East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence

By Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov, Timothy Y. Tsu (Published on 18 Dec.2012 by Routledge, 208 pages, Series: Asia’s Transformations)

East Asia is now the world’s economic powerhouse, but ghosts of history continue to trouble relations between the key countries of the region, particularly between Japan, China and the two Koreas. Unhappy legacies of Japan’s military expansion in pre-war Asia prompt on-going calls for apologies, while conflicts over ownership of cultural heritage cause friction between China and Korea, and no peace treaty has ever been signed to conclude the Korean War.

For over a decade, the region’s governments and non-government groups have sought to confront the ghosts of the past by developing paths to reconciliation. Focusing particularly on popular culture and grassroots action, East Asia beyond the History Wars explores these East Asian approaches to historical reconciliation. This book examines how Korean historians from North and South exchange ideas about national history, how Chinese film-makers reframe their views of the war with Japan, and how Japanese social activists develop grassroots reconciliation projects with counterparts from Korea and elsewhere. As the volume’s studies of museums, monuments and memorials show, East Asian public images of modern history are changing, but change is fragile and uncertain. This unfinished story of East Asia’s search for historical reconciliation has important implications for the study of popular memory worldwide.

Presenting a fresh perspective on reconciliation which draws on both history and cultural studies, this book will be welcomed by students and scholars working in the fields of Asian history, Asian culture and society as well as those interested in war and memory studies more generally.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Confronting the Ghosts of War in East Asia, Tessa Morris-Suzuki

PART I: Reconciliation as Method

1. On the Frontiers of History: Territory and cross-border dialogue in East Asia, Leonid Petrov and Tessa Morris-Suzuki

2. Historiography, Media and Cross-Border Dialogue in Korea: Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation, Leonid Petrov

3.Reconciliation Onscreen: The Second Sino-Japanese War in Chinese War Movies, Timothy Tsu

4. Letters to the Dead: Grassroots historical dialogue in East Asia’s borderlands, Tessa Morris-Suzuki

PART II: Re-Framing Memories

5. Gender and Representations of the War in Tokyo Museums, Morris Low

6. Remembering the Unfinished Conflict: Museums and the Contested Memory of the Korean War, Tessa Morris-Suzuki

7. Art, Photography and Remembering Hiroshima, Morris Low

8. Heroes, Collaborators and Survivors: Korean kamikaze pilots and the ghosts of war in Japan and Korea, Tessa Morris-Suzuki

About the Authors:

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor of Japanese History at the Australian National University.

Morris Low is Associate Professor of Japanese History at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Leonid Petrov is a former Chair of Korean Studies at Sciences Po (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris) and teaches Korean History and Language at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Timothy Y. Tsu is Professor in the School of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.

Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	0415637457
EAN:	9780415637459
Dimensions:	23.0 x 15.0 centimeters (0.47 kg)
Buy on-line	http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/East-Asia-Beyond-History-Wars-Tessa-Morris-Suzuki-Morris-Low/9780415637459

“A Capitalist in North Korea” by Felix Abt

Book review by Leonid Petrov (Australian National University)

This new book on North Korea is extraordinary. Since the late 1990s the influx of analytical and documentary literature on North Korea can be broadly divided into two categories: those that exhibit the terrors of life in North Korea, and the rest that speculate on what is wrong with North Korea. Felix Abt, a Swiss entrepreneur who lived and worked in the last communist Hermit Kingdom for seven years, attempts to depict life in North Korea as “normal” despite overwhelming ideological pressure from within and the harsh treatment from foreign powers. To date, only a handful of famed historians, such as Bruce Cumings and Gavan McCormack, have succeeded in showing North Korea from such an unusual angle.

As a business entrepreneur, Felix Abt prefers to remain apolitical and impartial when sharing his thoughts and memories of the seven-year sojourn. His writing exhibits his love for Korea and genuine concern for its people. In his assessments of North Korea’s past and present, the author approaches all issues from a human (and humanistic) perspective, attempting to present life in the country sans political or ideological colouring. But documenting everyday life in the DPRK “as it is” is often inherently counterproductive to the goal of presenting North Korea as “normal” or even on the road to normality. Snapshots of life in North Korea, more often than not, exhibit the miserable lives of the common people alongside the growing wealth of the privileged and trusted groups in the capital, Pyongyang.

