North Korea through the Looking Glass [Paperback]

Kong Dan Oh (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0815764359 | ISBN-13: 978-0815764359 | Publication Date: September 1, 2000

Fifty-five years after its founding at the dawn of the cold war, North Korea remains a land of illusions. Isolated and anachronistic, the country and its culture seem to be dominated exclusively by the official ideology of Juche, which emphasizes national self-reliance, independence, and worship of the supreme leader, General Kim Jong Il. Yet this socialist utopian ideal is pursued with the calculations of international power politics. Kim has transformed North Korea into a militarized state, whose nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and continued threat to South Korea have raised alarm worldwide. This paradoxical combination of cultural isolation and military-first policy has left the North Korean people woefully deprived of the opportunity to advance socially and politically. The socialist economy, guided by political principles and bereft of international support, has collapsed. Thousands, perhaps millions, have died of starvation. Foreign trade has declined and the country's gross domestic product has recorded negative growth every year for a decade. Yet rather than initiate the sort of market reforms that were implemented by other communist governments, North Korean leaders have reverted to the economic policies of the 1950s: mass mobilization, concentration on heavy industry, and increased ideological indoctrination. Although members of the political elite in Pyongyang are acutely aware of their nations domestic and foreign problems, they are plagued by fear and policy paralysis. North Korea Through the Looking Glass sheds new light on this remote and peculiar country. Drawing on more than ten years of researchincluding interviews with two dozen North Koreans who made the painfuldecision to defect from their homelandKongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig explore what the leadership and the masses believe about their current predicament. Through dual themes of persistence and illusion, they explore North Korea's stubborn adherence to policies that have failed to serve the welfare of the people and, consequently, threaten the future of the regime. Featuring twenty-nine rare and candid photos taken from within the closely guarded country, North Korea Through the Looking Glass illuminates the human society of a country too often mischaracterized for its drab uniformitynot a " state, " but a community of twenty million individuals who have, through no fault of their own, fallen on exceedingly hard times.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kongdan Oh, a Korean American, is a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and editor of the Asia Society's Korea Briefing, 1997-1999 (M. E. Sharpe and the Asia Society, 2000).

Ralph C. Hassig, a social psychologist, is a Washington-based consultant on Korean affairs and an adjunct associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland University College.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815764359
• ISBN-13: 978-0815764359
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #231,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > History > Asia > Korea

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Authors not up to the task, November 17, 2002

By 

Brian E. Moore (Lincoln, RI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: North Korea through the Looking Glass (Paperback)

Interest in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has increased since President Bush included the nation with Iran and Iraq as an "Axis of Evil" state. Further interest was generated in October of 2002, when the North Korean government confirmed that it possesses a nuclear weapons program. I, along with many Americans, are now seeking information about this mysterious hermit nation. I chose Kongdan Oh's "North Korea: Through the Looking Glass" because it seemed to be a non-technical overview of North Korean society, economics, and politics. The blurbs on the back cover described the book as providing "genuine insight" gleaned from "painstaking research." Unfortunately, the book did not live up to its promise.

One finds oneself wishing that the authors would share with the reader all of the interesting data that they discovered in researching the book. Instead, all we get are general statements about the corruption and ineptitude of the North Korean government. This could have been a much better book if the authors had elected to paint a more vivid picture by including more detail. Here's an example: on page 66 the authors make the following statement: "North Korean government and party officials also engage in many illicit activities such as counterfeiting, production of illicit drugs, and smuggling (especially conducted by the DPRK's foreign diplomatic corps). " There is no elaboration on this provocative declaration. The citation for this statement is an article by David Kaplan et al. in US News & World Report, dated February 15, 1999. I looked up the article and found it to be fascinating. The US News piece states that North Korean counterfeit "$100 bills ... are cranked out on a $10 million intaglio press similar to those employed by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, officials say. North Korean defectors claim the notes come from a high-security plant in Pyongyang. Kim Jeong Min, a former top North Korean intelligence official, told US News that he had been ordered to find paper used to print US currency but couldn't. 'Instead. I obtained many $1 notes and bleached the ink out of them,' he says." You can see how the authors water down the source material to a bland presentation of generalities. It as if the authors went to the same writer's school as the North Korean propagandists, from whom they endlessly and boringly quote.

