Intelligence and Captured Documents

RG 242 Files: Corruption, and Cult of Personality, at Kim Il-sung University

By | October 28, 2025

NARA document describes embezzlement and efforts to conceal malpractices at North Korea’s first university during early operations in 1946

Chinese Intellectuals, the CIA, and Defector Memoirs in the 1960s

By | January 18, 2024

Newly declassified documents shed light on a CIA operation to extract high-level intellectuals as defectors from the People’s Republic of China. We also look at defector accounts of meetings with Mao Zedong.

Review: The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War by Monica Kim

By | May 05, 2022

Interrogation documents, Cold War loyalties, and Japanese Americans vs. North Koreans — moments from Monica Kim’s book and insights into her expansive vision of the Korean War.

Neglected Voices: The Forgotten Psychological Effects of Korean War Bombings

By | February 19, 2021

Every war is complicated, but the Korean War, an international conflict, was more complicated than most. Here, Imogen Bird explores the difficulty of excavating civilian voices from the carnage.

The Past and Present of North Korean Belligerence: Rangoon 1983

By | July 07, 2017

The Rangoon Bombing of 1983 remains a piece of hidden history, only to be fully illuminated when the division of the two Koreas comes to an end. In the meantime, the archives of the ROK government give evidence of what motivated the attack. Let Eungseo Kim look back and be your guide.