(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best korean history books

This is a list that I saved (from reddit a while back. I wish I could give credit to the original poster, but the person who posted it also quoted the list. So whoever compiled this list. KUDOS! I wish I could give you credit:

>So the broader history book is A New History of Korea and starts very very far back. It will provide a general overview of Korean history. As for modern history if you don't know much about Korea's modern history a good place to start is Korea's 20th Century Odyssey. It starts in around the 1890s and if I remember correctly ends with the democracy movements of the 1980s. It very clearly divides the different periods of Korea's 20th century experience e.g. the colonial period, the war and the Park Chung-Hee regime. It is a very good starting point. If you want to have a deeper understanding of the colonial period there are two books I would recommend, the first being Colonial Modernity in Korea which covers a lot of the developments in Korea during the colonial period. Another book I want to recommend is Under the Black Umbrella which is a collection of first hand experiences and stories of people who lived during the colonial period. As for the Park Chung-Hee period there are two suggestions I have but they mostly focus more on economic policy and development. The first book is Korea's Development Under Park Chung-Hee and the second book is Reassessing the Park Chung-Hee Era. Both are pretty high in economic content but the second book does also have a lot of content focusing on political developments. If you read a few of these you will have a good understanding of Korean modern history.

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That is a good question. I read plenty before going. Even having a degree in Asian Politics and having read plenty I found that many of them did not capture the society very well.
Bruce Cumings "North Korea: Another Country" http://www.amazon.com/North-Korea-Another-Bruce-Cumings/dp/156584940X

This book is accused of pro-DPRK bias. I would call it more getting a better understanding of internal thinking. He explained it better than most. His latest book "The Korean War" is a great look at the war in most brutal terms.

Many of the books have great parts such as Hassig and Oh's "The Hidden People" but some of it does not quite make sense. If you read enough of this stuff you see that they have to cite the same sources.

Brad Martin's "Under the Loving Care" is a journalist's view and he pulls everything together, some of it is not credible. I think the book needed editing, say 20% left on the floor.

Andrei Lankov's "North of the DMZ" is a good book. He is a Kim Il-sung University graduate. I do not agree with all of it but he lived it. I read his commentaries and it is much better than most.

This is a tough subject, a closed country and a difficult society to understand. So few have been there and even fewer more than once. I do think we are getting a better view of what goes on as the place opens up - slowly but things are changing.

Here are a few books I recommended to someone else that you might find useful

>So the broader history book is A New History of Korea and starts very very far back. It will provide a general overview of Korean history. As for modern history if you don't know much about Korea's modern history a good place to start is Korea's 20th Century Odyssey. It starts in around the 1890s and if I remember correctly ends with the democracy movements of the 1980s. It very clearly divides the different periods of Korea's 20th century experience e.g. the colonial period, the war and the Park Chung-Hee regime. It is a very good starting point. If you want to have a deeper understanding of the colonial period there are two books I would recommend, the first being Colonial Modernity in Korea which covers a lot of the developments in Korea during the colonial period. Another book I want to recommend is Under the Black Umbrella which is a collection of first hand experiences and stories of people who lived during the colonial period. As for the Park Chung-Hee period there are two suggestions I have but they mostly focus more on economic policy and development. The first book is Korea's Development Under Park Chung-Hee and the second book is Reassessing the Park Chung-Hee Era. Both are pretty high in economic content but the second book does also have a lot of content focusing on political developments. If you read a few of these you will have a good understanding of Korean modern history.

I would donate it to Liberty in North Korea. I think what they're doing is extremely important but not enough people know/care about the people of North Korea.

And keep some to fund me and my boyfriend moving to Korea when we finish our degrees because I don't think I could move in with his parents!

This book, or any of the books in my wishlist, if I were to win :)

Thanks for the contest!

