Reviews

Occupation at the Local Level: Kim Dong-choon on Korean War Atrocities

By | August 23, 2016

In an extensive new review essay, Adam Cathcart offers a sweeping assessment of Kim Dong-choon’s 2009 text on the Korean War, reinvigorating debate over both Korean War history and the societal tensions that come with it.

A Roundtable Review of Il Hyun Cho’s Global Rogues and Regional Orders: The Multidimensional Challenge of North Korea and Iran

By | May 05, 2016

Il Hyun Cho argues that the “rogue state” narrative is not wholly global, but is largely a creation of US security concerns in tandem with the role conceptions of regional actors. Van Jackson and Daniel Wertz consider the proposition in this roundtable review.

Identity, Security, and the Nation: Understanding the South Korean Response to North Korean Defectors

By | April 22, 2016

In this review essay, Dr. Sarah Son summarizes her contribution to an Asian Ethnicity special issue (Spring 2016) on North Koreans in South Korea. Her work explores the simultaneous portrayal of this group as both “us” and “them” in public policy discourse.

Local and Limited: The Sociopolitical Implications of Segmented Marketization in North Korea

By | March 21, 2016

In the fifth part of our contemporary marketization series, Philo Kim takes a sociologist’s lens to the North Korean economy to find out why marketization hasn’t led to large-scale change or transformation.

A Roundtable Review of Hyun Ok Park’s The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea

By | March 07, 2016

Capital — it’s what lies beneath, argues sociologist Hyun Ok Park in her new transnational history of Korea. Meeting Park’s hefty tome head on, a Toronto-based historian and the Sino-NK team consider the work’s main claim, along with a number of thematic tributaries.