The North Korean Conundrum
The North Korean Conundrum

Author: Robert R. King

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-04-01

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1931368686

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North Korea is consistently identified as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. However, the issue of human rights in North Korea is a complex one, intertwined with issues like life in the North Korean police state, inter-Korean relations, denuclearization, access to information in the North, and international cooperation, to name a few. There are likewise multiple actors involved, including the two Korean governments, the United States, the United Nations, South Korea NGOs, and global human rights organizations. While North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the security threat it poses have occupied the center stage and eclipsed other issues in recent years, human rights remain important to U.S. policy. The contributors to The North Korean Conundrum explore how dealing with the issue of human rights is shaped and affected by the political issues with which it is so entwined. Sections discuss the role of the United Nations; how North Koreans’ limited access to information is part of the problem, and how this is changing; the relationship between human rights and denuclearization; and North Korean human rights in comparative perspective.

The Korean Conundrum
The Korean Conundrum

Author: Ted Galen Carpenter

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2015-03-31

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1466893028

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The US seems to be heading directly toward a confrontation with North Korea as Koreans in the south, and nations around the world, anxiously witness mounting tension. Carpenter and Bandow take a look at the twin crises now afflicting US policy in East Asia: the reemergence of North Korea's nuclear weapons program and the growing anti-American sentiment in South Korea. They question whether Washington's East Asia security strategy makes sense with the looming prospect of US troops stationed in South Korea becoming nuclear hostages. Carpenter and Bandow put forth the most provocative solution yet to this gnarled and dangerous situation.

Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader
Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader

Author: Benjamin R. Young

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1503627640

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Far from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in the Third World shaped the worldview of many North Koreans and helped them imagine a unified anti-imperialist front that stretched from the boulevards of Pyongyang to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the beaches of Cuba. This book tells the story of North Korea's transformation in the Third World from model developmental state to reckless terrorist nation, and how Pyongyang's actions, both in the Third World and on the Korean peninsula, ultimately backfired against the Kim family regime's foreign policy goals. Based on multinational and multi-archival research, this book examines the intersection of North Korea's domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea's developmental model appealed to the decolonizing world.

The Last Days of Kim Jong-il
The Last Days of Kim Jong-il

Author: Bruce E. Bechtol

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 161234612X

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North Korea has remained a thorn in the side of the United States ever since its creation in the aftermath of the Korean conflict of 1950 - 1953. Crafting a foreign policy that effectively deals with North Korea, while still ensuring stability and security on the Korean Peninsula - and in Northeast Asia as a whole - has proved very challenging for successive American administrations. In the wake of ruler Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, analysts and policymakers continue to speculate about the effect his last years as leader will have on the future of North Korea. Bruce Bechtol, Jr. conte.

Major Powers and the Korean Peninsula
Major Powers and the Korean Peninsula

Author: Titli Basu

Publisher: K W Publishers Pvt Limited

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 3741

ISBN-13: 9789389137156

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The Korean Peninsula, which constitutes one of the strategic pivots of Northeast Asian security, has remained a contested theatre for major powers. Denuclearisation of the Peninsula is unfolding as one of the most defining challenges in shaping regional security. The end state in the Peninsula and how it is to be realised is debated amongst the stakeholders. This book aims to situate some of the critical issues in the Korean theatre within the competing geopolitical interests, strategic choices and policy debates among the major powers. This volume is an endeavour to bring together leading Indian experts including former Indian ambassadors to the Republic of Korea, senior members from the defence and strategic community to analyse the developing situation in the Korean Peninsula. The Korean Peninsula has remained a contested theatre for the major powers. Brutal wars have been fought involving imperial Japan, Czarist Russia, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Qing China, the People's Republic of China, and the United States (US) which left the Peninsula conquered, colonised, and divided, starting with Chosun (Yi) Korea from 1392-1910 to colonial Korea from 1910-45 to divided Korea since 1945.1 Subsequently, the Korean War from 1950-53 defined the character of the Cold War in Northeast Asia. The strategic choices in the Korean theatre have been influenced by the competing geopolitical interests of regional stakeholders. In the post-Cold War era, the Peninsula remained a key variable in shaping the Northeast Asian security architecture since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea continued to employ the strategic use of nuclear brinksmanship.