The book strives to assure Western venture capitalists that North Korea is a land of untapped opportunities for diligent and sympathetic investors, but instead it seems to be more of a collection of horror stories about business failures and bankruptcies. Another important theme in the book is “how seclusion has shaped the attitudes of a people”, and “how war-mongering international politics are discerning for businesses”. Yet ultimately, it does not really matter whether the reason for the excessively high risk business environment is due to domestic contempt for capitalism or because of international sanctions. The reader is left with the impression that North Korea remains a black hole for foreign direct investment, just like it was under Kim Jong-Il or Kim Il-Sung.

Felix Abt addresses the main and most intriguing question in the book, “can North Korea ever change?” by declaring that the process has already begun and is unstoppable. He calls it a “reform” and believes that the young North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, will bring about “new winds of change”. Kim has apparently “set out to reform one of the world’s last five communist countries” and “curbed the power of the military, surrounding himself with top-level civilian cadres who support the idea of glasnost for the country”. Unfortunately however, this statement is hardly substantiated by any solid evidence.

Nothing in the book in fact proves that a substantial reform is underway. Packed restaurants, busy saunas and abundant food on the tables do not attest to an improved lifestyle for the population. People with money live and eat well everywhere, even in communist dictatorships. New stylish clothes, DHL vans or mobile phones do not fundamentally change a country in which information is censored, mobility restricted, and dissidents executed. New blocks of apartments, supermarkets and imported cars are merely signs of growth, and do not necessarily indicate real improvements in citizen livelihood.

We cannot expect a reform to be initiated by the communist dynasty, which singlehandedly rules half of a divided country, the other side of which is now free, prosperous and democratic. If the Pyongyang regime were serious about economic and social reform, and finishing the Korean War, recognition of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) would be the first step in making reform plausible. Yet this is impossible so as long as the Kim family is in power in the DPRK. A reformed North will sooner or later merge with the more advanced South, where there will be no place for the revolutionary dynasty of the Kims and their idiosyncratic ideologies. Everything else is a mere imitation of reform; a cosmetic change designed to maintain the painful status quo.

Nevertheless, Felix Abt’s new book, “A Capitalist in North Korea”, is a precious account of a long-term resident of the Hermit Kingdom. Some readers may disagree with author’s conclusions but everyone will find the content of this book fascinating. The book is destined to serve several generations of readers. These days, occasional travellers and business entrepreneurs will benefit from it but, as time passes by, economists, sociologists and historians will study this book as a rare perspective on the tragic episode of the Cold War in East Asia.

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You can purchase this book on Amazon Kindle Books here…

“South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century”

The Volume 1 of “Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century” by George Katsiaficas has been published by PM Press in Oalkland, CA.

Using social movements as a prism to illuminate the oft-hidden history of 20th century Korea, this book provides detailed analysis of major uprisings that have patterned that country’s politics and society. With a central focus on the1980 Gwangju Uprising that ultimately proved decisive in South Korea’s democratization, the author uses Korean experiences as a baseboard to extrapolate into the possibilities of global social movements in the 21st century. Ten years in the making, this book provides a unique perspective on South Korea. Richly illustrated, with tables, charts, graphs, index and footnotes Approximately 420 pages with about 77 photographs and wood block prints by Hong Sung-dam

“This book makes a unique contribution to Korean Studies because of its social movements’ prism. It will resonate well in Korea and will also serve as a good introduction to Korea for outsiders. By providing details on 20th century uprisings, Katsiaficas provides insights into the trajectory of social movements in the future. His world wide field-work experiences and surprising impacts in Korea are described well in this book.” — Na Kahn-chae, Director, May 18 Institute, Gwangju, South Korea

Advance Praise for Volume 2 of “Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: People Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia, 1947-2009″

“This book about people’s power movements in Asia over the last sixty years makes the case, convincingly, that they should be seen as part of the worldwide new left. Reading it will broaden the perspective of activists and analysts in North
America and Europe, a very important task.” — Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University.
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Find Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century at Amazon, and possibly save by using Amazon coupons from FrugalDad.com.

