Author: Bong-youn Choy

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Published: 2012-09-04

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1462912486

This detailed, scholarly history of Korea is a comprehensive political and socioeconomic history from 57 B.C. to modern times, including North and South Korea. Specializing in Korean industrial structure, economic planning, and administration, the author presents a concise yet readable historical approach to a greater understanding of Korea's position in East Asia. The author, a political scholar and experienced linguist, bases his text on primary Korean and Japanese sources, thus providing much information previously unavailable to English-speaking people. Ancient Korea is covered in the first chapter, "The Three Kingdoms," and also in the six subsequent chapters dealing with feudalism, land reform, and early Korean social structure. The thirteen succeeding chapters bring the history to modern times. They include a valuable account of Japanese colonial policy and the struggle for independence of the Korean people; the Korean War, its development, offensives, and counteroffensives; factionalism; the politics of Syngman Rhee and his twelve years of one-man rule; the background of the student revolutions; foreign relations; nationalism and neutrality; and the important comparative studies concerning Communism and the governments of North and South Korea. The concluding chapter deals with the future of Korea and its role in rapidly changing East Asia.