The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University) - Hardcover

Armstrong, Charles K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801440149 ISBN 13: 9780801440144

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Charles K. Armstrong is the Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies at Columbia University. He is the editor of Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State and coeditor of Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia.

Review:

"In The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950, Charles K. Armstrong shows conclusively for the first time that a revolutionary social, economic, and political upheaval occurred during this period, and that important ideological and policy conflicts defined the power struggles for control of the new state."

(Selig Harrison, author of Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement)

"Charles K. Armstrong has written a unique account of the North Korea's domestication of communism. The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 is an outstanding book."

(Dae-sook Suh, University of Hawaii)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0801440149
• ISBN 13: 9780801440144
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288