I'd say stick with the Seoul - Gyeonggi-do area then, there's more than enough to keep you busy. The national museum is quite good, and the Seoul Arts Center occasionally has world class exhibitions. Check out the Seoul guide by Robert Koehler, it's the best there is and will have a ton of cool stuff.

Edit: You know what? I'd send copies of that guide to key people in the wedding party right now. Just thumbing through it is like a trip in its own right. It really is a great insight into Seoul that gets crowded out by all the Lonely Planet guides.

This is an excellent book to learn about TKD's history. For a more general reference book for the Korean arts I would also recommend Korean Martial Arts Handbook it has a lot of good information on TKD's history as well as the schools that TKD was created from (as well as other Korean arts like Hapkido, etc).

"The New Koreans" is a recent publication (copyrighted 2017, although the narrative ends right before the juiciest moment of the decade, choigate, so more like 2016) that goes deep into korea's past and present. Even some points I never considered before.

However, read it with a grain of salt, because some of the things it says are just flat out wrong or biased (like claiming that korea's panic over pyramid scheme con artistry were an act of protectionism against western soap products, and implying that comfort women issue is nothing to bat an eye about because Joseon was a patriarchal society at the time. REALLY? ).

The summary says it outlines the three miracles of korea, each reportedly blew the author's mind as it happened. Economic miracle of the 70s, then democratic miracle of the 90s, then the miracle of breaking out in the world stage as a cultural powerhouse in the last decade. He doesn't really go into the last part in detail, and I can't blame him because he's been alive since the days of Park Chung Hee.

If you want a nice, entertaining and also informative reading on the cultural part, then pick up Birth of Korean Cool

This book, it's amazing. Rather than people speculating about what goes on there, it's full of actual stories from actual people there. Some of it is just unbelievable. They live in a fantasy world, except that fantasy implies something fantastic.

Also, this documentary is fascinating:

"Inside Undercover In North Korea" (5 parts)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_268_pBvPs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0t9fztpsOY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAipMzjaHzA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDR7j0sqYjA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4puhfLTzdc

http://www.amazon.com/North-Korea-Another-Bruce-Cumings/dp/156584873X

Bruce Cummings is one of the foremost experts on North Korea in the west. He documents many of his experiences on his numerous journeys to the north.

If you get the chance, I'd really recommend taking a military DMZ tour. I went once, might have to dig up a photo... That's me and my ex at the Panmunjeom, That picture was taken about 50 feet from the border of North Korea. This was probably about... Two weeks or so after the Taepodong-2 launch, which caused quite a lot of tension.

The tunnel trip was really, really cool though. South Korea discovered a handful of secret tunnels dug under the DMZ that were meant to be the ingress for an invasion force. It was pretty awesome, actually, and a little scary that they managed to dig 15 or so of them, and we've only found a handful.

EDIT: I forgot the best part: For lunch, we ate that the nearest Popeye's Chicken to North Korea. That's achievement-worthy.

Consider looking into Hobbes and Marx and Nozick and maybe Rawls, just to add a bit to your list of political theory basis. I mean, there's tons more, but those are a few I think are super interesting and would probably help.

Anyways, here are a few books I read for an undergrad polisci topic on American foreign policy towards Asia:

The International Politics of the Asia Pacific by Michael Yahuda.

Obama and China's Rise: An Insider's Account of America's Asia Strategy by Jeffrey A. Bader.

International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific by Ikenberry and Mastanduno.

Thanks for the serious and academic reply!

Regarding their program being a bargaining chip - it was this way when they offered to reverse their decision during the 90s (after having left the NPT). They were of course serious then about building nuclear weapons - though willing to bargain it away for the assurances they felt they could have if they were build. If a state intends to use weapons capabilities as one of their bargaining chip they have to be serious about actually pursuing the capabilities or the threat has no teeth in the diplomacy. But anyway, the nuclear program began long, long before bilateral diplomacy (they had asked both China and the Soviet Union for help decades prior).

