North Korea: Another Country

by Bruce Cumings

Book Overview

Depicted as an insular and forbidding police state with an "insane" dictator at its helm, North Korea--charter member of Bush's "Axis of Evil"--is a country the U.S. loves to hate. Now the CIA says it possesses nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as long-range missiles capable of delivering them to America's West Coast.

But, as Bruce Cumings demonstrates in this provocative, lively read, the story of the U.S.-Korea conflict...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156584873X
• ISBN13: 9781565848733
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Korea, Cumings & the InfoWar

A masterpiece on a highly contested subject such as Professor Bruce Cumings' (hereafter "BC") most illuminating introduction to North Korea is bound to get panned by parties who are heavily invested in the Pentagon-CIA-Mossad angle on the American world empire. When approaching a work deemed "controversial" because it challenges the biases of the baby-killers --quite literally and by the millions-- of the Sulzberger-Hollywood Axis, the savvy reader will realize that the greater the objective merit of the product under review, the fewer stars it will receive from the usual hostile sources. The blame-label of "anti-American" = a dead giveaway that the book in question reveals some important home truths about skullduggery by high USG officials. NORTH KOREA: AN OTHER COUNTRY only a delicious appetizer, so to speak. In order to appreciate its full value the student must digest the whole banquet of materials available on the immense topic of global tyranny of war capitalism and the dirty tricks which have so far sustained it. BC authoritatively reminds us that the masters of the Truman Administration deliberately provoked Kim Il Sung into trying to unify his ancient country under the governance of authentic Korean patriots as most sharply opposed to shameless lackeys of the Japanese and the American invaders. Both then and now the warfare state was the only alternative to recurrent depression known to the US rulers. Intervention in Korea provided them with the pretext necesary to erect the permanent Military-Industrial Complex in the form which has dominated our society ever since. But this general conclusion part of the wider context rather than BC's own highly informed & focussed narative on the Korean peninsula. The US-MIC BTW regarded the slaughter of 3,000,000 [three million] Koreans as a desirable exercise in the development of its imperial plans. This absolutely the same POV revealed in the mass murder of a similar number of Iraqis since 1990. Just as President-For-Life Franklin Roosevelt deliberately* set up the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in order to launch the USA, against the wishes of the American people, into the Second World War in 1941, so also did his Democratic Party successor Harry Hiroshima Truman repeat these treacherous tactics only nine years later with a similar motive in mind. Like a flare over the battlefield, BC's NKAC lights up the dark night of mindless Merkin TV propaganda in order to show us the real shapes moving in the continuing US aggression against Korea. One good turn deserves another, Dept. of: Jump from 1950 with BC's NKAC to 1963 with Michael Collins Piper's FINAL JUDGMENT** and see Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion mastermind the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in order to promote the development of Israeli nuclear weapons. The exposures offered by BC and by MCP greatly simplify the solution of the mystery of 2001. Aerial Shaboom's Kissing 'er now; 'tis a black op. To return to

Rarest achievement

As a journalist and instructor writing and teaching on Korean society and culture, I strongly recommend this wonderful book. It is extremely hard to get well-balanced information about North Korea in the U.S., and quite a few readers may find this book shocking. It is no wonder some negative and even hostile reviews have been written about this book. North Korea: Another Country does not make a conventional approach to North Korea, i.e., it does not chiefly criticize the country. Cumings emphasizes in this book the importance of understanding cultural and historical differences between the two countries. If you would like to truly understand North Korea as "another country" and why they are doing all the 'crazy things,' Cumings's North Korea: Another Country is definitely a must-read.

