Download or read book North Korea through the Looking Glass written by Kongdan Oh and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty-five years after its founding at the dawn of the cold war, North Korea remains a land of illusions. Isolated and anachronistic, the country and its culture seem to be dominated exclusively by the official ideology of Juche, which emphasizes national self-reliance, independence, and worship of the supreme leader, General Kim Jong Il. Yet this socialist utopian ideal is pursued with the calculations of international power politics. Kim has transformed North Korea into a militarized state, whose nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and continued threat to South Korea have raised alarm worldwide. This paradoxical combination of cultural isolation and military-first policy has left the North Korean people woefully deprived of the opportunity to advance socially and politically. The socialist economy, guided by political principles and bereft of international support, has collapsed. Thousands, perhaps millions, have died of starvation. Foreign trade has declined and the country's gross domestic product has recorded negative growth every year for a decade. Yet rather than initiate the sort of market reforms that were implemented by other communist governments, North Korean leaders have reverted to the economic policies of the 1950s: mass mobilization, concentration on heavy industry, and increased ideological indoctrination. Although members of the political elite in Pyongyang are acutely aware of their nation's domestic and foreign problems, they are plagued by fear and policy paralysis. North Korea Through the Looking Glass sheds new light on this remote and peculiar country. Drawing on more than ten years of research—including interviews with two dozen North Koreans who made the painful decision to defect from their homeland—Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig explore what the leadership and the masses believe about their current predicament. Through dual themes of persistence and illusion, they explore North Korea's stubborn adherence to policies that have

Download or read book The Real North Korea written by Andrei Lankov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive

Download or read book Through the Looking Glass written by Paul French and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The convulsive history of foreign journalists in China starts with newspapers printed in the European factories of Canton in the 1820s. It also starts with a duel between two editors over the future of China and ends with a fistfight in Shanghai over therevolution. This book tells the story of China's foreign journalists.

Download or read book North Korea in a Nutshell written by Kongdan Oh and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-11 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore North Korea, one of the most secretive countries in the world. This thoughtful book provides a concise introduction to North Korea. Two leading experts, Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig, trace the country’s history from its founding in 1948 and describe the many facets of its political, economic, social, and cultural life. The authors illuminate a hidden nation dominated by three generations of the secretive Kim regime, a family dynasty more suited to the Middle Ages than the contemporary era. North Korea has a robust if outmoded military force, including a growing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, to deter and defend against foreign attacks and to maintain independence and isolation from the rest of the world. The struggling economy, disconnected from the global marketplace, operates under harsh international sanctions. All North Koreans, from the highest party cadres to the youngest children living in prison camps, are essentially servants of the leader. Despite Kim Jong-un’s despotic control, the authors argue that North Korea cannot continue on its current path indefinitely. Kim treats even his closest associates harshly, and the gap is widening between his elite supporters, numbering a million or so, and the other twenty-four million North Koreans. The economic and technological gap between South Korea and North Korea is increasing as well, and younger people are becoming disenchanted as they gradually learn more about the outside world.

Download or read book White Tigers written by Ben S. Malcom and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-06 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operating from a clandestine camp on an island off western North Korea, Army Lt. Ben Malcom coordinated the intelligence activities of eleven partisan battalions, including the famous White Tigers. With Malcom's experiences as its focus, White Tigers examines all aspects of guerrilla activities in Korea. This exciting memoir makes an important contribution to the history of special operations.

Download or read book China and North Korea written by Andrew Scobell and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Act of War written by Jack Cheevers and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON AWARD FOR NAVAL LITERATURE “I devoured Act of War the way I did Flyboys, Flags of Our Fathers and Lost in Shangri-la.”—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author In 1968, the small, dilapidated American spy ship USS Pueblo set out to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Though packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, its crew, led by ex–submarine officer Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested young sailors. On a frigid January morning, the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded by more boats, shelled and machine-gunned, forced to surrender, and taken prisoner. Less than forty-eight hours before the Pueblo’s capture, North Korean commandos had nearly succeeded in assassinating South Korea’s president. The two explosive incidents pushed Cold War tensions toward a flashpoint. Based on extensive interviews and numerous government documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, Act of War tells the riveting saga of Bucher and his men as they struggled to survive merciless torture and horrendous living conditions set against the backdrop of an international powder keg.

Download or read book Kim Il Sung written by Dae-Sook Suh and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the rule of the Korean dictator who was premier, and then president, of North Korea until his death.

Download or read book In Order to Live written by Yeonmi Park and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” - Yeonmi Park "One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard - and one of the most inspiring." - The Bookseller “Park's remarkable and inspiring story shines a light on a country whose inhabitants live in misery beyond comprehension. Park's important memoir showcases the strength of the human spirit and one young woman's incredible determination to never be hungry again.” —Publishers Weekly In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea—and to freedom. Park confronts her past with a startling resilience. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life. Indeed, today she is a human rights activist working determinedly to bring attention to the oppression taking place in her home country. Park’s testimony is heartbreaking and unimaginable, but never without hope. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable.

Download or read book The Hidden People of North Korea written by Ralph Hassig and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book, now fully updated, provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of life in North Korea today. Drawing on decades of experience, noted experts Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh explore a world few outsiders can imagine. In vivid detail, the authors describe how the secretive and authoritarian government of Kim Jong-un shapes every aspect of its citizens' lives, how the command socialist economy has utterly failed, and how ordinary individuals struggle to survive through small-scale capitalism. Weighing the very limited individual rights allowed, the authors illustrate how the political class system and the legal system serve solely as tools of the regime. The key to understanding how the North Korean people live, the authors argue, is to realize that their only allowed role is to support Kim Jong-un, whose grandfather founded the country in the late 1940s. Still a cypher, Kim Jong-un, as did his father before him, controls his people by keeping them isolated and banning most foreigners. North Koreans remain hungry and oppressed, yet the outside world is slowly filtering in, and the book concludes by urging the United States to flood North Korea with information so that its people can make decisions based on truth rather than their dictator's ubiquitous propaganda.