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Brian Myers: Korea’s most dangerous writer?

By Andrew Salmon (SEOUL, Aug. 10  Yonhap)  He may be the most influential intellectual writer from the Korean Peninsula, but he is not Korean. He is obscure among domestic Pyongyang watchers but writes about North Korea for some of the world’s most influential media.

He is Brian Myers, an American who teaches international studies at Dongseo University in the southern port city of Busan. An academic, author and columnist, he contributes to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. It’s his status as an iconoclast that has won him fame. “I come across orthodoxies that I think need challenging,” he said in a recent interview. “But I’m not a full-time contrarian.”

The first group to feel the sting of Myers’ pen was America’s bookish establishment: He slammed the pretensions of the literary fiction community with “A Reader’s Manifesto” in 2002. He went on to redefine North Korea in his 2009 book “The Cleanest Race,” perhaps the most significant work on that country published since Kim Jong-il came to power. More recently, he has savaged a target closer to home: foodies.

Myers was born in New Jersey in 1963. The first “grown-up book” he remembers reading was Orwell’s “1984″; he went on to read Soviet studies in Germany. With the fall of European communism leaving him nothing to research, he relocated, after a few years in the auto industry, to Korea with his Korean wife.

Speaking with Myers, it is hard not to be impressed with his wide range of cultural references, his linguistic abilities and wicked intelligence — he bounces effortlessly from Cormac McCarthy to Kim Il-sung and speaks fluent German and Korean; one minute he is demolishing Korea’s emotive nationalists, next he is slamming war-mongering U.S. “chickenhawks.”

Naturally, the critic has critics. Salon criticized “A Reader’s Manifesto” as “a cranky lament”; Slate called it “bombastic” and sniffed at Myers as “a previously unpublished critic.” Conversely, The Times and The Washington Post hailed the work; many readers were delighted that someone was finally slaughtering the sacred cow.

No naysayers reared their heads over “The Cleanest Race,” albeit possibly because the English-speaking North Korea-watching community is a lot smaller than its literary community.

Based on Myers’s decade studying Pyongyang propaganda, it garnered rave reviews in The Economist, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Polemicist Christopher Hitchens called the book “electrifying” and admitted Myers had identified what he himself had overlooked.

The book overturned conventional wisdom: Myers portrays North Korea as neither a Stalinist nor even communist state; with its blend of arch-militarism and ultra-nationalism, it is essentially fascist. The book has been translated into French and Italian; Korean and Polish versions are in the works.

A more recent target — the subject of a Myers article in The Atlantic that generated a heated response from New York’s Village Voice — was foodies.

“You can’t get away from food talk,” he says. “Foodies tend to earn more, so they are worth more to advertisers, which is why dining sections of newspapers are expanding, while book pages are disappearing.” As a vegan himself, is Myers not trying to spoil others’ fun?

No, he argues, the issue goes beyond the personal. Food obsession is incompatible with attempts to fight obesity, and with millions of Indians and Chinese acquiring middle-class dining aspirations, it threatens environmental sustainability and animal rights.

“Raising more cows on open pastures or chicken on free-range farms is no solution,” he says. “We can’t sustain current levels of meat consumption without factory farms.”

Still, he does not plan a book on the issue, partly because he does not want to subject himself to a study of foodie writing. At present, he is translating a German novella into English, but his ever-critical eye remains firmly focused on the peninsula.

He is currently researching how pan-Korean nationalism undermines state patriotism in South Korea. Successive Seoul administrations have neglected to inculcate pride in the republic as a state entity, Myers says, instead equating it with the Korean race: “This is no problem when you have a nation state like Japan or Denmark, but is a problem when you have a state divided.”

This explains why, he continues, there were no mass protests against last year’s North Korean attacks. Moreover, the issue impacts beyond the strategic space: It also hinders South Korea’s globalization.

So Myers won’t be departing Korea quite yet? “I want to be here for unification,” he says, though he warns that it could be cataclysmic. “Ultra-nationalism is an appealing ideology — the Third Reich fought to the end, even sending their children into battle,” Myers muses. “We should not underestimate its appeal.”

