Product Description

America's leading authority on Korea provides a timely look at US-Korean relations.

We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts....Capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other. And let there be no doubt about it.—Donald Rumsfeld in response to North Korea's declaration of nuclear capability

Judging from media reports, North Korea is the country Americans love to hate. A charter member of Bush's "Axis of Evil" whose leader, Kim Jong Il, is routinely described as "insane" and "diabolical" and a self-proclaimed alternative to neo-liberalism and globalization, North Korea is anathema to conservative and liberal Americans alike. And now the CIA says it possesses one or two nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and long-range missiles capable of delivering atomic bombs or smallpox to America's West Coast.

Suffering no misconceptions regarding North Korea's dubious political tradition—from human-rights violations to token democracy—Bruce Cumings insists on a more nuanced understanding of US - North Korean relations. From CIA reports on North Korea's impressive social programs to that country's genuine efforts to address the new strategic environment since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cumings draws from his extensive knowledge of Korean history and declassified government reports to show that North Korea is as fascinating as it is repellent, as formidable as it is unique and idiosyncratic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #453168 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Booklist
Few books of political commentary are as insightful, outspoken, and even personable as this one. The author feels no obligation to keep his opinions to himself (unlike many commentators, who strive so hard for neutrality that they wind up not saying anything of substance). "I have no sympathy for the North, which is the author of most of its own troubles," he writes at one point, although he does allude to the "significant responsibility that all Americans share for the garrison state that emerged on the ashes of our truly terrible destruction of the North half a century ago." He also asserts, flatly contradicting the prevailing wisdom, that the Korean War, whose armistice was signed 50 years ago, is still the defining event of modern-day North Korea. The book is full of assertions that will challenge readers to reconsider several of their conceptions of contemporary history. It's also, and this is most unusual for a book of this nature, occasionally funny or even sarcastic, especially in its criticism of media responses to North Korea. A fresh, original take on a subject of growing international importance. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
America's leading historian and political analyst of contemporary Korea. -- Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback

Cumings counters the hype with an instructive history. -- The New York Times

Few books of political commentary are as insightful, outspoken, and even personable, as this one. -- Booklist

In the battle to open closed Western minds, this tart and witty broadside makes an excellent start. -- The Financial Times

About the Author
Bruce Cumings is the author of Korea's Place in the Sun; War and Television, and Parallax Visions. He teaches at the University of Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Poor, Misunderstood Kim Dynasty
In "North Korea: another country, the unitiated reader will get a good short introduction to Bruce Cumings and his views on the present-day Korean Peninsula, in all their infuriating clarity.

Cumings is right on several things in this book and wrong on much else. He is right to criticize the Wesern news media's coverage of North Korea for focusing almost entirely on its bizarre features while making little effort to figure out why it is so, and what the leadership is thinking. Perhaps if a country is so bizarre as to be unknowable, the news media are relieved of the responsibility of digging into it to inform their readers. One example of this was the coverage of Kim Jong-Il's 2001 visit to Russia by train. The US media focused on his unwillingness to fly and other trivia, but largely ignored the key point: a one-month absence showed he had great confidence in his grip on power.

Cumings is also right to inform readers of the devastating strategic bombing campaign that the US Air Forces unleashed on North Korea in 1950-53. The US forces brought their WWII experience intact to Korea and proceeded to flatten the North. It is important for Americans to know this, not because the USAF should have done differently in supporting our ground combatants, but because a) it is a matter of history and b) it helps explain some of the subsequent political and military behavior of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to give the North its full title. By the time of the 1953 Armistice, Kim Il-Sung was as great a believer in US air power as General Curtis LeMay. Kim ordered the burrowing of underground facilities of all kinds, from hangars to factories. One can also draw a line from that war experience to the later North Korean determination to develop nuclear weapons.

What is most tiresome about Bruce Cumings is that he constantly tries to excuse present-day North Korea. He avoids the obvious: that the only proper comparison is with South Korea. In that comparison, North Korea comes off very badly indeed. Having worked six years in Seoul as a US diplomat (in the late '70's and from 1988-92) and having later visited North Korea five times with an international organization, I see no excuse for North Korea's being the way it is, except for the obvious one -- keeping the Kim Dynasty and close supporters in power at the expense of all other North Koreans. To retain a semblance of objectivity, Cumings provides ritualistic interjections to the effect that of course North Korea is not a nice place.

