The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 by Charles K. Armstrong
Studies of the East Asian Institute
How much do you really know about North Korea? With the global situation as it is, Americans and others need to understand more about the problems we are facing. The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 by Charles K. Armstrong may be a source of good information for you.
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.
index
And the Wind Blew Cold by Richard M. Bassett, Lewis H. Carlson |
The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan, Pierre Rigoulot, Yair Reiner |
Avoiding the Apocalypse by Marcus Noland, C. Fred Bergsten |
Disarming Strangers by Leon V. Sigal |
East of Chosin by Roy Edgar Appleman |
Facts Tell by Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea |
From Stalin to Kim Il Sung by Andrei Lankov, A. N. LAN'Kov |
The Great North Korean Famine by Andrew S. Natsios |
In Enemy Hands by Larry Zellers |
Korean Atrocity! by Philip D. Chinnery |
Korean Endgame by Selig S. Harrison |
Korea's Future and the Great Powers by Nicholas Eberstadt, Richard J. Ellings |
Korea's Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings |
Negotiating on the Edge by Scott Snyder |
The North and South Korean Political Systems by Song Chol Yang, Sung Chul Yang, Song-Ch'ol Yang |
The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 by Charles K. Armstrong |
North Korea and the Bomb by Michael J. Mazarr |
North Korea by Han S. Park - The Politics of Unconventional Wisdom |
North Korea through the Looking Glass by Kong Dan Oh, Ralph C. Hassig, Kongdan Oh |
North Korea Under Communism by Erik Cornell |
North and South Korea by William Dudley |
One Anthropologist, Two Worlds by Choong Soon Kim |
Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War by Lewis H. Carlson |
The Two Koreas by Don Oberdorfer |
White Tigers by Ben S. Malcom, Ron Martz