Showing posts with label North Korea. Show all posts

2020-03-19

THE KOREAN WAR IN ASIA: A Hidden History | Edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki | Pacific Affairs

BOOK REVIEWS, NORTHEAST ASIA
VOLUME 93 – NO. 1

THE KOREAN WAR IN ASIA: A Hidden History | Edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Asia/Pacific/Perspectives. Lanham; Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. x, 226 pp. (Tables, map, B&W photos.) US$35.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-5381-1190-1.

Introduction: The Korean War, the region, and the world / Tessa Morris-Suzuki

-- A fire on the other shore? : Japan and the Korean War order / Tessa Morris-Suzuki
-- The Korean War and Manchuria : economic, social, and human effects / Mo Tian
-- From one divided country to another : the Korean War in Mongolia / Li Narangoa
-- Victory with minimum effort : how Nationalist China 'won' the Korean War / Catherine Churchman
-- The psychology of the Korean War : Okinawa and the fear of World War III / Pedro Iacobelli
-- A war across borders: the strange journey of prisoner no. 600,001 / Tessa Morris-Suzuki
-- The life and death of line-crossers : the secret Chinese agents of UNPIK / Catherine Churchman
-- The United States, Japan, and the undercover war in Korea / Tessa Morris-Suzuki
-- Epilogue: Northeast Asia and the never-ending war / Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, editor of the volume under review, in addition to writing the introduction and epilogue has contributed three excellent chapters, each of which is an updated version of earlier work that has appeared elsewhere, including in Asia Pacific Journal and the Journal of Asian Studies. Methodologically, the book focuses on nation-states as well as provinces and regions, with chapters on China’s Northeast (Manchuria), Inner Mongolia and Mongolia, Japan, Okinawa, and Taiwan. The authors draw on a rich body of primary and secondary sources and present a wealth of original material. The articles highlight the interaction between the war and the lives of everyday people, including soldiers, prisoners of war, herders, base labourers, interpreters, and teachers.

The book is part of Morris-Suzuki’s broader work on grass-roots perspectives of “informal life politics” in Asia over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this book she argues that the geographic impact of the Korean War on Asia was uneven, affecting some individuals, groups, and areas more than others.

The collection begins with an exploration of Japan’s role in the Korean War. This history is often examined in the context of the economic impact of the conflict on the Japanese economy, but Morris-Suzuki shows how the Japanese military participated in activities hidden from public view by the Japanese government and the United Nations Command (UNC). Although UNC officials denied that Japanese soldiers participated in the war, American military officers ordered them to work in support missions, especially as crew for American landing craft and seamen in mine-sweeping operations. Approximately 8,000 Japanese were involved in the conflict, Morris-Suzuki points out, more than the number of UNC soldiers raised by France (3, 421), New Zealand (4,720), and the Philippines (7,420). In response to these activities, American occupation officials retained imperial naval officers who had been scheduled to be purged. The war also spurred the growth and transformation of the National Police Reserve, a forerunner of Japan’s Self-Defence Force.

Two chapters in the collection examine the impact of the war on North Korea’s allies, China and Mongolia. Mo Tian presents a fine piece on the relocation of industries within Manchuria in the early 1950s, the expansion of the region’s armament industry, and the mobilization of civilians into “patriotic compacts,” designed to discipline workers and raise “voluntary” contributions for the war effort. From the point of view of transnational human linkages, however, we still lack detailed studies of the wartime background to the creation of the Yanbian autonomous zone in 1952, the views of Korean-Chinese about the conflict, and the North Korea-Manchuria border crossings of Korean refugees and family members.

Li Narangoa explores the contributions made by the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) and Mongolian-Chinese (Inner Mongolians) to the war. The MPR sent livestock (horses, goats, cows, and sheep) to North Korea, while Inner Mongolia participated in the war as part of China’s “Resist America Aid Korea” campaign. In addition to livestock, the Chinese province sent cavalry units to Korea. These mounted soldiers suffered heavy losses from US air attacks and were later converted into two infantry units and an artillery regiment. This story is largely unknown, as histories tend to treat Chinese involvement in the war in monolithic terms. The conflict itself accelerated Inner Mongolia’s assimilation into the newly created People’s Republic of China and reinforced the territorial division of Mongol populations in Northeast Asia.

Another chapter by Pedro Iacobelli examines the role of emotions, especially fear, amongst Okinawans during the Korean War. He points out that the fighting recalled the traumatic experiences of the islanders during World War II.

The history of prisoners of war (POWs) is a prominent theme in the book. Catherine Churchman notes that most of the Chinese prisoners had been soldiers in Nationalist armies and that almost half of all Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) had been in Communist armies for less than a year. In the context of the anti-communist violence in the POW camps, the soldiers re-lived China’s civil conflict. Although the Nationalist government may not have secretly colluded with the US to mobilize the prisoners, it sent instructors into the camps to preach anti-communism and democracy. Churchman does not explore the Nationalist concept of democracy in the 1940s and 1950s, but points out that most of the Chinese prisoners had quite limited knowledge of the politics surrounding their fate, being “entirely at the mercy” of their camp commander (95).
Morris-Suzuki takes up the POW theme in her chapter, which explores the remarkable history of prisoner 600,001, a Japanese soldier captured by the UNC while fighting for the Chinese communist army in Korea, and whose history highlights the linkages between the Korean War, World War II, and the Chinese Civil War. This history raises wider questions about the composition of the CPV.

Narangoa suggests, for example, that some of the Inner Mongolians in the CPV had served in armies under the Japanese, and it is likely Chinese communist forces also consisted of former warlord soldiers.

The last two chapters examine the relationship between POWs and secret American intelligence operations during the conflict. Churchman focuses on the history of Unit 8240, United Nations Partisan Infantry Korea (UNPIK), made up of Chinese POWs who were coerced into making extremely dangerous “line-crossing” intelligence missions into North Korea. Not only did these operations violate the Geneva Accords on POWs, a large majority of the recruits appear to have been killed or captured.

In the last chapter, Morris-Suzuki examines the history of “Z Unit,” a US intelligence organization anchored in Tokyo and involved in numerous “line-crossing” missions, including infiltrating into North Korea, invasive interrogations in Japan, and training UNPIK recruits. In one case, which later became public knowledge, the unit kidnapped a prominent Japanese leftist and attempted to force him to become a spy.

There are some limitations to this volume. Koreans are secondary actors in the analysis, and the use of “Asia” in the title is a bit misleading as the book primarily discusses Northeast Asia and Taiwan. Absent from the analysis are other Asian participants in the conflict, notably India, the Philippines, and Thailand. Even so, the book makes a significant and original contribution to our understanding of the Korean War and is a welcome addition to the literature on the conflict.