Download or read book Marked for Life written by Robert M. Collins and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Our Supreme Leader written by Paul French and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since his accession to power in 2012, Kim Jong-un has come to personify North Korea in the eyes of the outside world. An object of derision as much as fear, he has nevertheless succeeded in strengthening his grip on the country, purging potential rivals and strengthening the personality cult around himself and his predecessors. This process is set to culminate at the Seventh Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party, the first such congress in over thirty-five years, where Kim is widely expected to proclaim the dawn of a new era under his leadership. In Our Supreme Leader, Paul French explores the ways in which the North Korean regime has evolved under Kim’s direction, with a detailed analysis of the history and development of its infamous cult of The Great Leader. Featuring the first in-depth assessment of the Seventh Congress and its significance within North Korea, French also offers fresh insights into the inner workings of this secretive regime, as well as looking ahead to its likely future direction.

Download or read book Dear Reader written by Michael Malice and published by Michael Malice. This book was released on 2014-01-25 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No country is as misunderstood as North Korea, and no modern tyrant has remained more mysterious than the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Now, celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice pulls back the curtain to expose the life story of the "Incarnation of Love and Morality." Taken directly from books spirited out of Pyongyang, DEAR READER is a carefully reconstructed first-person account of the man behind the mythology. From his miraculous rainbow-filled birth during the fiery conflict of World War II, Kim Jong Il watched as his beloved Korea finally earned its freedom from the cursed Japanese. Mere years later, the wicked US imperialists took their chance at conquering the liberated nation—with devastating results. But that's only the beginning of the Dear Leader's story. In DEAR READER, Kim Jong Il explains: *How he can shrink time *Why he despises the Mona Lisa *How he recreated the arts in Korea *Why the Juche idea is the greatest concept ever discovered by man *How he handled the crippling famine *Why Kim Jong Un was chosen as successor over his elder brothers With nothing left uncovered, drawing straight from dozens of books, hundreds of articles and thousands of years of Korean history, DEAR READER is both the definitive account of Kim Jong Il's life and the complete stranger-than-fiction history of the world's most unique country.

Download or read book The Interpreter written by Suki Kim and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A striking first novel about the dark side of the American Dream Suzy Park is a twenty-nine-year-old Korean American interpreter for the New York City court system. Young, attractive, and achingly alone, she makes a startling and ominous discovery during one court case that forever alters her family's history. Five years prior, her parents--hardworking greengrocers who forfeited personal happiness for their children's gain--were brutally murdered in an apparent robbery of their fruit and vegetable stand. Or so Suzy believed. But the glint of a new lead entices Suzy into the dangerous Korean underworld, and ultimately reveals the mystery of her parents' homicide. An auspicious debut about the myth of the model Asian citizen, The Interpreter traverses the distance between old worlds and new, poverty and privilege, language and understanding.

Download or read book My Holiday in North Korea written by Wendy E. Simmons and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You remember Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun? Yeah, this really isn’t like those. It’s better” (San Francisco Chronicle). Most people want out of North Korea. Wendy Simmons wanted in. In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it’s never been seen before. Even though it’s the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border. But Wendy’s initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia. Before long, she learned the essential conundrum of “tourism” in North Korea: Travel is truly a love affair. But, just like love, it’s a two-way street. And North Korea deprives you of all this. They want you to fall in love with the singular vision of the country they’re willing to show you and nothing more. Through poignant, laugh-out-loud essays and ninety-two never-before-published color photographs of North Korea, Wendy chronicles one of the strangest vacations ever. Along the way, she bares all while undergoing an inner journey as convoluted as the country itself. “Much of the humor and poignancy comes from the absurdity of a fun-loving free spirit taking a vacation that’s more rigidly scripted and controlled than a presidential motorcade . . . Simmons’ photos—including an eerie image of a classroom full of schoolgirls playing accordions—further illustrate the bizarre nature of a country that, whether for good or bad, has been carefully controlled for generations.” —San Francisco Chronicle “An irresistible read . . . A rare and fascinating look at the tourist’s North Korea in a work that is humorous, appalling, and very sad. A highly recommended and revealing glimpse into a secretive land.” —Library Journal

Download or read book Kim Jong Il and North Korea written by Andrew Scobell and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Exit Emperor Kim Jong Il written by John H. Cha and published by Abbott Press. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il, authors John H. Cha and K. J. Sohn present a compelling portrait of two men caught up in a struggle for the survival of North Korean society. Th e product of an eight-year study of individuals who observed and worked under Kim Jong-il, the dictator of North Korea for over thirty years, this biography provides insight into the Kims family corruption of power. The story is told through the eyes of Hwang Jang-yop, a renowned philosopher and writer, former International Secretariat of North Korea, and mentor to Kim Jong-il. It narrates Hwangs journey in his battle against Kims greed for power. It reveals a three-dimensional portrait of Kim Jong-il rarely chronicled, from Kims early days and rise to power to his economic crisis and his continual power struggle. As well as recording the life of Kim, Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il recounts Hwangs defection from North Korea so he could tell the world about the corrupt dictatorship and its policies that he felt were responsible for the massive famine in North Korea. Through testimonies from Hwang and other defectors from North Korea, this biography reveals what was going on inside the man, Kim Jong-il, and the society he ruled.