts of the personality cult, Myers analyzes each of the country’s official myths in turn—from the notion of Koreans’ unique moral purity, to the myth of an America quaking in terror of “the Iron General.” In a concise but groundbreaking historical section, Myers also traces the origins of this official culture back to the Japanese fascist thought in which North Korea’s first ideologues were schooled. What emerges is a regime completely unlike the West’s perception of it. This is neither a bastion of Stalinism nor a Confucian patriarchy, but a paranoid nationalist, “military-first” state on the far right of the ideological spectrum. Since popular support for the North Korean regime now derives almost exclusively from pride in North Korean military might, Pyongyang can neither be cajoled nor bullied into giving up its nuclear program. The implications for US foreign policy—which has hitherto treated North Korea as the last outpost of the Cold War—are as obvious as they are troubling. With North Korea now calling for a “blood reckoning” with the “Yankee jackals,” Myers’s unprecedented analysis could not be more timely.

The Real North Korea

The Real North Korea PDF Author: Andrei Lankov
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199390037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader PDF Author: Bradley K. Martin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429906995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 912

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Book Description
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader offers in-depth portraits of North Korea's two ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Lifting North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society, that to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs. To North Koreans, the Kims are more than just leaders. Kim Il-Sung is the country's leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, general, farmer, and ping-pong trainer. Radios are made so they can only be tuned to the official state frequency. "Newspapers" are filled with endless columns of Kim speeches and propaganda. And instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrate Kim's birthday--and he presents each child a present, just like Santa. The regime that the Kim Dynasty has built remains technically at war with the United States nearly a half century after the armistice that halted actual fighting in the Korean War. This fascinating and complete history takes full advantage of a great deal of source material that has only recently become available (some from archives in Moscow and Beijing), and brings the reader up to the tensions of the current day. For as this book will explain, North Korea appears more and more to be the greatest threat among the Axis of Evil countries--with some defector testimony warning that Kim Jong-Il has enough chemical weapons to wipe out the entire population of South Korea.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

The Aquariums of Pyongyang PDF Author: Chol-hwan Kang
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465011047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, one man's suffering gives eyewitness proof to an ongoing sorrowful chapter of modern history.

A Misunderstood Friendship

A Misunderstood Friendship PDF Author: Zhihua Shen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Today, the People’s Republic of China is North Korea’s only ally on the world stage, a tightly knit relationship that goes back decades. Both countries portray their partnership as one of “brotherly affection” based on shared political ideals—an alliance “as tight as lips to teeth”—even though relations have deteriorated in recent years due to China’s ascendance and North Korea’s intransigence. In A Misunderstood Friendship, leading diplomatic historians Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia draw on previously untapped primary source materials revealing tensions and rivalries to offer a unique account of the China–North Korea relationship. They unravel the twists and turns in high-level diplomacy between China and North Korea from the late 1940s to the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Through unprecedented access to Chinese government documents, Soviet and Eastern European archives, and in-depth interviews with former Chinese diplomats and North Korean defectors, Shen and Xia reveal that the tensions that currently plague the alliance between the two countries have been present from the very beginning of the relationship. They significantly revise existing narratives of the Korean War, China’s postwar aid to North Korea, Kim Il-sung’s ideological and strategic thinking, North Korea’s relations with the Soviet Union, and the importance of the Sino-U.S. rapprochement, among other issues. A Misunderstood Friendship adds new depth to our understanding of one of the most secretive and significant relationships of the Cold War, with increasing relevance to international affairs today.

In Order to Live

In Order to Live PDF Author: Yeonmi Park
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698409361
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
“I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” - Yeonmi Park "One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard - and one of the most inspiring." - The Bookseller “Park's remarkable and inspiring story shines a light on a country whose inhabitants live in misery beyond comprehension. Park's important memoir showcases the strength of the human spirit and one young woman's incredible determination to never be hungry again.” —Publishers Weekly In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea—and to freedom. Park confronts her past with a startling resilience. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life. Indeed, today she is a human rights activist working determinedly to bring attention to the oppression taking place in her home country. Park’s testimony is heartbreaking and unimaginable, but never without hope. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable.

North Korea

North Korea PDF Author: Bruce Cumings
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 159558739X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Depicted as an insular and forbidding police state with an "insane" dictator at its helm, North Korea—charter member of Bush's "Axis of Evil"—is a country the U.S. loves to hate. Now the CIA says it possesses nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as long-range missiles capable of delivering them to America's West Coast. But, as Bruce Cumings demonstrates in this provocative, lively read, the story of the U.S.-Korea conflict is more complex than our leaders or our news media would have us believe. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Korea, and on declassified government reports, Cumings traces that story, from the brutal Korean War to the present crisis. Harboring no illusions regarding the totalitarian Kim Jong Il regime, Cumings nonetheless insists on a more nuanced approach. The result is both a counter-narrative to the official U.S. and North Korean versions and a fascinating portrayal of North Korea, a country that suffers through foreign invasions, natural disasters, and its own internal contradictions, yet somehow continues to survive.

The Great Successor

The Great Successor PDF Author: Anna Fifield
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541742508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
The behind-the-scenes story of the rise and reign of the world's strangest and most elusive tyrant, Kim Jong Un, by the journalist with the best connections and insights into the bizarrely dangerous world of North Korea. Since his birth in 1984, Kim Jong Un has been swaddled in myth and propaganda, from the plainly silly -- he could supposedly drive a car at the age of three -- to the grimly bloody stories of family members who perished at his command. Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived, abetted by the approval of Donald Trump and diplomacy's weirdest bromance. Skeptical yet insightful, Fifield creates a captivating portrait of the oddest and most secretive political regime in the world -- one that is isolated yet internationally relevant, bankrupt yet in possession of nuclear weapons -- and its ruler, the self-proclaimed Beloved and Respected Leader, Kim Jong Un.

Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea

Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea PDF Author: Kevin Cawley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131727380X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea addresses a wide range of traditions, serving as a guide to those interested in Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism, Christianity and many others. It brings readers along a journey from the past to the present, moving beyond the confines of the Korean peninsula. In this book Kevin N. Cawley examines the different ideas which have shaped a vibrant and exciting intellectual history and engages with some of the key texts and figures from Korea’s intellectual traditions. This comprehensive and riveting text emphasises how some of these ideas have real relevance in the world today and how they have practical value for our lives in the twenty-first century. Students, researchers and academics in the growing area of Korean Studies will find this book indispensable. It will also be of interest to undergraduates and graduate students interested in the comparative study of Asian religions, philosophies and cultures.