Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History

Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History by Bruce Cumings Ph.D.

This is a long history of Korea that was written a couple decades ago. At time of the writing, the author didn't know of any Korean movie that was released in the US. Since then a Korean movie has won the best picture Oscar. Korean drama and music have also exploded on the world stage. The government has become more stable. When a president attempted to implement martial law, he was instead impeached. The South Korea's economy has continued to grow and is now vastly larger than North Korea.

Korea has been one defined area with one population for much of its history. It has had significant interactions with Japan and China. It previously used China's characters, but later adopted its own alphabet. Japan controlled Korea during much of the first half of the twentieth century. After World War 2, America artificially divided the country in two. The Korean War was a civil war between two parties that looked to different sources for influence (USSR vs US). Both sides committed plenty of atrocities. The North was probably in better condition to succeed. However, it was also more heavily bombed. After the end of fighting, both sides were lead by dictators. The North seemed to be industrializing faster and was centrally commanded. The south was relying more heavily on US largess. In the south there were coups, assassinations and other not so great leadership transitions. With heavy government support, big companies grew bigger and grew to compete on the global market.

The author has experience in both North and South Korea. The history primarily focuses on "modern" Korean, though the book was originally written in 1997 and revised in 2005. The coverage of the Koreas is balanced, though the book is quite long.