Communism was destroyed not from without, but from within–by a persistent failure to make its economic theories work in practice. But what exactly did go wrong with its central planning? Until the last moment, top western economists claimed that Communism was superior to western models. Even now, centralised Marxist planning retains its admirers, especially among the young.With the benefit of new archival research, we can finally grasp how falsified and manipulated statistics blind...

What happens when a dictator wins absolute power and isolates a nation from the outside world? In a nightmare of political theory stretched to madness, North Korea's Kim Jong Il made himself into a living god, surrounded by lies and flattery and beyond criticism. As over two million of his subjects starved to death, Kim Jong Il roamed between palaces staffed by the most beautiful girls in the country and stocked with the most expensive delicacies from around the world. Outside, the steel m...

The great city of Beijing, capital of China from the ninth century, and given its form for five hundred years by the Ming Dynasty, was for a millennium one of the most extraordinary places on earth. At a time when London, Paris, or Rome had only several hundred thousand residents, Beijing held over a million. This book tells the history of this great city, and through it provides a highly engaging summary history of China.In the summer of 1997, President Jiang Zemin made a decision...

An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books), with a new afterword that revisits these stories—and North Korea more broadly—in 2022, in the wake of the pandemicNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTIn this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, aw...

The Korean War (1950-53) forms a little-known but exciting part of Canada's military history. The heroism and sacrifice of Canadians who fought in this conflict as part of the United Nations force has often been ignored. In this lively, anecdotal book, John Melady combines archival material and interviews with many Korean veterans. The result is a vivid, intensely human account of the war from its first days, to heroic battles such as Kapyong, to fascinating and more obscure incidents such...

****Named one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist**Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors.**North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every perso...

For every fan of K-Pop music, Korean Wave dramas and Kimchi—or anyone intrigued by Korea and Korean culture—A Geek in Korea is a hip, new guide to the land of the Samsung smartphone and Gangnam Style.Author Dan Tudor first arrived in Korea on the eve of the 2002 World Cup when South Korea played Italy in the finals. What he saw inspired him to return and work in Korea. He served as The Economist magazine's Korea correspondent for three years, and ...

The goal of this brief book is to use North Korea’s unique, occasionally beautiful, often threatening propaganda posters to introduce and highlight the country’s history, ideology, and culture. This is not an art critique or an examination of color and painting - the goal is to provoke thought and conversation about one of the world’s most well-known but least understood countries.  As the book unfolds, we’ll see that Pyongyang’s near total control of its domestic informa...

A heart-wrenching novel of the two love affairs a young Korean writer experiences while living in Germany.

This illuminating volume provides a detailed analysis of the oft-hidden yet major uprisings that have patterned Korea's politics and society. An emphasis is placed upon social movements and grass-roots counter-elite dynamics rather than leaders, noting how the intelligence of ordinary people surpasses that of the leaders holding the reins of power. From the 1894 Tonghak Uprising to the 1980 Gwanju Uprising, Korean experiences act here as a baseboard for a greater exploration of global soci...

In this ambitious and innovative study Gregg Brazinsky examines American nation building in South Korea during the Cold War. Marshaling a vast array of new American and Korean sources, he explains why South Korea was one of the few postcolonial nations that achieved rapid economic development and democratization by the end of the twentieth century. Brazinsky contends that a distinctive combination of American initiatives and Korean agency enabled South Korea’s stunning transformation. On o...

One of the largest political protests in contemporary Korean history, the May 1980 Kwangju Uprising still exerts a profound, often contested, influence in Korean society. Through a deft combination of personal reflections and academic analysis, Contentious Kwangju offers a comprehensive examination of the multiple, shifting meanings of this seminal event and explains how the memory of Kwangju has affected Korean life from politics to culture. The first half of the book offers highly person...