My Holiday in North Korea
My Holiday in North Korea

Author: Wendy E. Simmons

Publisher: Rosetta Books

Published: 2016-05-03

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0795347227

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“You remember Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun? Yeah, this really isn’t like those. It’s better” (San Francisco Chronicle). Most people want out of North Korea. Wendy Simmons wanted in. In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it’s never been seen before. Even though it’s the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border. But Wendy’s initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia. Before long, she learned the essential conundrum of “tourism” in North Korea: Travel is truly a love affair. But, just like love, it’s a two-way street. And North Korea deprives you of all this. They want you to fall in love with the singular vision of the country they’re willing to show you and nothing more. Through poignant, laugh-out-loud essays and ninety-two never-before-published color photographs of North Korea, Wendy chronicles one of the strangest vacations ever. Along the way, she bares all while undergoing an inner journey as convoluted as the country itself. “Much of the humor and poignancy comes from the absurdity of a fun-loving free spirit taking a vacation that’s more rigidly scripted and controlled than a presidential motorcade . . . Simmons’ photos—including an eerie image of a classroom full of schoolgirls playing accordions—further illustrate the bizarre nature of a country that, whether for good or bad, has been carefully controlled for generations.” —San Francisco Chronicle “An irresistible read . . . A rare and fascinating look at the tourist’s North Korea in a work that is humorous, appalling, and very sad. A highly recommended and revealing glimpse into a secretive land.” —Library Journal

Cracking the China Conundrum
Cracking the China Conundrum

Author: Yukon Huang

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-06-22

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190630043

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China's rise is altering global power relations, reshaping economic debates, and commanding tremendous public attention. Despite extensive media and academic scrutiny, the conventional wisdom about China's economy is often wrong. Cracking the China Conundrum provides a holistic and contrarian view of China's major economic, political, and foreign policy issues. Yukon Huang trenchantly addresses widely accepted yet misguided views in the analysis of China's economy. He examines arguments about the causes and effects of China's possible debt and property market bubbles, trade and investment relations with the Western world, the links between corruption and political liberalization in a growing economy and Beijing's more assertive foreign policies. Huang explains that such misconceptions arise in part because China's economic system is unprecedented in many ways-namely because it's driven by both the market and state- which complicates the task of designing accurate and adaptable analysis and research. Further, China's size, regional diversity, and uniquely decentralized administrative system poses difficulties for making generalizations and comparisons from micro to macro levels when trying to interpret China's economic state accurately. This book not only interprets the ideologies that experts continue building misguided theories upon, but also examines the contributing factors to this puzzle. Cracking the China Conundrum provides an enlightening and corrective viewpoint on several major economic and political foreign policy concerns currently shaping China's economic environment.

The Korean War
The Korean War

Author: Bruce Cumings

Publisher: Modern Library

Published: 2011-07-12

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 081297896X

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A BRACING ACCOUNT OF A WAR THAT IS EITHER MISUNDERSTOOD, FORGOTTEN, OR WILLFULLY IGNORED For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953. But for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long struggle that still haunts contemporary events. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Bruce Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its origin as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America’s post–World War II occupation of Korea, reveals untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, exposing as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides. Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential.

Wealth Conundrum
Wealth Conundrum

Author: Ralph Doudera

Publisher: Signature Ed

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780977689200

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A money manager who handles millions of his own and others wealth describes his struggles with loving money vs. giving it away to the needy.

The Park Chung Hee Era
The Park Chung Hee Era

Author: Byung-Kook Kim

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-04-01

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 0674061063

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In 1961 South Korea was mired in poverty. By 1979 it had a powerful industrial economy and a vibrant civil society in the making, which would lead to a democratic breakthrough eight years later. The transformation took place during the years of Park Chung Hee's presidency. Park seized power in a coup in 1961 and ruled as a virtual dictator until his assassination in October 1979. He is credited with modernizing South Korea, but at a huge political and social cost. South Korea's political landscape under Park defies easy categorization. The state was predatory yet technocratic, reform-minded yet quick to crack down on dissidents in the name of political order. The nation was balanced uneasily between opposition forces calling for democratic reforms and the Park government's obsession with economic growth. The chaebol (a powerful conglomerate of multinationals based in South Korea) received massive government support to pioneer new growth industries, even as a nationwide campaign of economic shock therapy-interest hikes, devaluation, and wage cuts-met strong public resistance and caused considerable hardship. This landmark volume examines South Korea's era of development as a study in the complex politics of modernization. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources in both English and Korean, these essays recover and contextualize many of the ambiguities in South Korea's trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth.