Customer Reviews

Han Sorya and North Korean Literature: The Failure of Socialist Realism in the DPRK (Cornell East Asia Series No. 69)

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I was looking for a book which goes beyond the usual cliches about North Korea, so although I wasn't that interested in literature I bought this book. It provides a fascinating look at a North Korea that I hadn't known existed. We all tend to think that the personality cult kicked in right after 1945, but this book shows that it developed over time, with literary figures like Han Sorya playing a large role in developing what Myers calls the "iconography" of the personality cult. The book is also entertaining, since it describes the various factional struggles inside the literary scene. The analysis of Han's novels is very wittily done. After reading this book, I felt that I knew the North Korea of the forties and fifties.

This is really the only study of North Korean culture in English, but it is also indispensable for historians and political scientists. Myers' explanation of the DPRK's glorification of spontaneous impulses/rages etc goes a long way towards explaining that country's long list of idiotically self-defeating terrorist acts - from the ax murders at the DMZ to the Rangoon bombing.