Steven Hugh Lee

The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Last Revised: February 28, 2020
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This book takes a fresh look at the Korean War by considering the conflict from a Northeast Asian regional perspective. It highlights the connections of the war to earlier conflicts in the region and examines the human impact of the war on neighboring countries, focusing particularly on the ways in which the Korean War shaped regional cross-border movements of people, goods, and ideas (including hopes and fears). It also considers the lasting consequences of these movements for the region’s society and politics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This remarkable book’s unique approach makes it one of most important works we have on the Korean War. Rather than attempt to answer traditional questions regarding origins or battle tactics, it traces the domino effect of the war on governments and peoples peripherally related to the actual slaughter itself.

Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries. (CHOICE)

A truly essential book at a critical juncture for Northeast Asia. In lucid prose and with far-ranging examples, Tessa Morris-Suzuki and her fellow authors powerfully reveal that the ‘very divergent ways in which the Korean War is remembered and forgotten in the countries that participated in the conflict have the power to fuel present and future regional tensions.’ This should be required reading for everyone involved in thinking about Korea and its place in the world today. (Alexis Dudden, University of Connecticut)

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CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu | Pacific Affairs

CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu

Perspectives on Contemporary Korea. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018. vi, 320 pp. (Table, B&W photos, illustration.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-472-05396-4.

Youngju Ryu’s edited volume of essays, Cultures of Yusin: South Korea in the 1970s, is a welcome supplement and counterpoint to earlier recent collections on developmental dictatorship and the Park Chung Hee era (Yi Pyŏngch’ŏn, ed., Kaebal tokchae wa Pak Chŏnghŭi sidae: uri sidae ŭi chŏngch’i-kyŏngjejŏk kiwŏn, Seoul: Ch’angbi, 2003; translated into English as Lee Byeong-cheon, ed., Developmental Dictatorship and the Park Chung-hee Era: The Shaping of Modernity in the Republic of Korea, Paramus: Homa & Sekey, 2006; and Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel, eds., The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea, Cambridge: Harvard, 2013). The Yusin era (1972–1979), from the promulgation of the Yusin Constitution that formalized Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship, to his assassination by the director of his own apparatus of totalitarianism, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), was a period of profound anti-democracy and rapid industrialization. To borrow Prasenjit Duara’s phrase, the essays in this new collection are attempts at “rescuing history from the nation.” While the collected essays embark from the common acknowledgment of Park Chung Hee’s monolithic Yusin culture as both the constructive and detrimental foundation for contemporary Korea, the authors consciously employ a post-nostalgic perspective after the popular rejection of “Yusin Redux” with the Candlelight Revolution (2016–2017) that ended the presidency of the dictator’s daughter. The plural Cultures of Yusin explores ideas and spaces that were not necessarily oppositional, but informal, peripheral, or alternative to the prescribed Yusin “cultural project of hypernationalization” (12).

Ryu bookends the collection with the observation that Koreans and scholars of Korea are no longer constrained by the Yusin paradigm “that posited development and democracy in largely oppositional terms” (288). She notes the ironic pattern underlying the April Student Revolution (1960) and the June Democratic Uprising (1987) that occurred before and after the Yusin era, that radical progressives did not directly win the support of the masses, but that it was the heavy-handed government reaction against radical progressives that moved the masses, conservative by default, to effectively support the reformers. While relatively absent of violence, there was a similarly ironic pattern behind the recent Candlelight Revolution. Largely as a product of relentless state conditioning, many South Koreans had for decades persistently responded to the dislocation of ambiguity and modernity with an abstract nostalgia for Park Chung Hee and Yusin culture, the illusory certainty of dictatorship and development. Progressives largely failed to discourage such nostalgia, as the “assessment of Park as a ‘great’ president [was] widely shared by both supporters and critics alike” (4). Only when the abstract was made concrete by his daughter’s presidency, did the delusional appeal of Yusin culture self-destruct. In four short years, Park Geun-hye went from riding a popular presidential election victory, to weekly demonstrations of millions of Koreans demanding her resignation and prosecution.

The chapters cover diverse subjects, but two overlapping themes are prevalent, one of literal and metaphorical spaces beyond the reach of the Yusin regime’s coercive social control, and the other, an antagonism of individualism versus national collectivism. Eunhee Park describes the significance of informal kye (rotating credit associations) that never became successfully incorporated into the formal banking system, but grew to ubiquitous popularity, particularly among lower and middle-class women, contributing not only to mass prosperity, but also serving as a lifeline for small and medium size enterprises—all neglected by the Yusin regime’s obsession with big businesses in the “Big Push” for heavy industrialization. Several authors explore imagined spaces previously neglected by scholars of the Yusin era. Irhe Sohn describes “Techniscope action movies,” including popular martial arts “Westerns” set in the hinterlands of colonial Manchuria, of untamed individualism that appealed to lower-class men. Sunyoung Park explores alternate realities in science fiction, and Joan Kee alternate possibilities in performance art. Se-Mi Oh describes the celebrated Yusin architect Kim Swoo-geun’s “Master Plan” for the modern capital which was left incompletely realized because of Park’s anti-communist aesthetic. Han Sang Kim describes how the liberal Western ideal of homeownership, filtered through an emerging “my home” (maihōmu) owning Japanese middle class, into a frustrating Korean fantasy that still generates antiestablishment resentment.

Won Kim describes how even progressive intellectuals who had originally founded journals like Ch’angbi in the 1960s with “pro-Western tendencies” (37) of privileging modernism over tradition, nevertheless succumbed to using the state’s own vocabulary of nationalism in competing with the Yusin state in the 1970s by embracing native progressivism in “national literature” and “sprouts of capitalism” as a consequence of Koreanness becoming constrained by popular anti-colonialism and the illiberal state’s anti-Westernism. There were inherent contradictions that ultimately made Yusin totalitarianism unrealizable no matter how much coercion, torture, and murder was applied. Park was force fitting a Meiji Japanese model of industrial development, social control, and ethnic nationalism, which became necessarily anti-Japanese because Korean sovereignty had to be independent and anti-colonial. Ryu quotes Janet Poole’s description of fascism as “the desire for a kind of capitalism without capitalism… the dream of capitalism without its excesses” (11). Park’s “Korean-style democracy” (Han’guk-sik minjujuŭi) was literally without democracy, the dream of a society without individuals. Serk-bae Suh describes a particularly empowering phenomenon in which subversive writers like Kim Chi-ha and others inverted the common paradigm of Jesus as an omnipotent authority into Jesus as an impotent supplicant in need of human rescue. This form of humanism posited the agency and responsibility for saving the people in the hands of the people and not a higher authority, divine or political.

