During the founding of North Korea, competing visions of an ideal modern state proliferated. Independence and democracy were touted by all, but plans for the future of North Korea differed in their ideas about how everyday life should be organized. Daily life came under scrutiny as the primary arena for social change in public and private life. In Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950, Kim examines the revolutionary events that shaped people's lives in the development of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
By shifting the historical focus from the state and the Great Leader to how villagers experienced social revolution, Kim offers new insights into why North Korea insists on setting its own course.
Kim’s innovative use of documents seized by U.S. military forces during the Korean War and now stored in the National Archives―personnel files, autobiographies, minutes of organizational meetings, educational materials, women’s magazines, and court documents―together with oral histories allows her to present the first social history of North Korea during its formative years.
In an account that makes clear the leading role of women in these efforts, Kim examines how villagers experienced, understood, and later remembered such events as the first land reform and modern elections in Korea’s history, as well as practices in literacy schools, communal halls, mass organizations, and study sessions that transformed daily routine
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"[On] the whole Kim's argument that the revolution was largely home-grown remains convincing. Especially fascinating are her chapters on the role of women in the revolution, and her exploration of the autobiographies that all adult North Koreans had to draft to show how their individual life stories fitted within the larger framework of Korea’s recent history and the revolution."(Michael Rochlitz Europe-Asia Studies)
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"Kim's work stays focused on various 'everyday' people as examples of how the North Korean revolution enabled regular peasants to build a new socialist modernity uniquely theirs. The author relies on oral histories and archival sources to bring these marginalized histories to light. Kim is well read across Korean, Russian, and Chinese sources as well as scholarship on North Korea. Her innovative approach is... a step forward from the typical Cold War approach.... Summing Up: Highly recommended."(Choice)
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"Kim's book is a pioneering contribution to the articulation of a new paradigm. Putting it even more directly, she provides fresh, and often compelling, answers to a most fundamental question: How should the history of North Korea be written, especially in the aftermath of the Cold War? Suzy Kim has written an important book that deserves to be read widely by historians of North Korea, as well as by those of comparative communism and revolutionary processes."(Journal of Korean Studies)
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"Concisely establishing the various lacunae and epistemological ossifications that hamstring studies of North Korea, this book makes a persuasive case for the significance of its subject. Kim argues that the everyday, especially in the formative years of the nation-state (1945–1950), posited a space for contestation, contingency, and construction by both state and society, which led to the formation of what she calls 'socialist modernity.'... Kim deftly mobilizes a range of materials, including statistics, photos, interviews, and official reports.... This is in many ways a pioneering work, the first analysis of North Korean social history in its formative years. Argued with finesse and supported by rich empirical research, it is undoubtedly an invaluable resource for all who are interested in the history of North Korea, everyday forms of socialism, and social history."(Hyung-Gu Lynn American Historical Review)
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"This well-researched and innovative book will be welcomed not only by scholars in East Asian and Korean studies but also by a broader audience interested in questions of revolution and everyday life. With a rigorous comparative and historical perspective Suzy Kim presents a compelling and sympathetic look at illiterate tenant farmers swept up in revolution."(Henry Em, Underwood International College, Yonsei University, author of The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea)
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"With a political system that is seen as bizarre in the West, and a developing nuclear program, too much of our attention is directed at North Korea as a state. Suzy Kim's book is an important contribution to overcome that bias and to point our attention at the individuals who lived in that country in its formative years. We need more research like this."(Rudiger Frank, Professor of East Asian Economy and Society, University of Vienna, Austria)
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About the Author
Suzy Kim is Associate Professor of Korean History at Rutgers University.
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Product details
Paperback: 328 pages
Publisher: Cornell University Press; Reprint edition (November 15, 2016)
Language: English
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Which is worse agenda or jargon?
ByJoseph Connollyon October 12, 2016
Way too much jargon and seemingly blind praise for the communist liberators makes this a tough read. The desire to highlight the positive aspects of liberation makes the lack of criticism almost unbearable. It is written as if the events are contemporaneous with the book and we are unaware of the actual events and outcome. She quotes from positive accounts from the DPRK by leftists and others blinded by the propaganda of the time.
There is no context within which to place the events. I am sure those small farms and landlords did not see land reform the same way as the author. There is no mention of the violence and coercion which must have taken place at the time. I have yet to be able to determine if this is a denial or just not seen as a topic within the scope of this book.
Those familiar with both either the Soviet or the Chinese implementation of collectivism will be aware of the details. A reader without such an orientation might come away with a different understanding.
Finally there is too much philosophy and jargon.
A better title might have been "Modernity and the concept of the everyday"
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good analysis of the North Korean revolution
ByChrison April 1, 2015
Good analysis of the North Korean revolution, and one of the only works in English on the topic. However, the author likes to "philosophize," and spends much of the first chapter discussing the origin and philosophical background of the concept of the "everyday"- something I could have done without.
The author also has a definite sympathy for left-wing/Marxist views, and this colors her writing. It wasn't a problem for me, but could be for more right-wing readers.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
In-depth and approachable
ByGeoffrey Woodon October 8, 2013
An in-depth and approachable study of the life of the North Korean people (rather than the leadership) in the tumultuous years leading up to the Korean War.
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4.0 out of 5 starsgood overview
ByJesse Soron April 10, 2014
It's a good overview of North Korea but does not go much into specifics, just a broader outlook on the whole.
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