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Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History
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About Korea's Place In The Sun: A Modern History
Product Description An authoritative, narrative chronicle of modern Korea focuses on the country's turbulent twentieth-century history, discussing its 1910 loss of independence, its years under Japanese rule, its division and the Korean War, and its postwar recovery and economic growth. Amazon.com Review Bruce Cumings traces the growth of Korea from a string of competing walled city-states to its present dual nationhood. He examines the ways in which Korean culture has been influenced by Japan and China, and the ways in which it has subtly influenced its more powerful neighbors. Cumings also considers the recent changes in the South, where authoritarianism is giving way to democracy, and in the North, which Cumings depicts as a "socialist corporatist" state more like a neo-Confucian kingdom than a Stalinist regime. Korea's Place in the Sun does much to help Western readers understand the complexities of Korea's past and present. From Publishers Weekly Cumings's riveting history of modern Korea challenges much received wisdom. Rejecting the verdict of Western historians who support Japan's "modernizing role" in Korea, he characterizes the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) as a callous colonization that fostered underdevelopment, crushed dissent and suppressed indigenous culture. Director of Northwestern University's Center for International and Comparative Studies, the author is highly critical of the U.S. military occupational government (1945-1948), which he blames for bolstering the status quo and laying the groundwork for one of Asia's worst police states. Popular resistance in South Korea, he emphasizes, ultimately transformed an authoritarian regime into a relatively democratic society, while the North, which he has visited extensively, remains a cloistered, family-run, xenophobic garrison state. Yet, drawing on recent scholarship, Cumings argues that North Korea was never a mere Soviet puppet but instead resembled more autonomous communist nations, such as Yugoslavia. His incisive concluding portrait of Korean Americans presents a hardworking, upwardly mobile yet insular, ambivalent group, "in the society but not of it." This spirited, vibrant chronicle is indispensable for understanding modern Korea and its dim prospects for reunification. Photos. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This culturally infused history begins with the decline of "Old Korea" and the opening of trade in 1860. The author (Ctr. for International and Comparative Studies, Northwestern Univ.; Origins of the Korean War, 2 vols., Princeton Univ., 1981 and 1990) shows that even as social systems changed, persistent Korean traits forged historic events. Cumings discusses Japanese colonialism and its founding role in modern Korean industry; the tragic, arbitrary division at the 38th Parallel; the Korean War; communism and its peculiarly East Asian characteristics; the United States's 1950 consideration whether to use nuclear weapons in Korea; widespread postwar poverty; political machinations in two Koreas, each emulating different models of ancient ideals; North Korea as a nuclear threat; potential reunification; and remarkable industrial growth. Most collections have sparse selections of books on Asia by true Asian experts, highly recommending this for all libraries.?Margaret W. Norton, Morton West H.S., Berwyn, Ill. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Scientific American Bruce Cumings is America's leading historian and political analyst of contemporary Korea. His new book [conveys] a sophisticated analysis of the Korean Civil War and of South Korea's economic ascent ... He also refocuses attention on Korea as one of the world's distinctive civilizations, not some amalgam of Chinese and Japanese cultures ... This is the single best book anyone today can read on Korea. From Kirkus Reviews An elegantly informative account of Korea's convulsive transformation from a cohesive, if authorit