The essays in this edited volume are nuanced but accessible, and Ryu does an admirable job in bridging a coherence to the different narratives. The authors are relatively young scholars, and there is no doubt there will be more on the subject forthcoming. Meanwhile, this work elevates the critical discourse on Yusin in the sense of rescuing history as a step toward constructive progress.

Tae Yang Kwak

Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, USA

NORTH KOREAN GRAPHIC NOVELS: Seduction of the Innocent? | By Martin Petersen | Pacific Affairs

NORTH KOREAN GRAPHIC NOVELS: Seduction of the Innocent? | By Martin Petersen | Pacific Affairs
BOOK REVIEWS, NORTHEAST ASIA

VOLUME 92 – NO. 3

NORTH KOREAN GRAPHIC NOVELS: Seduction of the Innocent? | By Martin Petersen
---
Graphic novels (kurimchaek) are a major art form in North Korea, produced by agents of the regime to set out its vision in a range of important areas. This book provides an analysis of North Korean graphic novels, discussing the ideals they promote and the tensions within those ideals, and examining the reception of graphic novels in North Korea and by North Korean refugees in South Korea.

Particular themes considered include the ideal family and how the regime promotes this; patriotism, and its conflict with class identities; and the portrayal of the Korean War – "The Fatherland Liberation War", as it is known in North Korea – and the subsequent, continuing stand-off.

Overall, the book demonstrates the importance of graphic novels in North Korea as a tool for bringing up children and for promoting North Korean ideals. In addition, however, the book also shows that although the regime sees the imaginative power of graphic novels as a necessity for effective communication, graphic novels are also viewed with caution in that they exist in everyday social life in ways that the regime may be aware of, and seeks to control, but cannot dominate completely.

--- Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia Series. London; New York: Routledge [an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business], 2019. xv, 306 pp. (Tables, illustrations) US$149.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-04693-1.

As the world tunes into US-DPRK summits, and talks of denuclearization dominate the media, there is still the mundane everyday life that exists in North Korea.
Martin Petersen’s book North Korean Graphic Novels: Seduction of the Innocent? presents to the English-speaking audience an aspect of everyday culture that has not been dealt with in studies on North Korea.

Petersen’s research is vast, exhibiting his knowledge and expertise in hundreds of graphic novels. Primarily focusing on graphic novels from the 1990s and 2000s, Petersen contextualizes the historical and political trajectory and the impact it has had on the production of this cultural medium. Although Petersen acknowledges the evident state ideology in graphic novels, he also suggests that artistic expression allows for “ironic readings” to emerge, affirming the diversity of cultural production in North Korea.

North Korean Graphic Novels consists of nine chapters, divided into three parts.

The first three chapters in part 1 outline the history of the development of graphic novels from the 1960s to the present day and how they reflect the political changes occurring under the leadership of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Based on the data in Korean Literature and Art Yearbook, chapters 1 and 2 itemize the publication of graphic novels, revealing their increasing popularity. In chapter 3, Petersen describes how graphic novels are inextricably connected to the deification of the leaders. By analyzing images and discourses in the novels’ frames, he shows the replication of political ideology glorifying the Kim family.

Part 2 is the most theoretical aspect of the book, framed around descriptive analyses of graphic novels of the 1990s and 2000s.

In chapter 4, Petersen provides three approaches—what he calls meta-authorial reading, ironic reading, and reader-recognizant meta-authorial reading—to understanding graphic novels during the Arduous March in the 1990s, a period that crippled North Korea’s economy due to mismanagement of food, lack of production, and a nation-wide famine. According to Petersen, meta-authorial reading is an “expression of regime intentionality with an inherently partisan mode of meaning,” which is to say that the graphic novels of this period projected Party guidelines and adhered to state ideology (132). Ironic reading, then, is an approach that questions the intentionality of the state and provides open-ended interpretations of graphic novels. Although Petersen tries to demonstrate that graphic novels are not simply iterations of the state ideology and that there are cognitive dissonances, his application of reader-recognizant meta-authorial reading shows how the regime used graphic novels to reinstate power and stability during times of crisis. Petersen’s use of these three approaches is a modality through which we can better understand graphic novels of the 1990s. However, his descriptions of the plot were longer than his critical analysis, leaving the readers to make the connections that Petersen had promised.

Chapter 5 explores a recurring problem of bad family background in North Korean society. The state judges one’s intentions by scrutinizing one’s family background. Petersen argues that the function of graphic novels is to educate the readers to transcend problematic family backgrounds to become more loyal subjects of the state. Of all the chapters in North Korean Graphic Novels, this chapter is by far the most simplistic and uncritical in terms of analyzing the cultural medium. Petersen engages yet again in a descriptive explanation of the plot and falls short of providing critical nuances of a subject matter that is common in North Korean literature. He promises to extrapolate ironic readings that reveal structural problems in the society, but such readings get subsumed in the heavy-handed description of plots.

Conversely, chapters 6 and 7 are the most successful literary interpretations of graphic novels. By examining frames, sequences, artwork, rhetoric, dialogues, and symbolisms, Petersen explicates literary nuances that support the regime and moments that push the limits of artistic expression. Chapter 7, in particular, is the most developed chapter, wherein Petersen restrains from exhaustive descriptions of the plot while presenting a critical understanding of the multimodal production of graphic novels in North Korea. Petersen argues that there is much ambiguity in the interplay between state ideology and entertainment in graphic novels about loyal patriots who cross over to enemy territory to convert South Koreans.

Part 3 consists of chapters 8 and 9, which attempt to examine the consumption of graphic novels by North Koreans. While the cultural medium is primarily intended to educate young readers, Petersen observes that children may steal and read them in secret, potentially misunderstanding the intended message. The impact of such misunderstanding, Petersen argues, is important enough to spur the state to intervene, and educate the parents to emulate the Kim family in raising revolutionary children, which is an extension of the state’s attempt to educate the youth. Chapter 9 valiantly attempts to understand the reception of graphic novels by North Koreans. Interviewing a handful of North Korean refugees, migrants, and defectors living in South Korea, Petersen contextualizes these graphic novels, and situates them in a framework of reader-response theory. It is understandable that the outside world desires to know what North Koreans think about their own cultural medium, regime, and society, particularly because of the enigmatic discourse that shrouds that country. However, as difficult as it is to grasp authorial intent, it is virtually impossible to know how all the citizens of a country read, think, and interpret graphic novels, and insights from a handful of refugees will not provide any critical analyses of graphic novels.

