Ten years ago, in the summer of 1995, it was fashionable in Washington and Seoul to predict the imminent collapse of North Korea's political and economic systems, and even the state itself. While clearly an errant forecast, it is easy to see why pundits and analysts thought as they did. Kim Il-Sung had died. Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-Il, was failing to lead just as the country suffered a massive agricultural failure. A nuclear-weapons dispute with the United States had forced a costly full-scale mobilization of the country's million-man army. It was likewise clear that North Korea's industry had shut down; night imagery of the peninsula showed, quite literally, that the lights were out in North Korea.

Ten years on, this volume aims to rectify misconceptions and increase collective understanding about North Korea. It is intended to present a snapshot of what is happening in North Korea now -- economically, politically, and socially. To be sure, much of the country remains in shadow, and there is much we still do not know. Moreover, issues of North Korean nonproliferation are so often binary that compromise becomes difficult, if not impossible.

The distinguished contributors -- specialists in politics, economics, human rights, and security -- advocate a subtler, more multidimensional approach to the North Korea problem. Offering cautionary perspective on this poorly understood place, they highlight recent positive developments and suggest solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Most attest that economics, commerce, and integration -- all arenas in which slow progress is being made -- may be the most powerful forces for change on the Korean peninsula. This timely book encourages thoughtful, pragmatic discussion about North Korea and seeks to light the road ahead, for the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

(This book is now out of print. You may download the full text here.)

One of the few ways to get a taste of North Korea, short of leaping through numerous hoops to get a visa to visit the country, is to eat cold noodles (naengmyen). Most South Korean cities and even a few American ones offer several types of North Korean-style noodle restaurants. The version often prepared in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is mul naengmyen, or cold noodles in broth. It is served in a large metal bowl and looks like a flowering mountain rising up from the sea. Artfully balanced atop the mound of noodles made from buckwheat flour are julienned cucumbers, several slices of beef, half a hardboiled egg, and a few pieces of crisp Korean pear. When prepared Hamhung-style -- named after the industrial city on North Korea's east coast -- noodles are made from sweet potato flour and often topped with raw skate, which has a slightly ammoniac flavor.

The signs in the South advertising Northern-style cold noodles are a reminder of the Korean War and the division of the peninsula. After the Korean War, refugees from the conflict set up stalls in the markets of Seoul to sell the "taste of the north" to those who could no longer travel there. The recipes they brought with them to the south were sometimes the only valuables they carried. In the 1990s, a new wave of North Koreans came to the South and established naengmyen restaurants. Hailing from the North lends a certain authenticity to the preparation of the dish. Whether prepared by the refugees of the 1950s and their descendents, the defectors of the 1990s, or North Koreans themselves in Pyongyang or Hamhung, cold noodles are something that North Koreans are widely credited with doing better than South Koreans.

But the way naengmyen is "consumed" in the South reveals the great disparity between the two countries. There are many jokes in South Korea about the number of North Korean defectors who have only this one marketable skill. Since cooking in Korea is largely a woman's job, the close association of North Koreans with the production and sale of cold noodles subtly feminizes and, according to patriarchal Korean values, devalues them. North Koreans are thus second-class citizens, both those who are unemployed (the majority) and those who are employed only to provide service to the real "breadwinners" of the country. Anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker relates how South Korean textbooks and popular culture often depict North Korea as the younger brother of the more advanced South Korean older brother. Given the cultural associations of naengmyen, wife to husband might be the more appropriate analogy. A recent Joongang Ilbo Photoshop cartoon reinforces this sexist gloss on inter-Korean relations by depicting South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun dressed as a Choson-era husband with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as his bride.

In a divided country, cold noodles serve as an important reminder of a common culture. They also represent a unique contribution that the economically weaker North Korea can bring to the reunification process. But however tasty Pyongyang-style mul naengmyen may be, cold noodles ensure neither a sustainable livelihood for every North Korean defector nor an equal place at the reunification table for North Korea.

This paper concerns the paradox of democratization in South Korea, whose progression has been entwined with neoliberal capitalism beginning in the 1990s. A particular form of democratization addressed in this paper is the broad-reaching initiatives to transform the relationship between the state and society. Specifically, the initiative to rewrite colonial and cold-war history was examined. This particular initiative is part of an effort to correct a longstanding tendency of previous military regimes that suppressed the resolution of colonial legacies and framed Korean national history within an ideological confrontation of capitalist South Korea and communist North Korea.

Between 1979 and 1992, the JKS became a leading academic forum for the publication of innovative in-depth research on Korea. Now under the editorial guidance of Gi-Wook Shin and John Duncan, this journal continues to be dedicated to quality articles, in all disciplines, on a broad range of topics concerning Korea, both historical and contemporary.

This edition's contents:

Articles

1. Contention in the Construction of a Global Korean Community: The Case of the Overseas Korean Act. Jung-Sun Park, Paul Y. Chang
2. Development as Devolution: Nam Chong-hyon and the "Land of Excrement" Incident. Theodore Hughes
3. Systematization of Film Censorship in Colonial Korea: Profiteering From Hollywood's First Golden Age, 1926-1936. Brian Yecies
4. Negotiating Cultural Identities in Conflict: A Reading of the Writings of Paek Kyonghae (1765-1842). Sun Joo Kim

Perspective

1. Two Key Historical Moments of the Early 1960s: A Preliminary Reconsideration of 4/19 and 5/16. Woo Jin Yang

Book Reviews

Introductory-level Korean Language Textbooks for the Anglophone Adult Learner: A Survey of Three Recent Publications

1. College Korean by Michael C. Rogers, Clare You, and Kyungnyun K. Richards
2. Integrated Korean: Beginning 1 and Integrated Korean: Beginning 2 by Young-Mee Cho, Hyo Sang Lee, Carol Schulz, Ho-Min Sohn, and Sung-ock Sohn
3. You speak Korean! by Soohee Kim, Emily Curtis, and Haewon Cho. Reviewed by Ross King
4. A History of Korean Literature, edited by Peter H. Lee. Reviewed by Scott Swaner
5. Three Generations by Yom Sang-seop. Reviewed by Theodore Hughes
6. Japan's Korean Encouragement Policies in Colonial Korea: Japanese Who Learned the Korean Language, by Yamada Kanto. Reviewed by Mark Caprio and Aoki Atsuko