In the 90s they had intended to develop nuclear weapons because they saw the Soviet Union and the protection offered by great power balance collapse and because the US and ROK had been refusing international inspections programs to prove that they had themselves been removing nuclear warheads from the peninsula.

And NK did seriously suspend their nuclear program during the Agreed Framework under the Sunshine Policy - were serious about abandoning it for security assurances. NK had used their pursuit of a nuclear weapon as a bargaining chip for security assurances. US Ambassadors and Diplomats from Charles Pritchard to Wendy Sherman evaluate this as having nearly succeeded but for the massive change from the Clinton to Bush administrations, where Bush had tried to simultaneously use coercion and persuasion (these don't work well together), tactics to collapse the regime and prevented the US from fulfilling its side of the agreements. This curtled the DPRK trust in the United States, and they doubled down on their program, seeking deterrence from capability rather than deterrence from agreement. I wouldn't call progress on their program slow by any measure.

That's to say it's crucial to understand that the North had been bargaining for security against the actions it feared it needed to pursue nuclear weapons for in the first place.

"Nukes=sovereignty" isn't an equation I think anyone, including officials in the North would condone. Nukes contribute to certain security garuntees against particular types of military engagements. And in fact the ones they have now still wouldn't be capable of full deterrence. In the longer term, North Korea hopes to pursue a full nuclear triad - which gives much stronger deterrence guarantees. But they don't ensure diplomatic security, they don't ensure security against economic warfare, and they don't secure the regime against externally source destabilization operations. We both know that MAD alone isn't a reasonable or realistic metric. Agreed that the cost imposition is a real deterrent.

So anyway, agreed entirely it isn't black-and-white. It's just very much not right to say that strategic deterrence isn't a primary feature of the programme.

The opportune times in history to wipe out NK have been equally inopportune. In the mid 60s through early 80s, due to unpopular, brutal and expensive land wars in Asia, subsequent presidents were promising to remove US presence from the peninsula - and it was only through a very think ringer of bribes that military presence was kept. During the 80's there was some effort but NK was not a priority - having been off the front roster of the still ongoing Cold War for some time. Probably the best time would have been after the Soviet Union collapsed - but at this point the United States and ROK were engaged to try to include NK into the rest of the world economy and to build a peaceful coexistence. It's only when real efforts to collapse and occupy the regime went into affect that they abondoned the diplomatic track. We might have been able to pull it off then as well, except that expensive, brutal and unpopular ground wars in the Middle East kept our full attention.

> The two Koreas were separately admitted as member states to the UN in 1991.

> Having two separate seats despite a single language, culture and history is clearly not normal.

> This year marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the Korean Peninsula remains stifled by a wall of division.

> …

> I call on the international community to stand with us in tearing down the world’s last remaining wall of division.

> …

> A unified Korea will be the starting point for a world without nuclear weapons, offer a fundamental solution to the North Korean human rights issue, and help unlock a stable and cooperative Northeast Asia.

> …

> The founders of the UN were not deterred by the heat of war from looking to the future and planning for a peaceful post-war world.

President Park Geun-hye in an address to the UN on Korean Unification

Though I might also link her (very rare) public appeal to the ROK, in which she pitched occupation of the North a "bonanza". And the ROK's efforts to reeducate youth on the importance of reunification by altering school textbooks.

The problem is not communism. The problem is totalitarianism. Communism is just the excuse to make people give up everything and do what you say 'for the greater good'.

I really recommend reading Under The Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, which is an amazing book about the founding and history of North Korea, especially focusing on that of Kim Il Sung.

New Village is quite an interesting read. This text is dense but I read it for my Asian studies course and it's a good touchstone piece where you can start to learn about modern Korean development. They take more of a biographical approach as opposed to an economic one but those are the only two texts I've read on the topic but they form a good baseline level of understanding in regards to post-War Korean advancement.