Petersen begins and ends his book with the question of whether graphic novels have the power to seduce youth in North Korea, and demonstrates that they do indeed persuade readers to internalize state ideology. At the same time, he recognizes the seductive inclination of entertainment in graphic novels, creating a space of imagination that goes beyond the intended political message. Petersen displays his expertise in graphic novels and provides a comprehensive understanding of the cultural medium. Petersen’s book, therefore, is an important addition to much-needed scholarship in North Korean studies.

Immanuel Kim

The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

Last Revised: November 28, 2019
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학술저널

북한의 그림책 장르인식과 아동 그림책에 나타난 탈이념성

North Korea’s Recognition of the Picture Book Genre and the Anti-Ideology in Children’s Picture Books

최윤정(건국대학교)
한국아동청소년문학학회
아동청소년문학연구
아동청소년문학연구 제23호
2018.12
117 - 149 (33 pages)
KCI등재

DOI : 10.24993/JKLCY.2018.12.23.117

초록

이 논문은 북한의 그림책을 연구대상으로 하여 그림책에 대한 북한의 장르인식을 살피고 아동용 그림책의 특징을 분석하였다. 특히 남북 이질감을 극복하기 위한 방안에서 북한 그림책에 나타난 탈이념성에 주목하였다.
북한 그림책이 가지고 있는 장르의 혼종성은 많은 연구자들에게 혼란을 주고 있지만, 남한식의 개념을 무리하게 대입시키기보다는 그러한 혼종성 자체를 북한 그림책의 특징으로 이해하여야 할 것이다. 특히 1980년~90년 중반에 걸쳐 집중 발간된 북한의 아동용 그림책들은 글과 그림의 관계, 그림의 완성도 측면에서 예술적 관점으로 접근 가능한 텍스트들이다. 이들 텍스트들을 중심으로 그림책 장르에 대한 북한식의 이해를 살펴볼 수 있다. 많은 아동용 그림책들이 북한 사회에서 요구하는 교양덕목을 담아내는 데 일차적인 목적을 두고 있는 것은 분명해 보인다. 그럼에도 불구하고 발견된 탈이념적 성격의 그림책들은 향후 남북관계에 있어 가교역할을 할 수 있다는 측면에서 주목을 요한다.

This study set out to examine North Korea’s perceptions of the picture book genre and analyze the characteristics of picture books for children by examining picture books in North Korea with a special focus on the anti-ideology of North Korean picture books to overcome a sense of difference between North and South Korea.
In North Korean picture books, pictures include cartoons. Since there is no clear distinction between picture books and cartoons in North Korea with regard to the perception of the picture book genre, the researchers are in confusion in the field. The hybridity of the genre itself should, however, be understood as a characteristic of North Korean picture books instead of forcing the South Korean-style concept on North Korea. The North Korean picture books for children whose publication was concentrated from the 1980s to the middle 1990s, in particular, offer texts that can be approached from an artistic perspective in terms of relations between texts and pictures and the completion level of pictures. The present study examined the North Korean-style understanding of a medium of art called picture books with a focus on these texts. It is clear that many picture books for children have a primary goal of conveying the virtues of refinement required by the North Korean society, but the picture books of antiideological nature around “old storybooks with pictures” are worth receiving attention as they will be able to promote the recovery of homogeneity between North and South Korea and serve as a bridge in future relations between two Koreas.
닫기

목차

국문초록
1. 서론
2. 북한 그림책의 성격과 그림책에 대한 장르 인식
3. 아동용 그림책의 특징과 탈이념적 성격의 발견
4 결론
참고문헌
Abstract

CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu | Pacific Affairs

CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu | Pacific Affairs

BOOK REVIEWS, NORTHEAST ASIA

VOLUME 93 – NO. 1

CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu

Perspectives on Contemporary Korea. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018. vi, 320 pp. (Table, B&W photos, illustration.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-472-05396-4.

Youngju Ryu’s edited volume of essays, Cultures of Yusin: South Korea in the 1970s, is a welcome supplement and counterpoint to earlier recent collections on developmental dictatorship and the Park Chung Hee era (Yi Pyŏngch’ŏn, ed., Kaebal tokchae wa Pak Chŏnghŭi sidae: uri sidae ŭi chŏngch’i-kyŏngjejŏk kiwŏn, Seoul: Ch’angbi, 2003; translated into English as Lee Byeong-cheon, ed., Developmental Dictatorship and the Park Chung-hee Era: The Shaping of Modernity in the Republic of Korea, Paramus: Homa & Sekey, 2006; and Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel, eds., The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea, Cambridge: Harvard, 2013). The Yusin era (1972–1979), from the promulgation of the Yusin Constitution that formalized Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship, to his assassination by the director of his own apparatus of totalitarianism, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), was a period of profound anti-democracy and rapid industrialization. To borrow Prasenjit Duara’s phrase, the essays in this new collection are attempts at “rescuing history from the nation.” While the collected essays embark from the common acknowledgment of Park Chung Hee’s monolithic Yusin culture as both the constructive and detrimental foundation for contemporary Korea, the authors consciously employ a post-nostalgic perspective after the popular rejection of “Yusin Redux” with the Candlelight Revolution (2016–2017) that ended the presidency of the dictator’s daughter. The plural Cultures of Yusin explores ideas and spaces that were not necessarily oppositional, but informal, peripheral, or alternative to the prescribed Yusin “cultural project of hypernationalization” (12).

Ryu bookends the collection with the observation that Koreans and scholars of Korea are no longer constrained by the Yusin paradigm “that posited development and democracy in largely oppositional terms” (288). She notes the ironic pattern underlying the April Student Revolution (1960) and the June Democratic Uprising (1987) that occurred before and after the Yusin era, that radical progressives did not directly win the support of the masses, but that it was the heavy-handed government reaction against radical progressives that moved the masses, conservative by default, to effectively support the reformers. While relatively absent of violence, there was a similarly ironic pattern behind the recent Candlelight Revolution. Largely as a product of relentless state conditioning, many South Koreans had for decades persistently responded to the dislocation of ambiguity and modernity with an abstract nostalgia for Park Chung Hee and Yusin culture, the illusory certainty of dictatorship and development. Progressives largely failed to discourage such nostalgia, as the “assessment of Park as a ‘great’ president [was] widely shared by both supporters and critics alike” (4). Only when the abstract was made concrete by his daughter’s presidency, did the delusional appeal of Yusin culture self-destruct. In four short years, Park Geun-hye went from riding a popular presidential election victory, to weekly demonstrations of millions of Koreans demanding her resignation and prosecution.