On page 199 of his "Korea's Place in the Sun" (1997), Cumings states it would have been preferable for Kim Il-Sung's 1950 invasion to succeed, calling it a "purifying upheaval that might have been pretty awful," but not as bad as the Korean War or the 1960 uprising against Syngman Rhee or the 1980 Kwangju Uprising. (In the latter two events, the death toll was measured in the hundreds, not the millions.) In this breathtaking scenario, he asserts that a Korea unified under Kim in 1950 would have moderated over time, "as did China, as Vietnam is doing today." What Professor Cumings manages to gloss over in these short sentences is nothing short of stupefying. As John Merrill points out in "Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War," over 100,000 Koreans were killed on the peninsula in left-right violence even before the North invaded the South on June 25, 1950. Kim Il-Sung carried out brutal purges in the part of Korea he did control, and was ruthless in imposing his rule in the North. Success for Kim in 1950 would have been bloody indeed and would have left South Koreans without hope of economic or political improvement, and Kim without any incentive for either. As for Cumings's breezy comparison with China, he surely knows how many millions died in Mao's mad schemes like the Great Leap Forward. Few South Koreans who remember the war would appreciate his consigning them to the tender mercies of the Kim Dynasty. Though he states the point less clearly here, Cumings is still distressed that Kim was thwarted in 1950.

In general, Bruce Cumings explains North Korea's structure and behavior as being more Confucian than Communist. He draws on the structures and traditions of the Yi Dynasty or Chosun Korea (1392-1910) to illuminate the North. There is a fair amount of truth in that comparison. Where his simile runs onto the rocks is the nearly total militarization of North Korea, which has only accelerated after the dynastic succession to Kim Jong-Il, who initiated the "son-gun" (military first) policy. In Confucian Chosun times, military officials clearly took a back seat to civilian scholar-officials. To me, the best comparison to make with that central aspect of the North is with the highly militarized and regimented Japan between the world wars.

A reader wanting to learn more about North Korea would do far better to read "North Korea Through the Looking Glass" by Katy Oh and Ralph Hassig. It is far more objective and thorough.

Original take but somewhat over the top
Cumings' book has one major strength and one major weakness. Its strength is how much it makes you question what you are told by the American media. Like most Americans, I have a very black-and-white view of North Korea as a dangerous, terrorist-harboring, repressive totalitarian state, the closest you will ever get to George Orwell's 1984 in real life. Cumings bucks this view, but unfortunately, in so doing, he glosses over a lot of the relevant facts that make this view valid. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely opposed to the Kim regime and believe that he has been unbelievably cruel to his people, but Americans also ignore a lot of their own atrocities towards Korea and completely refuse to see the other point of view. Cumings sees the other point of view, but unfortunately ignores the original one he's arguing about, which does have merit. He also seems to have something of a vendetta against the American government and takes cheap pot shots at various Western figures which are detrimental to what is otherwise a scholarly, although occasionally overly argumentative, work.

If you want a book that turns your view of North Korea on its head and causes you to question everything the media tells you, I highly recommend it, but be prepared to be angry and take everything with a grain of salt, because it's pretty one-sided.

I'm all for alternative viewpoints, but...
This book just doesn't have a point. There's no overarching thesis to explain the North's behavior. I think he's going towards a Confucian explanation, but then he doesn't really have that much to say about Confucianism either. The first chapter is about the history of the Korean war, and how disproportionate our reaction was. The second is about the nuclear crises in the 90's and 2000's, which makes the point that North Korea isn't as unpredictable as people make it out to be. For these two chapters, I'll give it one star above the minimum. However, there's a big hole between 1953 and 1990: he seems to be making the same mistake as those he detracts, only paying attention to them in terms of their military relations with the US. Moreover, the thesis of the second chapter doesn't get expounded anywhere else in the book.

The third chapter is about Kim Il Sung (and the fifth chapter is largely about Kim Jong Il)- which kind of makes me wonder why I'm bothering reading an alternative history in the first place. Sandwiched inbetween in a chapter on daily life. He quotes a number of people who have direct experience in Pyongyang, and relates their experiences to his own experiences in Pyongyang. He never really makes it out into the countryside, though, thus neglecting the biggest part of the country, when nowadays it's perfectly possible to get information on that subject. Finally, the last chapter talks about a lot of other authors that I haven't read. In general, his political views are incoherent: he questions people who assert that Koreans aren't fit for democracy, after excusing the death camps on the basis that they're okay for Koreans. I won't give too much else away, because that's part of the fun of reading the book - and anyway most other reviews have already talked about it. I'm really dying to know what Saudi Arabia has done to "make Kim Jong Il look enlightened" though - he never really explains that point.

Anyway, if you're looking for a good alternative source on North Korea, I would recommend Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World's Most Repressive Country. It doesn't have quite the same political leanings, but it's basically non-political, and it gives you a good feeling for how the country really works, outside the halls of power.