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Among the most Christianized cities and towns in northwest Korea (P'yŏngan-do and Hwanghae-do provinces) around 1925, Pyongyang was called the “Jerusalem of Chosŏn,” Chaeryŏng the “Christian world,” and Sŏnch’ŏn in P’yŏnganbuk-do a “kingdom of Christianity.” From 1915, half the population of Sŏnch’ŏn was identified as Christian (Presbyterian) and the Christian influence dominated town life. This article discusses the metamorphosis of Sŏnch’ŏn from an unknown small rural “heathen” town to a “kingdom of Christianity” within a generation. After describing the process and visualizing the spatial features of this transformation, it focuses on diverse inter-group conflicts, the discourse of the “kingdom of Christianity,” and socialists’ backlash against such triumphalism. By reviewing the history of the growth of S6nch’6n as a Christian city and major conflicts in its transformation, this case study of Northwestern Protestantism in Korea reveals the following three main points. First, the center of gravity of Korean Protestantism migrated from Seoul to Pyongyang in the 1900s and then to S6nch’6n in the next decade. Second, the nature of Northwestern Protestantism shifted from confrontation against Korean folk beliefs like shamanism in 1900s, to Christian nationalism against Japanese imperialism up to 1919, and then to Protestant capitalism against socialism in the 1920s. Their evangelical belief in the Christian superiority to traditional religions, political activism, economic middle-class status, and theological fundamentalism became the legacy of Northwestern Christians who engaged in the nation-building of the Republic of Korea from 1945 to the 1960s.

North Korea remains a puzzle to Americans. How did this country—one of the most isolated in the world and in the policy cross hairs of every U.S. administration during the past 30 years—progress from zero nuclear weapons in 2001 to a threatening arsenal of perhaps 50 such weapons in 2021? Hinge Points brings readers literally inside the North Korean nuclear program, joining Siegfried Hecker to see what he saw and hear what he heard in his visits to North Korea from 2004 to 2010. Hecker goes beyond the technical details—described in plain English from his on-the-ground experience at the North's nuclear center at Yongbyon—to put the nuclear program exactly where it belongs, in the context of decades of fateful foreign policy decisions in Pyongyang and Washington. Describing these decisions as \"hinge points,\" he traces the consequences of opportunities missed by both sides. The result has been that successive U.S. administrations have been unable to prevent the North, with the weakest of hands, from becoming one of only three countries in the world that might target the United States with nuclear weapons. Hecker's unique ability to marry the technical with the diplomatic is well informed by his interactions with North Korean and U.S. officials over many years, while his years of working with Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani nuclear officials have given him an unmatched breadth of experience from which to view and interpret the thinking and perspective of the North Koreans.

While popular trends, cuisine, and long-standing political tension have made Korea familiar in some ways to a vast English-speaking world, its recorded history of some two millennia remains unfamiliar to most. Korea: A History addresses general readers, providing an up-to-date, accessible overview of Korean history from antiquity to the present. Eugene Y. Park draws on original-language sources and the up-to-date synthesis of East Asian and Western-language scholarship to provide an insightful account. This book expands still-limited English-language discussions on pre-modern Korea, offering rigorous and compelling analyses of Korea's modernization while discussing daily life, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ history, and North Korean history not always included in Korea surveys. Overall, Park is able to break new ground on questions and debates that have been central to the field of Korean studies since its inception.

Pyongyang has been described as a center of evil that threatens the world with nuclear weapons. The city is perceived as both aggressive and controlled. This study explains those particularities of Pyongyang utilizing Wagner, Rudolf (2000) (“The moral center and the engine of change. A tale of two Chinese cities”. In: Peking Shanghai Shenzhen. Städte des 21. Jahrhunderts. Beijing Shanghai Shenzhen. Cities of the 21st Century. Vöckler, K and Luckow, D (eds.). Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, Edition Bauhaus, vol. 7, 452–459) theory of the Northeast Asian city as a moral center under the ongoing Korean War (although a ceasefire has been called, the war has not officially ended). This study starts by drawing similarities between Pyongyang and Hanyang, the capital of the Joseon Dynasty, which was established as a moral center according to the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty. I also look at the influence that the Korean War had on Pyongyang and find that Pyongyang was constructed to express the North Koreans socialist Juche ideology (self-reliance, subjecthood), while Hanyang expressed Confucian ideology. Pyongyang is more than just a moral center; it is “the Holy Land of Revolution” according to the “Administration Act of the Capital City Pyongyang”, where the war still takes place to defend the Juche Ideology and its supreme leader. The Korean War justifies the control in North Korea. The country utilizes the five-family control system inherited from the Joseon Dynasty. Its origin is legalism during the Warring States period (770−221 BC) in China. Control in Pyongyang has been strengthened because of the need for military operations in the unfinished Korean War, compared to Hanyang. Having relaxed political tensions in 2019, North Korea offers a vision for the future of Pyongyang as a “socialist fairyland” (seongyeong 仙境), which is related to Korea’s own Taoism (sinseon sasang 神仙思想). Developing Pyongyang with the Juche ideology from a Confucian tradition in the war, the city now reveals a unique means of cultural entanglement.