The chapters cover diverse subjects, but two overlapping themes are prevalent, one of literal and metaphorical spaces beyond the reach of the Yusin regime’s coercive social control, and the other, an antagonism of individualism versus national collectivism. Eunhee Park describes the significance of informal kye (rotating credit associations) that never became successfully incorporated into the formal banking system, but grew to ubiquitous popularity, particularly among lower and middle-class women, contributing not only to mass prosperity, but also serving as a lifeline for small and medium size enterprises—all neglected by the Yusin regime’s obsession with big businesses in the “Big Push” for heavy industrialization. Several authors explore imagined spaces previously neglected by scholars of the Yusin era. Irhe Sohn describes “Techniscope action movies,” including popular martial arts “Westerns” set in the hinterlands of colonial Manchuria, of untamed individualism that appealed to lower-class men. Sunyoung Park explores alternate realities in science fiction, and Joan Kee alternate possibilities in performance art. Se-Mi Oh describes the celebrated Yusin architect Kim Swoo-geun’s “Master Plan” for the modern capital which was left incompletely realized because of Park’s anti-communist aesthetic. Han Sang Kim describes how the liberal Western ideal of homeownership, filtered through an emerging “my home” (maihōmu) owning Japanese middle class, into a frustrating Korean fantasy that still generates antiestablishment resentment.

Won Kim describes how even progressive intellectuals who had originally founded journals like Ch’angbi in the 1960s with “pro-Western tendencies” (37) of privileging modernism over tradition, nevertheless succumbed to using the state’s own vocabulary of nationalism in competing with the Yusin state in the 1970s by embracing native progressivism in “national literature” and “sprouts of capitalism” as a consequence of Koreanness becoming constrained by popular anti-colonialism and the illiberal state’s anti-Westernism. There were inherent contradictions that ultimately made Yusin totalitarianism unrealizable no matter how much coercion, torture, and murder was applied. Park was force fitting a Meiji Japanese model of industrial development, social control, and ethnic nationalism, which became necessarily anti-Japanese because Korean sovereignty had to be independent and anti-colonial. Ryu quotes Janet Poole’s description of fascism as “the desire for a kind of capitalism without capitalism… the dream of capitalism without its excesses” (11). Park’s “Korean-style democracy” (Han’guk-sik minjujuŭi) was literally without democracy, the dream of a society without individuals. Serk-bae Suh describes a particularly empowering phenomenon in which subversive writers like Kim Chi-ha and others inverted the common paradigm of Jesus as an omnipotent authority into Jesus as an impotent supplicant in need of human rescue. This form of humanism posited the agency and responsibility for saving the people in the hands of the people and not a higher authority, divine or political.

The essays in this edited volume are nuanced but accessible, and Ryu does an admirable job in bridging a coherence to the different narratives. The authors are relatively young scholars, and there is no doubt there will be more on the subject forthcoming. Meanwhile, this work elevates the critical discourse on Yusin in the sense of rescuing history as a step toward constructive progress.

Tae Yang Kwak

Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, USA

Last Revised: February 28, 2020

A MISUNDERSTOOD FRIENDSHIP: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976 | By Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia | Pacific Affairs

A MISUNDERSTOOD FRIENDSHIP: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976 | By Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia

New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. xiv, 357 pp. (B&W photos, maps.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-18826-5.

The Trump administration’s policy toward North Korea has been erratic. At times, Washington has seemed to place too much hope on Beijing’s ability to curb the nuclear ambitions of North Korea’s young dictator. However, in this Trump has been disappointed. Did Beijing not have as much leverage over Pyongyang as the Americans assumed? Or, was Beijing just unwilling to help Washington achieve its goals in the Northwest Pacific? Had Trump and his advisors read this new book by Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, they might have figured out that it was both. Beijing-Pyongyang relations since the days of Kim Jong Un’s grandfather have been more complicated than any outsiders could imagine.

Based on new historical evidence from China, Russia, Korea, and former Eastern European Bloc countries, this book details the process in which the so-called “special relationship” between Beijing and Pyongyang developed, when Mao and the elder Kim were in charge. This is in contrast to some past scholarship, which either emphasized the “monolithic communist” nature of the Chinese-Soviet-North Korean alliance, or focused on its nationalistic nature, as if the conflict between Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang was more serious than their hostility toward the US. Still others would call the Korean War a “civil war.” This present study reveals that the Korean War was a war of proxies; Kim could not have waged war without support from both Stalin and Mao, as many other recent studies have already suggested. However, solidarity and disagreement among allies are never mutually exclusive, and the complications of alliance politics can be much more serious when the states involved are controlled by dictators. The unique contribution of this study is that the authors offer an insider’s look into the complications of alliance politics and details of the infighting among the leading figures in Beijing, Pyongyang, and Moscow.

Initially both Stalin and Mao did not approve of Kim’s military unification plan to attack the South. However, Stalin changed his mind early in 1950. He gave Kim the green light to start a military attack without consulting Mao in advance; but he did send Kim to Beijing, and gave Mao the final decision-making power. Stalin knew that Mao was obsessed with promoting his own brand of revolution throughout the East, to “create a supreme headquarters within China for the Asian Revolution,” as the authors write (23). If Mao wanted to be the revolutionary leader of the East, how could he refuse to support Kim’s plan to “liberate” the South militarily? Mao did not disappoint Stalin: he gave Kim his blessing and promised Chinese assistance whenever needed. Mao never wavered in sending troops to Korea after McArthur’s successful Inchon landing, in spite of his own politburo’s opposition and Stalin’s hesitation to provide air cover to the Chinese grand operations, according to the authors.

But Kim had his own ambitions and plans; he did not even inform Mao before ordering the initial attack. Only after three days did Mao receive a military briefing from Pyongyang. After the ceasefire, Kim started to purge his own comrades who had spent World War II in either China or the USSR in order to finalize his grip on power, and to minimize the influence from Beijing and Moscow. Mao and Khrushchev jointly intervened in 1956, but Kim only paid lip service to the “bosses.” As soon as the joint delegation left, he resumed his purge against those with extensive Chinese or Soviet ties. When Mao tried to put more pressure on Kim by suspending or reducing economic aid, Kim informed Mao that he would approach the UN to resolve the Korean unification issue. Mao was furious, accusing Kim of defecting to the West, just like Tito or Nagy. However, there was nothing Mao could do.