If you want a thorough analysis of Hangeul, I'd get a copy of The Korean Alphabet of 1446. Some of it can be somewhat dense, but there's a ton of really interesting info.

There's also The History and Future of Hangeul which is a fun read. The author is kinda angry (it is also translated), but has some entertaining ideas in it.

These are really the only three academic books in English covering the Korean language and Korean linguistics that I know of. I've read all three and actually had Prof. Ramsey as an instructor/adviser/mentor. Some of the information in the last two is a little dated (language changes constantly after all), but all are definitely worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Korean-Language-Ki-Moon-Lee/dp/0521661897/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282744&sr=8-1&keywords=A+History+of+the+Korean+Language

http://www.amazon.com/The-Korean-Language-Cambridge-Surveys/dp/0521369436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282775&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Korean+Language

http://www.amazon.com/Korean-Language-Suny-Series-Studies/dp/0791448320/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282775&sr=8-2&keywords=The+Korean+Language

EDIT: I should add that these books do cover the creation of Hangul and changes in Korean orthography.

Among other reasons, during the late 1800's Japan and China began competing fiercely for influence over Korea. There were pro-Japanese coups which were overturned by Chinese troops.

A rebellion in Korea in 1894 provided Japan and China with the excuse to send troops to Korea.

On July 25, 1894 Japanese ships attacked and sunk Chinese troop transports heading to Korea. The first Sino-Japanese war was brief and was a total humiliating defeat for the Chinese. As you can imagine, this did not endue them to the Japanese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War

For their part the Japanese were thoroughly interested in modernizing and copying the success of the West Which put them at odds with conservative, anti-western factions (to simplify) in China and Korea.

It also meant that they viewed imperial conquest as a legitimate tool of foreign policy. Imperial conquest was very much in vogue then and just as the Europeans claimed to be acting in the best interests of the Africans the Japanese claimed to be acting in the best interests of the Koreans and Chinese.

The Europeans and Americans agreed and generally viewed Japan's rise to power favorably, (failing to condemn even the 1931 invasion of Manchuria) many other people in Asia did not.

Source: [Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea] (http://www.amazon.com/Everlasting-Flower-A-History-Korea/dp/1861893353)

Wow, he shot the cover of Nothing to Envy, an excellent book.

You can buy Nothing to Envy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-Envy-Lives-North-Korea/dp/184708141X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376391740&sr=8-1&keywords=nothing+to+envy

One of the best NK books i've read.

They can and it is mentioned in Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. A lot of the factories there have been shut down during the famine so the pollution isn't what it was. It describes an (almost) romanticised depiction of walking around at night in pitch dark in areas that used to be bustling and developed. Such a strange mental image.


Highly recommend this book if you're curious about everyday life in North Korea.

Anyone who thinks the DPRK is actually communist should read The Cleanest Race.

Racial animus is actually the prime motivator behind Juche ideology. Kids are raised on propaganda telling them that the US invaded North Korea without provocation in order to force black and Jewish soldiers on Korean women. Their ideology propagates the idea that their race is the purest of all, so pure that they need the strong hand of Dear Leader to keep them away from the rest of the world. They're a fascist regime with the most superficial of communist window dressing.

Anyone with any interest in the real North Korea should read this

Very Interesting and it shows just how bad it really is.

worth a watch too

Basically. He modelled himself on Mao and doubled down on the ethnic nationalism. I recommend The Cleanest Race by Brian Myers if you want to read about that side of Juche.

Utterly safe for you, yeah. Not so much for the people living there. I'm reading this at the minute, it's just jaw-dropping. I mean, we all know it's a shit life there, but it's far, far worse than I ever imagined. Really recommend the book.

A docu-drama based around Nothing to Envy, a fantastic and devestating book by Barbara Demick about six seperate people who esacpe from North Korea.

It would have to have the HBO treatment and cannot shy away from the violence, torture and emotional gravity of the situation - whilst at the same time not glorifying it.

