Asia Times: Juche on the beach: summer reading on North Korea


	July 21, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Juche on the beach: summer reading on North Korea
By Aidan Foster-Carter

As an academic turned hack, I'm all too conscious of the limits to what one can get across in the space of a column of less than 1,000 words. Even in the Internet age, to tackle North Korea (or whatever) in any depth requires the greater length of a journal article - or better yet, a book. At a time when Asia Times Online readers may be packing bags for hills or beach, here are some ideas for any masochist whose holiday just wouldn't be the same without Kim Jong-il. (I trust author and title will suffice: you can of course check out publisher details and availability - don't forget second-hand - via Online bookstores.)

First, then, three books which are all in different ways introductions: not only to North Korea, but also to Korea as such. Two reasons for this. Korea as a whole remains less well known than its importance warrants. And you can't make sense of North Korea without seeing it in its broader peninsular context.

For starters, try Michael Breen's The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies, written by a British journalist/consultant/longtime resident in Seoul. It's mainly about South Korea (only one chapter is directly about the North), and the anecdotal style and personal touch offend some purists. But it's an easy read, and in my view it's deceptively simple style really gets under the skin of a country and people toward whom few are neutral. You either love or loathe Korea: often both at once.

A similar passion infuses another introduction, more comprehensive and scholarly, by a US academic: Bruce Cumings' Korea's Place In The Sun: A Modern History. The leading revisionist historian on modern Korea, Cumings' Origins of the Korean War was the first to analyze this terrible conflict as a Korean civil war - rather than just Cold War overspill, or in purely military terms. (Despite this, even now far too many narrow gung-ho Korean war memoirs keep rolling off the presses.) Korea's Place in the Sun takes a wider view, including an insightful - if sometimes too defensive - account of the North. Ablaze with insights and powerfully written, this book plunges you right into the Korean maelstrom.

Another American, veteran journalist Don Oberdorfer (who first visited Korea in 1953), has penned a different kind of introduction. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History is essentially a narrative of both Korean states' tangled politics - internal, mutual, and with the surrounding powers - from 1970 to 1997. It's a complex tale, but Oberdorfer deftly weaves the strands together. He ends before Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine" policy and summit, so a second edition would be a boon. And if updating, it would be great if he also felt like adding a "prequel" covering the earlier 1945-70 period in similar detail.

So much for general introductions. As for specialist works, until very recently these were few, costly, and hard to get hold of. No longer. Since the late 1990s, a welcome development is a growing corpus of specialist books in English on North Korea, many accessible and in paperback. So much so that it's already invidious to be selective, especially between books focusing on distinct aspects of the DPRK. Here I pick my personal cream of the crop, but it's close. Fairness requires a second article for the rest.

Someone who in a sense does for recent (and indeed future) Korean economics what Oberdorfer did for politics is Marcus Noland of the Institute for International Economics in Washington. His Avoiding The Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas jams into its 400-odd pages more North Korean figures than most people realize exist. Synoptic as well as solid, it has chapters on both economies, the South's financial crisis, the North's "slow-motion famine", and more. Future scenarios - reform, collapse, or muddle through? - are analyzed too. All with a dry wit that helps the more technical medicine down.

Another DC think tank, the Brookings Institution, recently published a broader study aptly titled North Korea Through the Looking Glass. The authors, Kongdan Oh and Ralph Haussig, cover all the bases: ideology, economy, politics, the military, social control, and foreign relations, ending with a chapter on dealing with the DPRK. This is the most thorough and thoughtful account available on the challenges posed by North Korea to the wider world. It recommends what one might call robust engagement.

I agree. But it's hard, when the sheer wickedness of this foul regime is thrust in your face. Although North Korea does its damnedest to silence individuals and their stories, and succeeded for many years, such voices are starting to be heard.

One, as graphic as its title sounds, is Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman. A party member from an elite background, Lee Soon-ok had a good job and worked conscientiously as a distribution manager. But then the local security chief framed her for refusing to give him extra, plunging her for six years into the nightmare world of North Korea's justice (ha, ha) and prison system. On her release - a rarity: most leave feet first - she fled the country, first to China and eventually South Korea. True, this isn't exactly holiday reading. But it is compulsive, and convincing. For once, words fail me. Just read it, and rage.

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