Two years later, Mao found himself in need of Kim’s loyalty, even if it was the lip-service type, when he started to openly challenge the Kremlin’s leadership in the communist world. Mao started to build a “special relationship” with Kim, and he ordered all Chinese troops to leave North Korea in 1958. Beijing no longer protected Kim’s opponents who had historical ties with the Chinese Communist Party, and Kim completed his monopoly on power with Mao’s help. While the Sino-Soviet rivalry and conflict deteriorated all the way to a military border clash between these two powers in 1969, Kim leveraged his position to milk more benefits from both Beijing and Moscow by constantly moving between the two poles.

After the Sino-Soviet border war in 1969, Mao came to identify the USSR as the number-one enemy, thus moving toward a policy of rapprochement with the US. If Mao was furious when Kim played the UN card against him in the 1950s, Kim certainly could not have been happy to see Mao shake hands with Nixon. Vietnam and Albania, the only other party-states that followed Mao’s self-acclaimed leadership, were also alienated by Beijing’s new policy. If Mao hoped that his move would intensify the Soviet-American conflict, which would lead to a revolutionary crisis worldwide, he died a frustrated man, because Nixon also moved to a policy of detente with Moscow and started nuclear arms control talks shortly afterward. At the same time, Kim was promoting himself as a revolutionary leader in the communist world, which would not succeed by any realistic means, other than helping him build his personality cult within North Korea. He would also die leaving his country isolated and extremely impoverished.

Now, the first meeting between Trump and Kim did not yield much concrete progress towards Pyongyang’s denuclearization. The second meeting in Vietnam ended abruptly without any agreement, but with both sides seeming to leave open the possibility of a third meeting. The question remains: Does Washington understand that the young Kim may be playing both Chinese and American cards to leverage his position, just as his grandfather did?

Michael Sheng

The University of Akron, Akron, USA

NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS: Activists and Networks | Edited by Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb; with a Foreword by The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG | Pacific Affairs

NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS: Activists and Networks | Edited by Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb; with a Foreword by The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xxxi, 301 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures) US$110.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-109-42549-0.

This edited volume describes the complexities and politics of advocating for human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). It chronicles the emergence of a transnational advocacy movement in the past two decades, composed of “domestic and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), government agencies, legislative bodies, foundations, think-tanks, churches and other religious organizations, journalists, scholars, students, and concerned citizens” (3). At the heart of the movement are self-identified “defectors” from North Korea and committed activists of various ethnic backgrounds, mainly living in South Korea and the United States, but also in Canada, Japan, and the European Union. Although defectors and activists share the ultimate goal of improving human rights in North Korea, they differ in the means. Some prefer humanitarian assistance in cooperation with the DPRK regime, and oppose sanctions that would block such assistance. Others advocate more confrontational approaches, including lobbying the United Nations for punitive sanctions and illegally smuggling information to North Korean people through radio broadcasts and thumb drives.

North Korea is theoretically important for the literature on human rights and social movement activism, because it is currently the only country where domestic human rights activism has yet to germinate and therefore the conditions for a “boomerang pattern” (Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders, Cornell, 1998) cannot be satisfied. The editors ask, “First, how does a transnational advocacy network emerge to push for change in a highly repressive context where there is no domestic opposition? And second, by what pathways might transnational activists create change in such contexts?” (2).

The eleven contributing writers each address one or both of these questions. The contributors analyze local, regional, and international pressure tactics and the responses from the North Korean (NK) regime. Even in the absence of human rights activist partners in North Korea, transnational advocates (outside of North Korea) have successfully lobbied for the establishment of the 2013–2014 UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and other resolution-based mechanisms to monitor human rights in North Korea. The question remains whether these institutional monitors will lead to substantive changes in DPRK policy, or merely cosmetic ones, in the absence of domestic human rights actors.

The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 (Domestic Discourse and Activism) investigates DPRK-related discourse and advocacy in South Korea, the US, Japan, and Europe. In South Korea (chapter 2), Jacob Reidhead analyzes how right-leaning activist movements advocating civil and political rights (CPR) and politically allying with right-wing parties eventually dominated media discourse and the civil society field over left-leaning groups advocating economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR). In the US (chapter 3), Andrew Yeo finds, North Korean human rights activism is deeply embedded in the Cold War normative framework of the 1970s and early 1980s; as such, compared to advocates elsewhere, US-based advocates connect DPRK human rights violations to the DPRK regime’s threat to international security (e.g., nuclear missiles).

Compared to those of the United States and South Korea, Japanese rights discourse and activism are more recently and narrowly focused on the abduction of Japanese nationals by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s (Celeste Arrington, chapter 4).

North Korea human rights advocacy in South Korea, the US, and Japan tends to be dominated by right-wing, anti-communist activists and politicians. In chapter 5, Narayan demonstrates a less politicized and confrontational approach in the European Union, where human rights advocates and governments seek “to maintain a constructive relationship with the North Korean government while at the same time introducing human rights issues into the dialogue,” an approach called “critical engagement.”

Part 2 transitions from national to transnational-level analysis, as contributors Hosaniak, Goedde, and Chubb consider how activists from various backgrounds and nations develop coherent transnational networks. In chapter 6, Hosaniak discusses NGOs as catalysts for agenda-setting and discourse at the United Nations and other inter-governmental organizations. Most NGOs and IGOs have converged on an accountability paradigm that seeks to hold the DPRK regime accountable for human rights violations, as reflected in the increasing number of UN member nations voting for human rights resolutions. Goedde examines DRPK reactions, ranging from propaganda pushback and rejection to more constructive legal and policy changes (chapter 7). In chapter 8, Danielle Chubb discusses the theoretical ramifications of the previous chapters. She asks how and why the normative and discursive contours of activist networks shift over time and what are the implications of this for campaign outcomes.

Part 3 contemplates the voices of North Koreans themselves, both anti-regime defectors and regime officials. Because of the lack of independent voices within North Korea, defector accounts are central to the credibility of the human rights movement. Jay Song maps out the intricate connections and interactions of five prominent defectors with activists and agencies in their countries of residence (chapter 9). Sandra Fahy systematically analyzes thousands of pages of the DPRK newspaper Rodong sinmun for the regime’s reactions to UN resolutions; these include the old defense of sovereignty and a more recent one of an “ersatz” civil society that perfectly echoes government rhetoric (chapter 10). Jieun Baek explores the bottom-up strategy of providing information to ordinary North Koreans, from illegally smuggling thumb drives to legal market trading between North Koreans and Chinese (chapter 11).