That impression was reinforced on a trip he made to North Korea in June. Driving from Pyongyang to Wonsan on the country’s east coast, he was able to see rural villages up close. Yet despite their poverty, there was no sense of things falling apart.

“You get the impression of a nation that is still cohering,” he said. “It is not simply because of repression, but because the regime still manages to inspire people.”
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Inside the Red Box: North Korea’s Post-totalitarian Politics

by Patrick McEachern
December, 2010
Cloth, 320 pages, 6 halftones, 3 tables
ISBN: 978-0-231-15322-5
$35.00 / £24.00

North Korea’s institutional politics defy traditional political models, making the country’s actions seem surprising or confusing when, in fact, they often conform to the regime’s own logic. Drawing on recent materials, such as North Korean speeches, commentaries, and articles, Patrick McEachern, a specialist on North Korean affairs, reveals how the state’s political institutions debate policy and inform and execute strategic-level decisions.

Many scholars dismiss Kim Jong-Il’s regime as a “one-man dictatorship,” calling him the “last totalitarian leader,” but McEachern identifies three major institutions that help maintain regime continuity: the cabinet, the military, and the party. These groups hold different institutional policy platforms and debate high-level policy options both before and after Kim and his senior leadership make their final call.

This method of rule may challenge expectations, but North Korea does not follow a classically totalitarian, personalistic, or corporatist model. Rather than being monolithic, McEachern argues, the regime, emerging from the crises of the 1990s, rules differently today than it did under Kim’s father, Kim Il Sung. The son is less powerful and pits institutions against one another in a strategy of divide and rule. His leadership is fundamentally different: it is “post-totalitarian.” Authority may be centralized, but power remains diffuse. McEachern maps this process in great detail, supplying vital perspective on North Korea’s reactive policy choices, which continue to bewilder the West., reviewing a previous edition or volume

*Patrick McEachern is a foreign service officer in Seoul supporting the Six Party Talks and a former North Korea analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His publications have appeared in Asian Survey, Journal of East Asian Studies, and Korea Yearbook.

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Praise for Inside the Red Box

“Working from North Korean media, Patrick McEachern shows that, whatever might have been the case under Kim Il Sung, North Korea under his son, Kim Jong Il, is not the unknowable and irrational totalitarian state presented by many commentators. Since the elder Kim’s death in 1994, the country’s political structure has evolved. The younger Kim is undoubtedly powerful but has neither his father’s revolutionary credentials nor his personal charisma and does not always succeed in imposing his views. It is these policy debates that lie behind the apparent abrupt swings from engagement to non-engagement, not some inherent irrationality in the North Korean polity, and it pays to study them. This stimulating and well-written book does just that. It should be required reading for all those interested in or involved with North Korea.”—J. E. Hoare, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and coauthor of North Korea in the Twenty-First Century.

“It is conventional wisdom that information on North Korea is hard to come by, but in fact, the opposite is true. Most researchers quickly find themselves drowning in information, and the real challenge is to make sense of the deluge of data and separate the wheat from the chaff. Patrick McEachern rejects easy routes and embraces the project of using sound social science methodologies to examine a mountain of primary sources. The result of his painstaking analysis is the illumination of domestic politics in Pyongyang—opening up the “red box.” While McEachern’s findings can be disputed, they cannot be ignored—this book is a must read for any serious student of North Korea.”—Andrew Scobell, Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation

“Inside the Red Box is a nuanced and meticulous study of the inner workings of North Korea’s policy apparatus. It is a very useful addition to the literature, saying more about what happens inside the black box (or red box) beyond standard accounts and the personality cult of the Kim family.”—Victor D. Cha, coauthor of Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies

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To the Diamond Mountains with Tessa Morris-Suzuki

To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred Year Journey Through China and Korea (published by Rowman and Littlefield this month) takes readers on a unique journey through China and North and South Korea.