Good insights on NK

I think Professor Cumings is largely misunderstood. I strongly disagree with people's assertion that he is an apologist. Many have had problems with his findings because his audacity to criticize the American government. People believe that he is anti-America for doing so but he is being truly embracing the Americanness by criticizing our government. In fact, that is our duty as the citizens of this country, is it not? This book introduces us to a country that is vaguely known to the rest of the world. We see the exterior of this country and we make judgements. Yes, North Korean government is horrendous but his point is that calling it an evil empire isn't really helping the situation in Korean Peninsula. In many respects it is unproductive to talk about it in those terms, as President Bush has done. In sum, we can't simplify the situation. Whether we like it or not, we have to deal with NK and in order to have any success in achieving peace in the region, we need to look past the apprent "evilness" of the government for the sake of people of Korea. Bruce Cumings really has been a controversial figure but I think his insights on North Korea, whether it's left or not, has helped us look at the country in a different light. On another note, people have mistaken his claims that about Korean War. Bruce Cumings isn't saying NK didn't start the war. Yes they did. But if you look at the history of that country closer, it is clear that both sides were itching to go to war, to obtain control over the entire peninsula. Cumings doesn't really think that who first attacked is all that relevant because if Kim Il Sung and his cronies didn't, Syung Man Rhee would have. As Kim Il Sung was begging the Soviets for the "go-ahead", Rhee was begging the Americans for the same thing. Now the important thing is to look at how could we have avoided the war. That's what history is about isn't it? I don't agree with Bruce Cumings on many things but I respect him as a scholar and his views challenges mind and that pushes me to become a better scholar. This books challenges our perceptions of the country and about our own judgements; that in itself makes this worth a read.

Modest realism based on huge historical studies

Prof. Cumings, who has been very famous for so-called revisionist historical studies on the Korean War, esp. 'The Origins of the Korean War I & II, has been one of the most reliable Korean watchers in the world. The reality of the North Korea has been hidden in a veil of secrecy, so that discours on the country would be very dubious or biased, partly because information on the country has been extremely limited and partly because there have been a lot of political intrigues such as explosions of airplanes and kidnappings by he state agency. It cannot be denied that the Kim Jong Il Regime is responsible for those criminals. Prof. Cumings, however, claimes that unless we overcome too much simple dichotomy between Good and Evil, we would remain far away from resolving the historically profound problem. Prof. Cumings insists that we must be sachlich (Weber). Such cool-headed insight must be drived from his excellent historical studies. A brilliant and insightful work.

Next Year's War

No matter how open-minded and cosmopolitan you are, it is hard to think that North Korea is anything other than a deeply weird country. On the one hand it is a communist dictatorship, but on the other it is apparently a theocratic monarchy. With the possible exception of Albania and Pol Pot Cambodia, no Communist country produces a propaganda that is more offensive to Western principles, one of relentless flattery to the Kim dynasty. It is a deeply chauvinistic culture, only that endlessly harps about the virtue of self-reliance and seems to think that all human accomplishment revolves around North Korea. Yet one can see that many of the electronic devices are actually imports while one sees Korean operas that sound suspiciously like "Swan Lake." Everywhere there is the most garish kitsch about the Kim's, far surpassing Marx or Stalin or Mao, and everywhere one can see the Great Leader's quotations. (Such as "It is important to play the piano well.") All the foreigners are constantly watched and monitored. Thanks to lengthy military service Korean men appear to remain virgins well into their late twenties and early thirties. When Kim Jong Il realized that smoking was bad for his health, he not only stopped, but forbid his General Staff as well.But this is only part of the story, as Bruce Cumings points out in his brief but important book on the subject. As a book, it has the major weakness that much of what he has said he has written before in his books on the origins of the Korean war and his general history of Korea. But considering that the United States might end up in a conflict that could kill millions of people, it is vital that everybody read this book. The current regime is a very unpleasant one (Cumings calls it "abhorrent"). It has at least 100,000 political prisoners and perhaps 150,000 in its local gulags. Although its economy and living standards may have been as good as South Korea's as late as 1978, its dogmatic economic policy and secretive nature helped worsen major flood and draughts to cause a famine that killed at least 500,000 people. Its leadership is cruel and it is suspicious, but Cumings reminds us that it is not paranoid. If it has 700,000 troops on the border merely 100 kilometres from Seoul, Cumings reminds us that South Korea has 540,000 troops, presumably healthier and better armed, on its border merely 100 kilometers from Pyongyang. Cumings reminds us that behind the monarchical façade the party is dominated by the generation of anti-Japanese guerrillas. Of the forty top leaders of North Korea in 1997 only one, Kim Jong Il himself, is under the age of 60. The average age of the Politburo, excepting Kim, was 72. This is important for a number of reasons. The Japanese were brutal occupiers, extorting hundreds of thousands of Koreans for forced labor and forced prostitution. Many of its quislings and pimps became the backbone of the South Korean state, including its greatest leader, President Pa