The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950

by Armstrong, Charles K.

• ISBN13: 9780801440144
• ISBN10: 0801440149
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-11-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

North Korea, despite a shattered economy and a populace suffering from widespread hunger, has outlived repeated forecasts of its imminent demise. Charles K. Armstrong contends that a major source of North Korea's strength and resiliency, as well as of its flaws and shortcomings, lies in the poorly understood origins of its system of government. He examines the genesis of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) both as an important yet rarely studied example of a communist state and as part of modern Korean history. North Korea is one of the last redoubts of "unreformed" Marxism-Leninism in the world. Yet it is not a Soviet satellite in the East European manner, nor is its government the result of a local revolution, as in Cuba and Vietnam. Instead, the DPRK represents a unique "indigenization" of Soviet Stalinism, Armstrong finds. The system that formed under the umbrella of the Soviet occupation quickly developed into a nationalist regime as programs initiated from above merged with distinctive local conditions. Armstrong's account is based on long-classified documents captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War. This enormous archive of over 1.6 million pages provides unprecedented insight into the making of the Pyongyang regime and fuels the author's argument that the North Korean state is likely to remain viable for some years to come. Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Author Biography

Charles K. Armstrong is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
List of Abbreviations	xv
Introduction	1	(12)
Revolution on the Margins	13	(25)
Liberation, Occupation, and the Emerging New Order	38	(33)
Remaking the People	71	(36)
Coalition Politics and the United Front	107	(29)
Planning the Economy	136	(30)
Constructing Culture	166	(25)
A Regime of Surveillance	191	(24)
The People's State	215	(25)
Conclusion	240	(7)
Appendix A: A Note on Sources	247	(4)
Appendix B: Statements of General Chistiakov on the Soviet Occupation of North Korea, Fall 1945	251	(4)
Selected Bibliography	255	(8)
Index	263