Following in the footsteps of a remarkable writer, artist and feminist, Emily Kemp, who traveled this route a century ago  in the year when Korea became a Japanese colony  the journey reveals an unseen face of China and the two Koreas: a world of monks, missionaries and smugglers, of royal tombs and socialist mausoleums; a world where today’s ideological confrontations are infused with myth and memory, and nothing is quite as it seems.

Northeast Asia today is poised at a moment of profound change as the rise of China is transforming the global order and tensions run high on the Korean Peninsula, the last Cold War divide. Probing the deep past of this region, To the Diamond Mountains offers a new and unexpected perspective on the region’s present and future.

To the Diamond Mountains: Behind the Book – Video Clip: www.youtube.com

Book Launch and Talk: “To the Diamond Mountains with Tessa Morris-Suzuki. A Journey through China and the two Koreas”
Monday November 15 at Asia Bookroom

An evening not to be missed for anyone interested in the present or past of this important, and lesser known, part of the world.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor of Japanese History in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has published widely on issues of history and memory in Northeast Asia; migration and ethnic minorities in Japan; Cold War history in Northeast Asia; and concepts of area studies, civil society and human rights. Her work has appeared in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Dutch and French translation. Her other recent books include The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History; Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War; and Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era. She is also an enthusiastic traveler and has published children’s stories and poetry (including the collection of poems Peeling Apples).

If you can’t join us on November the 15th but would like to buy a signed copy or would just like to look at the details just click here To The Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey through China

When: 6pm Monday, 15th November

Where: Asia Bookroom, Unit 2, 1 – 3 Lawry Place, Macquarie. ACT

RSVP: By Saturday 13th November by phoning +61(2)6251 5191

Admission by gold coin donation. All money raised will go towards the excellent work done by the Eugene Bell Foundation

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“Europe – North Korea. Between Humanitarianism and Business?”

“Europe – North Korea. Between Humanitarianism and Business?” has recently been published by LIT in Germany. In honor of the launching of the book, a workshop will take place at Seoul National University on Wednesday, October 27, 2010.

The book contains 327 pages and has four parts: Part I: Human Rights, Humanitarianism. Part II: Economic, Political and Ideological Relations between East/West Germany and North Korea, and their Legacies. Part III: Capacity-Building and Development. Part IV: Investment, Business, and Business Schools.

The table of contents is available at: www.gpic.nl/EU – North Korea book.pdf 

October 27, 2010, SNU Workshop Program:

15.30 – 16.00 Registration

16.00 – 16.15 Opening remarks: Prof. Myoung-Kyu Park, Director, IPUS (Institute of Peace and Unification Studies). Congratulatory remarks: Marjo Crompvoets (deputy head of Mission, Embassy of The Netherlands). Prof. Woosik Moon (Director, Center for EU Studies)

16.20 – 17.40 Session: “The European Way toward North Korea”. Moderator: Mr. Pierre Clément Dubuisson (Ambassador of Belgium). Paul Tjia, “European businesses and North Korea”. Prof. Sung-Jo Park, “Aspects of European NGOs and EU’s Asia- Invest Programme in North Korea”. Dr. Bernhard Seliger, “Capacity building in North Korea – the experience of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation”.

17:40 – 18:00 Book presentation.

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Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: A History.

By Jeremy Kuzmarov,  The Cutting Edge (August 16th 2010)

Overshadowed by World War II and Vietnam, the Korean War has long been the “forgotten war” in American memory. Apart from a few notable exceptions, American historians have predominantly accepted the standard propaganda that the Communist North (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—DPRK) was singularly responsible for provoking the war by invading the Southern Republic of Korea (ROK) and carried out myriad atrocities, justifying U.S. action. Mainstream analysts and commentators similarly devour Washington’s line that North Korea today is a threat to humanity which should be contained and its leaders overthrown.

Bruce Cumings’s book The Korean War: A History shatters these conceptions and shows in vivid detail that the Korean War was among the most misguided, unjust, and murderous wars fought by the United States in its history, displaying many of the features of the Vietnam War that aroused mass public protest. Cumings, chair of the history department at the University of Chicago, writes: “Here was the Vietnam War we came to know before Vietnam—gooks, napalm, rapes, whores, an unreliable ally … untrained GIs fighting a war their generals barely understood, fragging of officers … press handouts from Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters apparently scripted by comedians or lunatics, an ostensible vision of bringing freedom and liberty to a sordid dictatorship run by servants of Japanese imperialism.”