The concluding chapter by Yeo and Chubb describes the empirical and theoretical contributions of the book. The authors modify the spiral model, which outlines the stages of behaviour of repressive regimes, from violators to compliant participants of human rights campaigns. The model highlights that countries like North Korea initially deny the very assumption of human rights violations. As they face pressure from the international community, they start to change their position. After some time, they adjust their domestic policies to align with human rights norms. In the long term, they may change their behaviour to comply with the international human rights framework. During this process, information flows and rights discourse are essential elements in empowering ordinary citizens to fight for their rights.

Left-wing scholars such as Christine Hong critique North Korean human rights advocates as right-wing imperialists committed to regime change. Yeo and Chubb recognize that hardline elements exist, but argue that the current movement is diverse and complicated, and increasingly includes actors that equally support humanitarian engagement and human rights. Yeo has been personally involved in such engagement efforts and hopes to boost their influence in the human rights movement.

This edited volume is an outstanding collection of chapters that shows the challenges and opportunities of transnational activism with respect to the world’s most isolated and repressive country. The chapters offer interesting theories and novel methodological approaches, and shall be invaluable contributions to scholars, policy makers, and activists working on North Korea and on human rights more generally.

Joseph Yi

Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea

Wondong Lee

University of California, Irvine, USA

UNVEILING THE NORTH KOREAN ECONOMY: Collapse and Transition | By Byung-Yeon Kim | Pacific Affairs

UNVEILING THE NORTH KOREAN ECONOMY: Collapse and Transition | By Byung-Yeon Kim | Pacific Affairs

BOOK REVIEWS, NORTHEAST ASIA
VOLUME 92 – NO. 2

UNVEILING THE NORTH KOREAN ECONOMY: Collapse and Transition | By Byung-Yeon Kim

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xii, 329 pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$35.99, paper. ISBN 978-1-316-63516-2.

Unveiling the North Korean Economy is divided into three parts:

a theoretical chapter (6–40) covering socialist economic systems from a general perspective;
a discussion of some key features of the North Korean economy (41–216);
and a final part (217–304) devoted to the dynamic aspects of transition.

Author Byung-Yeon Kim takes the position that effective policies towards North Korea can only be drafted if there is a proper understanding of that country’s economy, and argues that so far the related level of understanding in the international community is inadequate. His book aims to fill that gap.

The first part emphasizes the role and position of firms and households in a socialist economy, which is the central theoretical argument of the book and something that, according to Kim, has so far been mostly neglected by other studies on North Korea’s economy. He discusses the problem of economic statistics and their reliability, drawing on past experience of studying the Soviet Union. Kim reminds his readers of the huge discrepancies between data from various sources despite the relative transparency of the Soviet Union compared to North Korea: “[working with Soviet data] is … like playing with jigsaw puzzles … Working with North Korean data is more like looking for a needle in the haystack” (2). His response to that challenge is the use of accounts of North Korean refugees living in South Korea, and of surveys of Chinese firms that do business with North Korea.

In the second part, Kim explores some specific features of North Korea’s economy. He is highly critical of the leaders’ custom of arbitrary micro management through on-the-spot guidances and concludes that “the North Korean economic system can be characterized as a ‘plan-less’ planned economy” (64). After an extensive critical discussion of Bank of Korea estimates of North Korean GDP data, Kim offers his own, more pessimistic calculations and argues that the GDP of 2013 was only about 80.5 percent of the 1989 value (83). Section 2.3 offers insights from surveys among North Korean refugees conducted in 2009 and 2011.

The data shows that more North Koreans participate in the informal economy (71.2 percent) than in the official economy (50.6 percent) and that this behaviour does not depend on Party membership, educational background, or location (101). Some of the numbers are striking; an average official monthly salary of 2,171 won (102) contrasts with an average informal monthly income of 172,758 won (104). Furthermore, the surveys explore consumer behaviour. A key finding is that on average, two thirds of all North Koreans identified markets as their main source of procurement of food and consumer goods, and that even in Pyongyang this rate included about half of the population (tables 2.15 and 2.16). This is all the more significant if we consider that the survey was conducted almost a decade ago, and that marketization has meanwhile continued. It also helps explain why there are instances of North Korean leaders calling in speeches for luring consumers back to state-operated stores (Peter Ward, communication with the author).

Turning to the firms, the author identifies three waves of decentralization (1980, 1991, and 2002). In his analysis, the disintegration of the economy into four parts—army, party, cabinet, and regional government—has “virtually destroyed” central planning (126). He shows that almost 60 percent of all North Korean firms allowed some of their staff to work informally and used part of the resulting income for their regular operations in lieu of sufficient funding by the central state. Kim’s survey of 176 firms in Dandong (China) of 2012–2013 confirms anecdotal reports from practitioners. It shows that most of the North Korean partners of these firms were related to either the party or the military, and that these were more productive compared to other types of North Korean business partners because of their access to licenses and permits. An interesting detail is the suggestion that the North Korean trade deficit as it has been reported by organizations such as KOTRA—an unsustainable phenomenon in the long run—could be explained by a commission paid to North Korean exporters by their foreign partners that is not reflected in trade statistics (165).

In the final part of chapter 2, the author discusses the results of a survey on the extent and effects of corruption in North Korea. Among the key findings is that “bribery and informal markets are likely to reinforce each other” (187), and that corruption has remained relatively stable at about nine percent of total household expenditures (199).

The third and final chapter reviews the existing experience of transition and draws policy recommendations for the future of North Korea including privatization as well as price and exchange rate liberalization.

A few critical words are in place regarding formal aspects. The romanization of Korean terms is somewhat odd, for example “Chullima” instead of the widely used Chollima [Ch’ŏllima] or Giubso instead of Kiopso [kiŏpso]. The usual English translation of hyŏnji chido is “on-the-spot guidance”; the author has chosen “Spot Guidance” instead. References are not always complete; for example endnote 27 in chapter 2 (65/205) refers to a Kim Jong-il speech for which only title and date are provided. Given the dynamic development of North Korea and its economy, some of the data used in the book must be regarded as slightly outdated at the time of publication in 2017, such as refugee surveys of 2009 and 2011 which are described as “recent” on page 93. And especially in times when conventional books face increased competition from electronic media, the publisher needs to be asked why the quality of the print is relatively low.

The book is based on continuous research of a senior expert over many years. Its main strengths are the solid theoretical foundation as well as primary data collected through refugee surveys. The critical approach to conventional wisdom, such as BoK data on GDP or trade data, is very welcome and thought provoking.