I was also annoyed by the repeated jabs at the North Korean government. Readers should be allowed to come to their own conclusions about the foolishness of the North Korean dictator, rather than be pelted with parenthetical inserts about the ineptitude of the leadership. An example: "The most pressing economic problem is the food shortage. The apparent (but wrong) solution to the problem is to try to achieve economic self-sufficiency... " This style gets irritating very quickly. Sometimes, the writing becomes downright stupid. An example from chapter 8: "North Korea is half a world away in the part of the globe less familiar to Americans -- Asia rather than Europe."

I was interested in examining the 29 photographs that occupy the center of the book. Unfortunately, they all appear to be government-approved. For instance, there are several sterile photos of peoples' backs as they stand still looking at statues exalting communism. Of course, the lifelessness of theses photos probably does reflect the Zeitgeist of this unfortunate country. But I wish the photographs could have provided more insight into the difficulty of daily life in North Korea.

Despite the flaws in the book, the subject is of such intrinsic interest that I kept reading. My persistence was rewarded at the end of the book, where the authors discuss policy options in dealing with North Korea. This section was well-reasoned and shows that the authors do indeed know their topic. Too bad the preceding 200 pages were not equally as good.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Conundrum of Korea: An Insiders Look, January 8, 2002

By 

Charles F. Hawkins - See all my reviews

This review is from: North Korea through the Looking Glass (Paperback)

(...) In "North Korea: Through the Looking Glass," they have combined their considerable intellectual talent and first-hand experience to craft a masterpiece of description, understanding and policy guidance.

This work is based on painstaking research and insightful analysis. There are charts and tables to support the author's findings, and there is an interesting picture section. Although it may seem a dauntingly dry read at first blush, it is in fact crisp and easily understood. Excerpts from two sections serve to illustrate.

In the preface, Oh and Hassig write: "Three years ago, when we first proposed to write this book, one of our colleagues sought to dissuade us on the grounds that North Korea would collapse before the book reached the printer. This was not an uncommon expectation in the years immediately following the 1994 death of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung. We had earlier predicted that his son and successor, the reclusive Kim Jong Il, would be unable to hold on to power for long. In any event, North Korea still survives, muddling along in a considerable weakened state. But even should North Korea collapse in the near future, we believe that a better understanding of the country and its people will help the world deal with a Korea struggling to reunify."

On page 201, under the sub-heading "Policy Considerations," we find: "The first goal of any responsible policy must be to avoid provoking conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Most of the people killed in a second Korean conflict would be Koreans in the North and South, and for a third party to trigger such a conflict would be unconscionable."

And: "The second policy goal should be to provide the North Korean people with the opportunity to move toward democracy (a specific example of the avowed U.S. policy of promoting democracy abroad) by penetrating the illusions under which the North Korean elites and masses live. This simply means telling the truth to the North Korean people as much as possible. Since the Kim regime is built on lies and oppression, truth telling will go a long way toward defeating it."

The chapter headings define the book's comprehensive focus:

1. Looking Backward (A historical and demographic appreciation.)
2. The Power and Poverty of Ideology (Juche revealed.)
3. The Turning Point Economy (Five decades of "plans," and the economy continues to decline as debt rises.)
4. The Leader, His Party, and His People ("Great Leader," and "Dear Leader," their personalities and grasp of reality, but "Nothing New under the Son.")
5. The Military: Pillar of Society (Core truths, capabilities, strategy and social role.)
6. Social Control (To "smash maneuvers by all class enemies," and establish a "revolutionary law-abiding spirit.")
7. The Foreign Relations of a Hermit Kingdom (Keeping its distance.)
8. Dealing with the DPRK (The difficulties in closing the gap.)

Although it is doubtful that American leaders at the highest levels have read "North Korea," it is a sure bet that some political and defense policy makers and senior advisers have done so. And it is these individuals, as well as the rest of us who wish to remain informed, for whom Oh and Hassig have prepared this well-crafted work.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book that provides great insight, January 30, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: North Korea through the Looking Glass (Paperback)

This book is really loaded and provides the reader with much insight behind this closed borders of this isolated country. North Korea is one of the last countries in the world that doesn't have diplomatic relations with the U.S. The book also provides historical data that is helpful as there isn't much known about this country who happens to be the largest weapons exporter in the region. Another book that I highly recommend as it discusses North Koreas secret, but aggressive nuclear weapons program supported by China is the thriller THE CONSULTANT by Alec Donzi.