The most disturbing element was the unrestrained air power that was used to destroy large portions of 18 of 22 major North Korean cities, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians by American and ROK soldiers which exceeded that of the DPRK by at least fifty percent. Hungarian journalist Tibor Meray is quoted as stating: “I saw destruction and horrible things committed by American forces … Everything which moved in North Korea is a military target, peasants in the field often were machine gunned by pilots, who, this was my impression, amused themselves to shoot targets which moved.”

[...] The North-South war, which began on June 25, 1950 when Kim’s Korean People’s Army (KPA) crossed the 38th parallel, was equally as brutal as the civil war in the south. While the New York Times likened the northern armies to “barbarian hordes and invading locusts reminiscent of Ghengis Khan” and the Nazi blitzkrieg, new archival evidence and the findings of the South Korean Commission on Truth and Reconciliation show that the torturing and shooting of POWs was carried out more systematically by the South and that the KNP liquidated the prisons in the aftermath of the DPRK invasion and shot thousands of people in the back of the head, including women and children. Driven by an acute racism, U.S. troops were also notorious for their cruelty and carried out numerous civilian massacres while showering the countryside with napalm. Much like in Vietnam, many soldiers were left to wonder why if South and North Koreans were identical “North Koreans fight like tigers and South Koreans run like sheep.”

These comments underscore for Cumings how Americans were ignorant of the political dynamic underlying the fratricidal war and its connection to the previous half century of Japanese colonial rule. As he writes: “it did not dawn on Americans that anti-colonial fighters might have something to fight about.” Characterized in American propaganda as a Soviet puppet and stooge, Kim Il-Sung presided over a nationalist revolutionary government, which whatever its flaws, promised autonomy from foreign colonialism and tutledge, and still does today. While harsh and oppressive, the DPRK never was Stalinist or totalitarian and land reform programs were less violent than in China and North Vietnam. Cumings likens the current regime to a modern form of monarchy that draws on neo-Confucianism and other historical traditions in Korean politics. Instead of adopting orientalist stereotypes, he argues, Westerners would be best to try and understand the country on its own terms, including how many of its policies have been designed out of fear of another invasion by the United States and by the threat of renewed domination by Japan. American bellicosity in this latter respect and “axis of evil” rhetoric has done nothing but harm.

One of the greatest tragedies of the Korean War, which was a major watershed in the growth of the American overseas network of military bases and put the country on the path of a permanent war economy, is that it is still ongoing. After all the bloodshed and destruction, the artificial division still endures as do many of the stereotypes and caricatures of the northern enemy in the United States. The one positive development over the last 25 years was the reemergence of a pro-democracy movement in the ROK (receiving minimal support from the United States) and establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which has enabled many South Koreans to come to terms with their losses. While old enmities are starting to breakdown in the ROK and a more progressive leadership has taken charge, the United States remains locked in a 1950s, McCarthyite time-warp, exemplified in CNN’s ever present warning of the “new North Korean threat.” Failing to learn anything from history, Americans are currently replicating their Korean experience in Iraq where, as Cumings writes, “without forethought, due consideration, or self knowledge, the United States barged into a political, social, and cultural thicket without knowing what it was doing and now finds that it cannot get out.”

Cumings has written a powerful book which serves to refute many historical myths and distortions in the United States about the Korean War. He shows in lucid detail the vicious character of America’s strategic allies and the barbaric and genocidal nature of the air and ground wars. In spite of the manipulations of Washington and to a far lesser extent the Soviet Union, Koreans were ultimately most decisive in shaping the conflict. And one day, with hope, they will come up with their own solution to the mess which liberal heroes Truman and Acheson helped to create.

See the full text of Review – Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: A History. Random House, 2010. 320 pages.

Jeremy Kuzmarov is assistant professor of history, University of Tulsa and contributes to the History News Network, from which this article is adapted.

