Abstract The Ŭnhasu Orchestra was a major North Korean ensemble in 2009–2013. It was established by Kim Jong Il (Kim Chŏng’il, 김정일) and was composed of young musicians and singers of both genders, several of them having studied in foreign higher educational institutions in countries like Austria, Italy, Russia and China. Its members represented the…
Introduction Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American…
Abstract This article analyses scholarship and memoir writing by German geographer Gustav Fochler-Hauke with respect to Korean settlement in Manchuria, and along the Tumen and Yalu/Amnok rivers in the 1930s and early 40s. The research note demonstrates that while Focher-Hauke’s work has its value—not least due to the access he received thanks to the Japanese…
Abstract Filipinos are avid consumers of exported South Korean media products. Teenagers and young adults know the lyrics and dance moves of their favorite K-Pop performers while older viewers are engrossed in the weekly Korean television dramas (known in the Philippines as ‘Koreanovelas’). There exists, however, a fundamental disconnect between the idealised images disseminated in…
Abstract North Korea has identified its official foreign policy as being focused on ‘self-reliance’ since the mid-1906s. Kim Il Sung (Kim Il-sŏng) had been long preoccupied with external interference in internal affairs, so the escalation of the Sino-Soviet schism created an environment in which to eliminate foreign influence in domestic politics and strengthen his control.…
Abstract To provide a glimpse into this period and ideas prominent at the time, the article explores the ideas of the Korean intellectual An Jae-hong, a scholar-gentleman whose career spans the nation’s colonial period and was entwined with debates over Korean nationalism. Natalia Kim channels and develops the insights from her work on the period…
Introduction The position of law in North Korean politics and society has been a long concern of scholars as well as politicians and activists. Some argue it would be more important to understand the extra-legal rules that run North Korea like the Ten Principles on the leadership cult as they supersede any formal laws or…
Abstract Kim Saryang (real name: Kim Sich’ang, 1914–1950) was among the Korean authors of the 1930s and 1940s who wrote frequently on the issues related to the Korean ethnonational identity, both in Korean and in Japanese. In May 1945, when dispatched on a lecture tour to the Japanese army units stationed in North China, he…
Abstract Owen Lattimore was an early student of frontiers in East Asia, and this paper takes as its point of departure Lattimore’s collection of books and articles relating to Koreans in Manchuria, and the border between Manchuria (then Manchukuo) and Korea. The paper indicates the depth of dependency that Lattimore and others had on Germanlanguage…
Abstract The Korean peninsula, like Taiwan (1895–1945), was one of Japan’s colonies in the first half of the twentieth century (1910–1945). The end of World War II brought an opportunity to be independent, but the different ideologies of the Capitalist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc generated the Cold War. The Korean War (1950–1953) was the…