262 The Review of Korean Studies

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1 Political History of North Korea I: The History of Party, State, and Military Construction. By Kim Gwang-un Seoul: Seonin, 976 pp. 38,000 Korean Won Charles Armstrong The study of the Democratic People s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) has made tremendous advances in recent years. Not so long ago, much of the scholarly literature on North Korea was divided into scholarship from North Korea itself, which had obvious political biases in favor of the North Korean regime and was not always of the most reliable quality, and publications from outside of North Korea, especially South Korea, Japan and the United States, which had their own types of biases usually being extremely critical of the DPRK and often lacked substantial empirical grounding. In short, political constraints and limitations of data contributed to a body of work on the DPRK that was, to say the least, intellectually less than satisfying. Furthermore, the interaction between North Korean scholarly institutions and individuals on the one hand, and South Korean and Western scholars on the other, was almost nonexistent. Several factors have changed this situation. While political constraints in North Korea itself are still severe, the range of perspectives on North Korea has opened up considerably in other countries where work on North Korea is done, especially in South Korea. At the empirical level, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the greater openness of China and other present and former socialist countries with close ties to North Korea have released a flood of new information on North Korea. New sources on North Korea have also been uncovered in South Korea and the United States, including the vast archive of documents captured by the US Army during the Korean War. Finally, there is a nascent exchange of scholarship and ideas developing between North Korean academies and their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea. Taking advantage of this new political and intellectual environment that has emerged over the last decade or so, Dr. Kim Gwang-un has written the most definitive work to date on the early history of the DPRK. His focus is on the period of what in North Korea is called democratic construction, or the formative period of the regime between the end of Japanese colonial rule and begin-

2 262 The Review of Korean Studies ning of Soviet occupation in August-September 1945, and the establishment of the DPRK on September 9, Covering nearly 1,000 pages, including some 150 pages of appendices and bibliography, Political History of North Korea is the most comprehensive study of this period we are likely to have for a long time to come. Dr. Kim has gathered together most of the existing primary and secondary sources on the subject in Korean, Russian, English, Chinese, and Japanese to paint an extraordinarily detailed portrait of the formative period of the North Korean regime. Dr. Kim makes extensive use of captured North Korean documents from the Korean War, the largest single archive of North Korean primary sources for this period currently available, as well as other documentary sources in the relevant languages. He also conducted numerous interviews of participants in this history and, owing to his position with the Korean Institute of National History, managed to visit Pyongyang four times, where he was able to interact with scholars at the Korean Academy of Social Sciences, Kim Il Sung University, and other academic institutions. In addition to its empirical richness, Political History of North Korea is nuanced and balanced, as close to an objective assessment of this history as one is likely to get. It is particularly good on issues of political leadership, although local and non-elite politics are covered extensively as well. For example, the author pays close attention to the People s Committee structure in Part II, as well as the democratic revolution (especially land reform) in Part III. However, one might have wanted more information on the non-communist political parties, including the Ch ondogyo Youth Party and the Korean Democratic Party; the author s overwhelming attention to the Communists, especially the Kim Il Sung group, is perfectly understandable given that the book s focus is on the origins of the leadership structure that actually emerged in the DPRK. But the lack of attention to the alternatives to the Communists and to Kim Il Sung gives the reader the reader an impression of the inevitability of this group s rise to power that is greater than is perhaps warranted. As the subtitle suggests, this book focuses on state, party, and military formation. The latter, however, is a somewhat secondary concern. The book s real emphasis is reflected in the three-part division of the text: the Soviet occupation and its influence on North Korean regime formation; the origins of the Kim Il Sung leadership system; and the establishment of the DPRK. As far as the Soviet occupation is concerned, the author overcomes the dichotomy between the Sovietization thesis vs. autonomous revolutionary development by sug-

3 Book Reviews 263 gesting in my view, correctly that North Korea should be seen as a product of both external and internal development factors. The Soviet role was important, but internal contradictions also made Korea what it is (p. 27). On the question of the Kim Il Sung leadership system, the author is right to emphase the Manchuria guerilla background of Kim and his cohort, who came to be the dominant force in North Korean politics. However, the author may be criticized for attributing too much power to the guerilla faction at this stage. Much of the scholarship on the DPRK the work of Wada Haruki, for example argues that while the guerilla group was important, it did not come to dominate the political system until after the Korean War. Contrasting this, the author gathers much evidence that North Korea was a guerilla band state from the very beginning of the regime (p. 173). As a political history of the early DPRK, this book is invaluable. But like any history, the history of North Korea is about more than politics. We can hope that someday solid social, cultural, and local histories will be written to add to this one, giving us a much more complete understanding of North Korean history than we have now. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine a more exhaustive treatment of North Korean political history than this one. It is unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon. (Associate Professor of History, Columbia University)

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5 Index of The Review of Korean Studies Vol. 7, No. 3 September 2004 War and Memory in Korean History Guest Editor s Introduction Roh Young-koo Yi Sun-shin, an Admiral Who Became a Myth Park Maeng-soo Japan s Distorted Memory of the Donghak Peasant Uprising and the Sino- Japanese War Byeon Eun Jin The Joseon Public s Perception of the War during the World War II Period Chung Yong Wook Leaflets, and the Nature of the Korean War as Psychological Warfare AN INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD W. WAGNER Articles Shin Bok-ryong The Origins of the Korean War Kim Il-sung s Intention to Begin the War Kim Il-Young The Race against Time: Disintegration of the Chang Myun Government and Aborted Democracy Sungmoon Kim Confucian Charisma and the True Way of the Moral Politician: Interpreting the Tension between Toegye and Nammyeong in Late Sixteenth Century Joseon REVIEW ESSAY Book Review

6 Index of The Review of Korean Studies Vol. 7, No. 2 June 2004 Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Globalization in Korean Society Guest Editor s Introduction Yang Young-Kyun Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Sport: A Case Study on Michelle Wie Bak Sangmee Negotiating National and Transnational Identities through Consumption Choices: Hamburgers, Espresso, and Mobile Technologies among Koreans AN INTERVIEW WITH KANG JAE-EUN Articles Oh Mahn-Seug Lee Jae Jun Zhu Xi s Ge-wu-zhi-zhi Theory and Its Implications in Reconstructing the Postmodern Curriculum Kim Chang-seok Formation and Transformation of the Material Flow System in Ancient Korea MATERIALS ON KOREAN STUDIES Book Review