North Koreans fear another famine amid economic crisis

By Barbara Demick (Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2010)

Women who fled to China describe acute shortages and anger after a disastrous currency revaluation. As an ailing Kim Jong Il tries to secure his son’s ascension, some people are beginning to speak out.

Reporting from Yanji, China – North Koreans who recently fled to China say many of their fellow citizens are losing faith in the regime of Kim Jong Il after a disastrous currency revaluation that wiped out savings and left food scarcer than at any time since the famine of the mid-1990s, when up to 2 million people died.

“People are outspoken. They complain,” said a 56-year-old woman from the border city of Musan who gave her name as Li Mi Hee. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added: “My son thinks that something might happen. I don’t know what, but I can tell you this — people have opinions. . . . It is not like the 1990s when people just died without saying what they thought.”

Li was one of five North Koreans from different parts of the country interviewed this month near the border with China. Using pseudonyms, as many North Koreans even outside their country do to protect family members from retaliation, they told of panic in the wake of the bungled economic move, which left even a staple such as rice in the hands of black marketeers and sent the communist government scrambling to repair the damage.

“The whole economic structure has collapsed because of the currency reform,” said James Kim, a Korean American educator and president of the Yanbian University of Science and Technology in Yanji, China, who is in the process of setting up a similar school in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. “It is a very difficult situation for them. . . . It might end up being worse than the 1990s.”

[...] “They apologized, but it didn’t do us any good. People already had lost all their money,” said Song Hee, a 17-year-old from Musan. She said party officials in Musan went door to door, speaking to neighborhood leaders of the inminban, or “people’s committee,” about the economic mistakes.

The teenager fled last month after the revaluation wiped out the cash her parents had been saving in hopes of sending her to college. “My friends would leave too if they could. They see no future in North Korea,” Song Hee said nervously, her bangs slick with sweat across her forehead. Before the revaluation, Song Hee said, her mother had been eking out a modest living selling cheap socks, keeping the family reasonably well fed.

North Korea announced Nov. 30 that it was issuing new currency and that the old currency would become invalid. People were permitted to trade in their old money for new, but only what would be worth about $30 on the black market. (The limit was later raised.) Unlike in Pyongyang, where people had seven days’ notice, the switch-over of the currency took place within 48 hours in Musan, Song Hee said. “People were in shock. Our money was becoming like water. With the psychological stress, many people had to go to the hospital,” she said.

As far as she knew, nobody dared to disobey the order for fear of punishment. “We were told that somebody decided he would burn the money instead of giving it to the government. The money had the picture of Kim Il Sung, and because he burned it he was shot to death for treason,” Song Hee said…

[...] “They wanted to make everybody the same,” said Choi Kum Ok, a 54-year-old member of the Korean Workers’ Party who left North Korea’s Yanggang province in mid-December to work in China. Choi, who said she remains loyal to the regime, nonetheless acknowledged that the economic reform had backfired. “There is no food and what there is has become unaffordable,” Choi said.

[...] The scarcities are spreading to the more privileged in North Korea. An aid worker who visits regularly said that on a trip this month, officials begged him to bring in food the next time. “I usually bring a bottle of Scotch as a gift — they really enjoy it — but this time they said, ‘Why didn’t you bring in rice instead?’ ” said the aid worker, who asked not to be identified. Even the relatively privileged capital has been affected.

“We live in one of the richer parts of the country. Things were OK for us around 2004, but now they’ve gotten bad again, maybe worse than before . . . people are starving to death,” said Su Jong, 28, who is from Pyongsong. The city, on the northern outskirts of Pyongyang, is home to many of North Korea’s top science institutes and to the largest wholesale market.

Although Su Jong held North Korea’s own economic policies at fault, she said she had not lost her love for Kim Jong Il. “If [Kim] was a good leader, we wouldn’t see children starving, people wandering the streets in rags, the markets with no food,” she said. “But I don’t doubt his good intentions. It is the people under him who are corrupt.”

It was a common sentiment among the North Koreans interviewed in China, several of whom said they weren’t defectors and hoped to return to their country. North Koreans live under a cult of personality in which members of the Kim family are demigods with unsurpassed skills at everything from golf to metallurgy and, of course, economic management. During the 1990s famine, North Koreans were largely persuaded by propagandists that U.S. sanctions were to blame for their troubles.