Unveiling the North Korean Economy is suitable as supplementary reading in graduate courses on North Korea. It takes a closer look at the country from the perspective of firms, households, and the process of transformation. Scholars and students who are already familiar with the structure of the North Korean economy, its resource endowment, and the chronology of its development, will benefit from detailed insights based on surveys among Chinese firms in Dandong and defector surveys conducted in South Korea. An update of these surveys would be most welcome to reflect the changes in North Korea over the last decade.

Rudiger Frank

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

ONE KOREA: Visions of Korean unification | Edited by Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo | Pacific Affairs

ONE KOREA: Visions of Korean unification | Edited by Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo

Rethinking Asia and International Relations. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. xi, 217 pp. (Table.) US$149.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-472-47614-2.

A key strength of this edited volume is its overarching view of the issue of inter-Korean unification, an event that would exert a substantial impact on the lives of seventy-five million Koreans as well as on the peace and stability of the East Asia region. First, the volume closely examines the significant discrepancies between North and South Korea’s unification formulae—Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo (DFRK) and Korean National Community (KNC), respectively. The DFRK formula is “to establish a federal state with one nation, one state, two systems, and two regional governments” while the KNC formula is “to establish a unitary, democratic unified state based on nationalism, democracy, freedom, and a welfare state” (18). In addition, the DFRK plan presents at least five preconditions to establishing a federal state, including the resignation of the current South Korean government and the withdrawal of US troops from the peninsula. It is extremely difficult for South Korea to accept such conditions. Given the implausibility of adopting either the DFRK or the KNC formula, the volume proposes an alternative approach—a unified Korea through neutralization. This neutralization-unification formula first requires the two Koreas to make every effort to neutralize their extreme thinking and antagonistic policy measures. These actions, it is argued, will trigger national reconciliation, the harmonization of interests, and ultimately peace between North and South Korea, thus smoothing the road toward a peaceful unification. A unified Korea will maintain the status of a non-aligned, neutral state and seek a balanced security and foreign policy. Based on this basic concept, the volume presents specific action plans for a five-stage neutralization-unification formula.

Second, in this volume a number of Korea experts from the five key stakeholders—the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea—address their respective nation’s fundamental stance on the issue of Korean unification. According to the authors’ analyses, although not officially opposing Korean unification, all four giants overall prefer the maintenance of the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, since Korean unification threatens to bring about significant changes and/or disruptions to the East Asian security and economic order. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the US has not adopted any consistent strategy for the achievement of Korean unification. The Korean issue has been tangential to America’s grand strategy toward the Soviet Union until the end of the Cold War and a rising China during the post-Cold War period. In this context, the US has preferred the preservation of the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, while regarding the Korean unification issue as part of South Korea’s sovereign authority. China, which has placed a great emphasis on peace and stability in the East Asia region, also supports the continuance of the status quo on the Korean Peninsula. It would not want to share an extended border with a unified Korea under heavy US influence. Moreover, China is extremely sensitive to potential problems deriving from the process of Korean unification, including a possible refugee crisis, pandemics, and unstable security and economic conditions. Russia’s posture on the issue of Korean unification is similar to that of China in the sense that Russia dislikes the emergence of a unified Korea that is heavily influenced by the United States. Rather than facing a disruptive unification process, which could be detrimental to its national interests, Russia places great weight on the promotion of economic cooperation between itself and the two Koreas, such as with the construction of a gas pipeline connecting the three nations. Japan is also reluctant to support Korean unification, as rapprochement on the Korean Peninsula could weaken the justification for a US military presence in East Asia and hamper its strategy to check and balance a rising China threat. Furthermore, a nationalistic, unified Korea could be detrimental to Japanese interests, because the unified nation would be antagonistic to a Japan that has not adequately come to terms with its past misdeeds during its colonial rule over Korea from 1910–1945.

Given these studies, the volume implies that it will be extremely challenging for the two Koreas to achieve unification without a clearly shared roadmap and close cooperation from the four giants. In this sense, the neutralization-unification formula suggested by the authors could be an ideal approach, as it goes beyond the presently contradictory DFRK and KNC formulae and mitigates the misgivings of the four stakeholders, particularly China and Russia, about the negative consequences that Korean unification could trigger. Nevertheless, the authors’ arguments are not free of shortcomings. First, their claims over the neutralization roadmap are largely normative, rather than based on thorough assessments of actual conditions. For instance, the first stage of the neutralization-unification formula is to replace the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty signed by the US, China, and the two Koreas, along with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. As seen in the ongoing diplomatic negotiations between the US and North Korea, peace-regime building on the Korean Peninsula and its attendant denuclearization are very complicated and bumpy processes. To make the neutralization-unification formula a more feasible approach, the authors should have paid closer attention to the forging of more concrete measures for the first stage—the neutralization preparation. Second, the authors’ argument does not clearly address whether a neutral, unified Korea would be in the four powers’ best interests. It makes sense that China and Russia prefer the option because it could prevent the US from dominating a unified peninsula, as the authors claim. However, why do the authors expect the US to support this approach? It seems fair to assume that the US would seek to preserve its hegemonic power status in the East Asia region even after Korean unification. Third, it seems too idealistic to imagine that, without addressing potential political changes in North Korea, a neutral, denuclearized, unified Korean state will be born through general, democratic elections at the fifth stage of the neutralization-unification formula.

Yangmo Ku

Norwich University, Northfield, USA

동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook

2020-03-19

THE KOREAN WAR IN ASIA: A Hidden History | Edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki | Pacific Affairs

CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu | Pacific Affairs

CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu

Last Revised: February 28, 2020

NORTH KOREAN GRAPHIC NOVELS: Seduction of the Innocent? | By Martin Petersen | Pacific Affairs

CULTURES OF YUSIN: South Korea in the 1970s | Edited by Youngju Ryu | Pacific Affairs

A MISUNDERSTOOD FRIENDSHIP: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976 | By Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia | Pacific Affairs

A MISUNDERSTOOD FRIENDSHIP: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976 | By Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia

NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS: Activists and Networks | Edited by Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb; with a Foreword by The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG | Pacific Affairs

NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS: Activists and Networks | Edited by Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb; with a Foreword by The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG

UNVEILING THE NORTH KOREAN ECONOMY: Collapse and Transition | By Byung-Yeon Kim | Pacific Affairs

ONE KOREA: Visions of Korean unification | Edited by Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo | Pacific Affairs

ONE KOREA: Visions of Korean unification | Edited by Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo

Last Revised: August 29, 2019