Criticism on Personality Cult of Kim Il Sung during the Cold War period, and how the North Korean history was perceived - Examination of Travelogues by Americans who visited North Korea in the 1970s -

2019 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 123-154
Author(s):  
Joo-ho Lee
2018 ◽  
Vol 123 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Schmid

Abstract The Cold War is far from over on the Korean Peninsula. Korean history—especially for the northern half—remains deeply shaped by the legacies of transnational anti-communism even as historians who study socialism in other settings have shed many of the Cold War–era assumptions about the extensive power of the state. By putting North Korea in a comparative perspective with other socialist countries such as the USSR, the People’s Republic of China, and the German Democratic Republic, this article suggests ways of integrating the constitutive power of social forces beyond the state into our histories of North Korea, as seen through an examination of population movement. Beginning with the dissolution of the Japanese Empire, the mobility of people has always been a politicized issue between the two Koreas. Historians have taken up this issue, yet dependence on sources produced by the North Korean state has led many narratives—however harshly critical of the regime—to reproduce within their own analytical frameworks key assumptions originally produced in Pyongyang in support of the personality cult. The result has been a cartoonish depiction of the North Korean state. By using a diverse set of public media as sources, this article shows that due to conflicting interests of migrants, factory managers, and central economic planners, many North Koreans moved into the cities despite administrative injunctions and the admonishments of Kim Ilsung. Asking questions about the limits of the state, rather than assuming its totalitarian capacity, becomes one way of escaping the historiographical legacies of the Cold War even as the politics of division continue to rage on the peninsula.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
Theofilus Jose Setiawan ◽  
Maria Sukmaniara ◽  
Jain Komboy ◽  
Darynaufal Mulyaman

The purpose of the paper is to analyze North Korea's efforts to obtain economic capital through the enrichment of nuclear weapons amid the various sanctions imposed on it. This paper uses a constructivism approach in accordance in term of give arguments regarding North Korea's struggle to gain economic capital is an all-out struggle. Since the communist regime took control of North Korea, North and South Korea have continued to conflict to this day. Supported by the Soviet Union and aided by China during the Cold War era, North Korea was still able to survive. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's lack initiatives from helping North Korea, the North Korean economy worsened. In this paper, we found that North Korea used its nuclear capability as a bargaining chip to get what it wanted, especially for economic reasons.


2015 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Benjamin Young

From the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, Seoul and Pyongyang sought to gain international recognition as the sole government on the Korean peninsula. Africa, the site of many newly independent nations during the Cold War, became the primary battleground for this inter- Korean competition. Focusing on North Korean-African relations, this article examines several African dictators who admired North Korea’s alternative brand of socialist modernity, Pyongyang’s exportation of its Juche (roughly defined as self-reliance) ideology to Africa, and African students who studied in North Korea as part of official diplomatic exchanges. Using archival sources from North Korea’s former communist allies, North Korean newspapers, declassified documents from the U.S. Department of State, and interviews with African students who studied in North Korea in the 1980s, I explore an under-researched dimension of North Korea’s diplomatic history and the North Korean leadership’s efforts in Africa to depict the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a model of Third World development.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-208
Author(s):  
Paweł Bielicki

The main purpose of my considerations will be to present the most important determinants and relationships that characterize China-North Korea relations during the presidency of Xi Jinping. Based on the available literature on the subject, I would like to try to answer the question whether the relations of the two entities should be considered as rough friendship or long-term partnership. In addition, I intend to state whether mutual ties should be expected in the future.At the beginning I will describe the relations between China and North Korea during the Cold War, when both countries fought in the Korean conflict against the United States and the United Nations. In addition, it would be appropriate to look at the relations of both entities from 1955 to the fall of the USSR, when the North Korean dictator, Kim Il-sung, as part of his doctrine of independence (Juche) balanced in foreign policy between China and the Soviet Union. Post-Cold War times and Beijing’s relationship with Pyongyang will also be of interest to me until 2013, when the North Korean nuclear program became an increasingly contentious issue. In the rest of the work, it will be important to describe the relationship of both countries since Xi Jinping took power in China and Kim Jong Un in North Korea. At that time, despite official declarations of cooperation, relations between the two countries remained cool. It was only the direct negotiations between North Korea and the United States since 2018 that increased its importance in Chinese policy, as evidenced by the visit of the to Pyongyang discussed in the text in June 2019. In the article I intend to raise economic contacts between both entities.In summary, I am trying to answer the question of how relations between China and North Korea will develop in the future. I intend to assess whether the growing role of the DPRK in an international configuration it can contribute to wider, strategic ties with Beijing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-409
Author(s):  
Hunter Hollins