“In China, people use bad words to criticize the government,” said Jeong Hee Ok, 50, who left the east coast city of Hamhung in mid-December to work as a maid in China. “But I come from North Korea — even little children know you are a bad person if you talk that way about the leadership. It is hard to change that mind-set.”

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Read more about North Korea in Barbara Demick’s new book “Nothing to Envy”…

Read the review of Barbara Demick’s new book “Nothing to Envy”…

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NKorea defector tells of business deals in West

By Sim Sim Wissgott (AFP)

VIENNA — Kim Jong Ryul spent 20 years doing business for North Korea’s dictators with European firms, before he defected to Austria in 1994. Now he fears for his life after emerging from hiding this week.

“I’ve come up to the light. But how long the sun will shine for me, I don’t know. I think it will be a short time,” he told AFP. “The North Koreans will try to capture me and kill me. I am very afraid.”

The small 75-year-old with the steel-rimmed glasses and the easy smile spent 20 years procuring legal and illegal goods for North Korea’s regime, saying he easily side-stepped the economic embargo against his country.

During repeated shopping trips to Europe, the fluent German-speaker acquired everything from spy technology, weapons and small planes to luxury cars and carpets, and a gold-plated gun for dictator Kim Il Sung.

One of his regular destinations was Vienna, where Pyongyang knew it could count on banking secrecy, relatively unrestricted trade and lax airport control.

Traveling on a North Korean diplomatic passport, often with a briefcase full of cash, Kim Jong Ryul spent months at a time in Europe, dealing with small firms that happily turned a blind eye on the goods’ destination in exchange for a 30-percent additional fee.

The North Korean embassy in Vienna often stored the banned surveillance equipment and high-tech devices before they were repackaged and flown out of the country with fake shipping documents and the help of paid-off customs officers, he said.

Not only Austrian but also Swiss, German and French firms did business with the North Koreans, and goods also came from Czechoslovakia.

All this is disclosed in a new book about Kim Jong Ryul’s life, “Im Dienst des Diktators” (“At the dictator’s service”) by Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi, whose publication this week brought the old man out of hiding.

A loyal party member who had never put a foot wrong, Colonel Kim defected to Austria on 18 October 1994 during one of his visits here, faking his death to throw the authorities off his scent.

Disgusted by a regime that lived in luxury while its people starved and sick of having his actions dictated to him by up-on-high, Kim left his family behind without a word about his plans. “I wanted freedom, I needed freedom,” he told AFP.

When his family saw him off at Pyongyang airport in October 1993, he already knew he wanted to defect. But he always planned to go back once the regime had fallen and Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 gave him hope. “I hoped if the great dictator was dead, there would be a change, a revolution.”

“I’ve waited so long and after 15 years I’m still sitting here. A small consolation is this book: that’s something I can leave behind.” For 15 years, Kim Jong Ryul has lived illegally in Austria, trying not to stand out, making few friends and living on savings which he managed to conceal before his escape.

In all this time, he has had no news of his family, whom he never informed of his decision, for his safety and theirs. “I have no clue if my family is still alive or not… Letters would be so dangerous because they all think I’m dead.”

Today, Kim, who owns five TV sets and has taught himself Japanese to better follow news about his country, has little hope of going back.

“To see my family, my son, my daughter once more before I die, that’s my dream… but it is far from likely. “For Asians it is very important to remain loyal to your masters. I violated that, today I’m a traitor. I betrayed the fatherland, I betrayed the revolution.”

Talking to the book’s authors was a calculated risk: “I will die eventually anyway. Why die without having some meaning?” “I’m very afraid, I don’t know where the bullets that will kill me might come from.” But he has no regrets, saying that defecting “was 100-percent the right decision.”

He is nevertheless taking precautions. “Starting tomorrow, you won’t see me anymore. Tomorrow or after tomorrow, I will disappear.”

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Read more about Kim Jong-Ryul:

Das neue Leben des Waffenkäufers von Kim Il-sung

Hoflieferant des Geliebten Führers

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