The Forgotten Political Elites of North Korea

The Forgotten Political Elites of North Korea PDF Author: Fyodor Tertitskiy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040043410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book comprises the biographies of the North Korean politicians whose actions played a pivotal role in shaping the formation of the country during the late 1940s, the Korean War of 1950-53 and the power struggles of the mid-1950s. Drawing from a rich array of archival material in both Korean, Russian and oral testimonies, this book gives insight into the life stories of key figures such as Pang Hak-se, the founder of North Korea's secret police; Lee Sang-jo, a rebellious and idealistic North Korean ambassador; and Mun Il, the secretary of North Korea’s first leader, Kim Il-sung. The biographies offer fresh perspectives into significant events in North Korean history such as the rise of Kim Il-sung and the reasons behind his selection as the nation's leader, The book also reveals how crucial events during the Korean War, such as the Inchon Landing Operation and China's entry into the war, shed new light on North Korean history. Unveiling the lives and impact of influential politicians in a notoriously secretive nation, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers including students and scholars of North Korea, the Korean War, the Cold War era, Asian history and those interested in the biographies of significant historical figures.

The Forgotten Political Elites of North Korea

The Forgotten Political Elites of North Korea PDF Author: Fyodor Tertitskiy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040043410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book comprises the biographies of the North Korean politicians whose actions played a pivotal role in shaping the formation of the country during the late 1940s, the Korean War of 1950-53 and the power struggles of the mid-1950s. Drawing from a rich array of archival material in both Korean, Russian and oral testimonies, this book gives insight into the life stories of key figures such as Pang Hak-se, the founder of North Korea's secret police; Lee Sang-jo, a rebellious and idealistic North Korean ambassador; and Mun Il, the secretary of North Korea’s first leader, Kim Il-sung. The biographies offer fresh perspectives into significant events in North Korean history such as the rise of Kim Il-sung and the reasons behind his selection as the nation's leader, The book also reveals how crucial events during the Korean War, such as the Inchon Landing Operation and China's entry into the war, shed new light on North Korean history. Unveiling the lives and impact of influential politicians in a notoriously secretive nation, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers including students and scholars of North Korea, the Korean War, the Cold War era, Asian history and those interested in the biographies of significant historical figures.

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

International Aid and South Korea

International Aid and South Korea PDF Author: Sojin Lim
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040276164
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
This book explores South Korea’s experience as an aid recipient, as an aid donor, and as an inter‐Korea aid provider. Analysing case studies of international aid both received and dispensed by South Korea, from the end of the Korean War until the present day, this collection provides a novel lens through which to explore South Korea’s development pathway. While it examines the cases of Italian and German aid to South Korea during its early economic development period, this volume also delineates South Korea’s international aid in the health and gender sectors. It also discusses the South Korean experience of providing aid to the Mekong region and North Korea. The latter specifically analyses whether this policy represents international altruism or reveals a novel method of international validation for South Korea over its neighbour. Featuring an exploration of South Korea’s development on the international stage through the lens of aid, this book will appeal to both students and scholars in the fields of Korean studies, East Asian studies, and Asia Pacific studies, as well as in the disciplines of Development Studies and International Relations and Political Economy, particularly that of aid policies and practices.

Without You, There Is No Us

Without You, There Is No Us PDF Author: Suki Kim
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307720667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues—evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own—at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged. Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."

Fish, Fishing and Community in North Korea and Neighbours

Fish, Fishing and Community in North Korea and Neighbours PDF Author: Robert Winstanley-Chesters
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811500428
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This open access book explores the histories and geographies of fishing in North Korea and the surrounding nations. With the ideological and environmental history of North Korea in mind, the book examines the complex interactions between local communities, fish themselves, wider ecosystems and the politics of Pyongyang through the lens of critical geography, fisheries statistics and management science as well as North Korean and more generally Korean and East Asian studies. There is increasing global interest in North Korea, its politics, people and landscapes, and as such, this book describes encounters with North Korean fishing communities, as well as unusual moments in the field in the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). It addresses fish, fishing infrastructure, fishing science and fishing statistics and other non-human elements of North Korean and other nations’ developmental regimes as actors and participants within them as much as humans and their technologies. The book enables readers to gain extensive insights into the aspirations and practices of fishing in North Korea and its neighbours, the navigation of difficult political and developmental situations and changing ecological realities in a time of environmental and climate crisis familiar to many across the globe.

North Korea's Hidden Revolution

North Korea's Hidden Revolution PDF Author: Jieun Baek
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300224478
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
“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

The Accusation

The Accusation PDF Author: Bandi
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 1487002726
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Authored by an anonymous writer and smuggled out of North Korea, The Accusation is the first work of fiction to come out of the country and a moving portrayal of life under a totalitarian regime. In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung’s totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and published around the world, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window into this most secretive of countries. Bandi’s profound, deeply moving, vividly characterized stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the theatre that is their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare. The Accusation is a heartbreaking portrayal of the realities of life in North Korea. It is also a reminder that humanity can sustain hope even in the most desperate of circumstances — and that the courage of free thought has a power far beyond those who seek to suppress it.

Isolationist States in an Interdependent World

Isolationist States in an Interdependent World PDF Author: Helga Turku
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131711194X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
States that withdraw from the international system provide insight into an unexplored area of international relations in terms of rationality, self-interest, power politics, cooperation and alliances. Indeed, isolationism in an interdependent state system goes against the logic of modern society and state systems. Using historical, comparative and inductive analysis, Helga Turku explains why states may choose to isolate themselves both domestically and internationally, using comparative historical analysis to flesh out isolationism as a concept and in practice. The book examines extreme forms of self-imposed domestic and international isolation in an interdependent international system, noting the effects on both the immediate interests of a ruling regime and the long-term national interests of the state and the populace.

Inside North Korea’s Theocracy

Inside North Korea’s Theocracy PDF Author: Ra Jong-yil
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438473745
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
First published in Korean in 2016, Inside North Korea's Theocracy offers a fascinating and rare look at the lives of several of the regime's key leaders. Its primary focus is Jang Song-thaek, a talented and reform-minded member of the political ruling class who was executed in 2013. Jang was the son-in-law of North Korean founder, Kim Il-sung; brother-in-law of its second leader, Kim Jong-il; and uncle to its current leader, Kim Jong-un. The author traces Jang's life from his youth as a brilliant student in Pyongyang to his eventual marriage to Kim Kyong-hui and his rising power as a businessman to, ultimately, his untimely death. In addition to biographical sketches of Jang, his wife, and brother-in-law, Ra Jong-yil provides first-hand impressions of life in North Korea and illuminates the inner workings of its government.

Printed in North Korea: The Art of Everyday Life in the DPRK

Printed in North Korea: The Art of Everyday Life in the DPRK PDF Author: Nick Bonner
Publisher: Phaidon Press
ISBN: 9780714879239
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Never-before-seen North Korea - a rare glimpse into the country behind the politics and the creativity behind the propaganda This incredible collection of prints dating from the 1950s to the twenty-first century is the only one of its kind in or outside North Korea. Depicting the everyday lives of the country's train conductors, steelworkers, weavers, farmers, scientists, and fishermen, these unique lino-cut and woodblock prints are a fascinating way to explore the culture of this still virtually unknown country. Together, they are an unparalleled testament to the talent of North Korea's artists and the unique social, cultural, and political conditions in which they work.