On 23 January 1968, the North Korean Navy attacked and captured the USS Pueblo, a United States naval intelligence collection ship in international waters off the coast of North Korea. The USS Pueblo was one of a group of AGER ships created to provide intelligence from the Sea of Japan during the Cold War. This article discusses the growing hostilities of North Korea during the Cold War and uses recently declassified documents to illustrate the naval intelligence efforts of the United States to monitor the North Korean threat.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moe Taylor

In a little-known episode of the Cold War that challenges many common assumptions, North Korea forged extensive political, economic, military and cultural relations with the small South American-Caribbean coastal state of Guyana in the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, Guyana was ruled by an authoritarian socialist regime under Forbes Burbham, whose unorthodox conception of “socialism” was viewed skeptically by Communist countries other than North Korea. Burnham's program of “co-operative socialism,” which envisaged a population strictly obedient to his own wishes as the supreme leader, was distinctly similar to the juche philosophy espoused by the long-time North Korean dictator, Kim Il-Sung. Burnham deeply admired North Korea's economic and military “achievements,” attributing them to the strict obedience of the North Korean populace to the wishes of Kim Il-Sung. Burnham envisaged a similar role for himself in Guyana and attempted to import various North Korean approaches to socialist education and culture. Guyana came to resemble North Korea in some important respects, but it gradually moved away from this pattern after Burnham's death in 1985.


Poliarchia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Mateusz Danielewski

Foreign Policy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Russian Federation toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (1948–2016) Foreign relations between the Soviet Union and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) during the Cold War were based on support of the North Korean regime and a distrustful attitude toward Kim Il‑sung, who remained neutral in the Soviet‑Chinese split. After the political transformation, the Russian Federation is pursuing pragmatic policy toward the DPRK. Moscow seeks to deepen economic cooperation in order to maintain security in Northeast Asia. The aim of this article is to analyse the USSR’s and Russia’s relations with the DPRK. The author describes events before, during and after the Cold War. The article draws attention to the extent to which national interests and the foreign policy of the Russian Federation coincide and differ from those pursued by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.


1957 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Speier

The uncertainty about whether atomic weapons will be used in future war, whether local or general, lends itself to political exploitation in the cold war. The efficiency of nuclear weapons in wartime, and their resulting threat-value in either war- or peacetime, constitute their political-military worth. In peacetime, the threat-value of weapons can be exploited in many ways: by an ultimatum, by authoritative or inspired statements on capabilities or intentions, by studied disclosures of new weapons at ceremonial occasions, by means of maneuvers, redeployments of forces, or by so-called demonstrations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-306
Author(s):  
Sunwoo Lee

Abstract Chi Ki-ch’ŏl’s story reveals a man not driven by ideology, but buffeted by it. He began adulthood as a Korean exile in Manchuria, where the Japanese occupation army conscripted him. After Japan’s defeat in August 1945, he joined a Korean contingent of the Chinese Communist Army and fought in the Chinese Civil War. His unit later repatriated to North Korea, where it joined the invasion of South Korea on 25 June 1950. When U.S.-led forces of the United Nations shattered that invasion in September, he quickly arranged to surrender to U.S. troops. While in custody, Chi worked with Republic of Korea (rok) intelligence to organize prisoner of war (pow) resistance to their being returned to North Korea after the impending armistice. He enjoyed privileges as an anti-Communist in the pow camps, and hoped it would continue. Although an active anti-Communist, Chi judged that he would not be able to live in South Korea as an ex-pow. After refusing repatriation to North Korea, he also rejected staying in South Korea. But Chi would survive elsewhere. He relocated to India, where he thrived as a businessman. He chose the space of neutrality to succeed as an anti-Communist, where life nevertheless reflected the contentious energy of the Cold War. Chi’s decision demonstrated how ideology, despite its importance to him, was not sufficient to translate his rejection of Communist North Korea into a commitment to South Korea.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-293
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gould

This essay investigates the challenges facing Caucasus philology, by which I mean the institutional capacity to conduct deep research into the literary cultures of Azerbaijan Republic, Georgia, Daghestan, and Chechnya. I argue that the philological approach to the literary cultures of the Caucasus has been a casualty of the rise of areas studies in the North American academy during the Cold War, and that Cold War legacies continue to shape Caucasus Studies to this day. I conclude by offering three proposals for opening exchanges between the humanities and the social sciences within Caucasus Studies. More broadly, this essay argues for a rapprochement between the social sciences and philological inquiry vis-à-vis the Caucasus.


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