There are six(?) escapees who are documented in the book, so a 6 - 8 episode, self contained series would be incredible

China created the rogue nuclear states of NK and Pakistan. It was brilliant on how it came about.

China gave their nuclear bomb designs to Pakistan, and missile technology to North Korea. Then NK and Pakistan swapped each other's technologies and acquired a full nuclear launch capability. All the while China claiming plausible deniability. This is classic back stabbing China. No surprise really.

>Although the Chinese profess to be against nuclear proliferation, documented evidence illustrates just the opposite -- as a means of asserting Chinese hegemony, complicating American security policy and undermining American influence.


Both North Korea and Pakistan are the bane of their existence to their neighbors. All thanks to China. What China has done to destabilize global security is unimaginable if not unpardonable.


Must read books on the subject.

Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb

The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics

North Korea's Serious New Nuclear Missile Threat


Don't be surprised if one of these two rogue terrorist countries detonates the next nuclear weapon. Either intentional or stolen by jihadis. Just a matter of time. We can all thank China then.

Edit - word.

I have. I know all about the sea org, its nothing like living in NK and to suggest otherwise is an insult to north korean suffering.

For one thing, they can leave anytime they want. if they wanted to badly enough. For another, no one in sea org is eating bark to survive.

please read this book to get first hand accounts of how it was during the famine in NK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-Envy-Lives-North-Korea/dp/184708141X

Its heartbreaking. Especially the classrooms of young kids getting smaller and smaller in number as more of them die from malnutrition and the teacher being too hungry to give them any of her meagre amounts of food and feeling guilty for the rest of her life.

> i ask you to explain to me, how the average person has the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions about who should run state?

It’s not necessary to explain this to you because the question is entirely irrelevant. It is a very narrow and parochial understanding of knowledge which becomes apparent if you reverse the question: How can any one individual, or small group of select individuals, have the required knowledge of the populace to make informed decisions about how the state should be run on their behalf?

The issue is not whether "the vast majority of people” have or don’t have "the required level of knowledge on politics” because they don’t need whatever this specialist knowledge is to have specialist knowledge of their own lives and families.

In fact, for that matter, specialist knowledge of the kind you are talking about is highly disputed, is not a well-defined object that can be learned or not and is the subject of endless debate - in a democracy at least that’s true. Under a dictatorship you can simply have dissenting voices silenced.

> … dictatorships are less pleasant but democracies are just as corrupt as any dictatorship its just far less obvious ...

That is absolute rubbish. I mean it’s not even a different point of view, just actual palpable nonsense.

The only way in which that statement could be true is if we were to extend the meaning of ‘Democracy’ to include countries like North Korea as they are named the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea or Zimbabwe or any other places which ostensibly have some form of democracy, let’s say Nigeria, but where corruption is absolutely rife and not even “far less obvious” but plain to see to anyone from the minute they wake up in the morning to the moment they go to bed at night.

The important point there from your argument is that the issues of corruption in the latter ‘democracies’ have absolutely nothing to do with the form of government they have, or who is in power at any one time, or whether or not the populace at large have what you call "the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions”.

Corruption exists in democracies such as the US or the UK and so on. But so do burglary, murder, extortion, rape, riots, inequality and any number of other crimes and injustices. A democratic system is not a promise of utopia and was never meant to be.

You’re a student so you’re young and it’s fine to hold pompous and silly ideas for the sake of shocking older people such as myself, but if it really is the case that you have actually "done considerable research” into dictatorships and democracies, then perhaps you could tell me what your thoughts on. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1: The Spell of Plato as I have to say your comments are rather suggestive of the idea that you think a dictatorship ruled by an elite class of selfless and benign philosophers would be just as good, perhaps better, than a democracy.

You could also, for instance, look at books such as these and explain where you can find anything comparable happening under a functioning democracy (and not e.g. those I mentioned before):

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World by Theodore Dalrymple

Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot