A reader in Glasgow, Scotland sends in the following questions:
What do you think the feeling is of the younger generation within South Korea to North Korea?
What do you think the general feeling amongst younger South Koreans towards reunification?
The short answer is that young South Koreans appear to regard the North Korean regime as […]
What would have been Kim Il-sung’s (김일성) 96th birthday, had he not died on 8 July 1994, is today (in Korea), 15 April. The “Great Leader” was born in Mangyondae in what is now North Korea, on the day the Titanic sank.
Jack of DPRK Forum points to some footage of Kim Il-sung, including some vintage stuff from 1956. Note that what would be Kim Il-sung’s 96th birthday is coming up on 15 April (same day the Titanic sank).
Though the mechanics are obviously different than the Sino-Soviet Dispute, the outcome is similar enough to be compared; North Korea is in the middle of the re-emerging Chinese great power and the world’s only superpower (for a detailed explanation this, see Suh Dae-sook’s book). Bush’s change from a hard-line to La-La Land policy […]
Namdaemun (the Southern Great Gate), which was perhaps the most renowned historical landmark in Seoul, suffered arson.
A little bit about the perpetrator:
Chae Jong-gi, a former fortuneteller who was angry about the amount of compensation the government had paid him for the loss of his house to a development project, showed up at Namdaemun.
He wore […]
From the Navy Historical Center:
On 23 January 1968, while off Wonsan, North Korea, Pueblo was attacked by local forces and seized. One crewmember was killed in the assault and the other eighty-two men on board were taken prisoner. The North Koreans contended that the ship had violated their territorial waters, a claim vigorously denied […]
I was unaware of the North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP) until James Person, NKIDP Program Associate, brought it to my attention:
The North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP) serves as an informational clearinghouse on North Korea for both the scholarly and policymaking communities by widely disseminating newly declassified documents on the DPRK from its […]
The book by Charles Jenkins detailing his time as a U.S. defector in North Korea, “Kokuhaku” (To Tell the Truth, in Japanese), will be released in English, 3 March 2008 under the title, “The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea.” (h/t Sam) The 238 page book is going for […]
The latest edition of the Military Review, a publication of the US Army’s Combined Arms Center located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has an excellent paper on, “Finding America’s Role in a Collapsed North Korean State.” (PDF) An excerpt:
American military and political thinkers today are focused on creating policies to govern stability operations, but this […]
About two years ago, I wrote about South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-Bak’s “student radical” days and how he came to get his chaebol job despite his prison record, on the now defunct blog The Korea Liberator (archived here).
This episode is fairly well-known in South Korea, but I reproduce much of the original post below […]
Via the Times: "The exhibition features 400 hand-painted posters dating from the peak of the Dear Leader Kim Sung Il's power in the 1950s to the present regime led by his son, Kim Jong Il." The article has only one image, but has several interesting propaganda quotes.
- #Young Korean Herrenvolk engaging in their version of Agoge, at least according to the New York Times. The two Korean schools mentioned in the article are similar to Exeter or Andover in the United States in someways (they are private academies that serve children of affluent parents). But my guess is that the studious atmosphere and intense regimen compare more to the likes of Stuyvesant (my alma mater) in NYC or T.J. in Virginia (both highly selective, but publicly-funded high schools).
- #North Korea claims that on 25 April 1932 the Korean People’s Army (KPA, 조선인민군/ Chosŏn inmin'gun) was formed. However, the more likely accurate date is 08 February 1948. It is celebrated as “Military Foundation Day” in Kimland.
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