In this essay I explore the reaction, in Western media commentary, to the announcement of North Korean premier Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011. I focus in particular on responses to the widely circulated images of crowds crying on the streets of Pyongyang. These responses obsessively returned to a single question: Do they really mean it? I do not attempt to answer this question. Rather, by considering a series of subsidiary questions that clustered around it (Can these tears be real? Are these people insane? Why are they such good/such bad actors? Is mass crying something that Asians are particularly likely to engage in?), I ask in turn why the sincerity of the North Korean crying crowds came to seem at once so necessary and so impossible to Western observers. I argue that the obsessive return to the question about whether they really meant it expressed a deep liberal anxiety—not, as one might suppose, an anxiety that North Korean totalitarianism would continue indefinitely, but a much more profound worry that it would come to a sudden end.

Regarding North Korea's denuclearization and peace-building on the Korean Peninsula, South-North Korean dialogues used to be secondary to the United States (US) and Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK) negotiations. There were frictions between the two. However, this situation changed on the road to the US-DPRK summits in Singapore on June 12, 2018, and in Hanoi on February 26, 2019. From the perspective of a \"détente as a policy,\" this paper will define the Moon Jae-in administration's policy as a \"Tight Link Strategy\" and examine how South Korea was trying to connect the South-North Korean dialogue and the US-DPRK negotiations tightly. The \"Tight Link Strategy\" has two aspects: one is that it made a new way to a \"Fourth Détente\" on the Korean Peninsular. Through this strategy, President Moon Jae-in was able to cooperate with Chairman Kim Jong-un for an integrated policy to obtain concrete results on denuclearization and peace-building at the US-DPRK summit. The other aspect is that the \"Tight Link Strategy\" contained a risk: if US-DPRK negotiation stagnates, the progress in the South-North Korean dialogue will become difficult as well.  This risk became a reality after the failure of the US-DPRK summit in Hanoi and caused the stagnation of South-North Korean relations. The Moon Jae-in administration will probably try to change its \"Tight Link Strategy\" policy. South Korea is now trying to expand its policy space toward North Korea by promoting individual tourism to North Korea, and the railway-road connection project between South and North Korea.  At the same time, he will have to avoid possible friction with the United States for policy coordination toward North Korea and use a \"Loose Link\" between South-North Korean dialogues and US-DPRK negotiations.

The central model of Japan's North Korea policy has been maintained consistently despite repeated changes in the government from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party and back again.Purpose: This paper summarizes Japan's policy concerning North Korea after the Cold War, examines the structure of this policy, and, based on this structure, analyzes Japan's current policy regarding North Korea. The analysis then turns to the future.Main Argument: Normalizing relations between Japan and North Korea may be the primary goal of Japan's policy, but the following four motives can also be identified. First, for Japan, the normalization of relations with North Korea is significant as a remaining postwar process. The second motive involves responses to security issues. Third, there is the issue of the safety of Japanese lives. Fourth, Japan's economic opportunities in North Korea must be considered. Japan has sought ties with North Korea with these four motives, which will remain unchanged in the future. However, Japan does not aim to normalize relations with North Korea without restrictions, and Japan's policy concerning North Korea is bound by the following three factors. The first factor is the international environment. Second, Japan-North Korea relations are constrained by the attitude of South Korea. Third, Japan's domestic politics also determine Japan's North Korea policy.Conclusion: While the four motives will remain the same for Japan, these three factors determine Japan's attitude toward North Korea, all three of which are pushing for Japan to negotiate with North Korea. He central model of Japan's North Korea policy has been maintained consistently despite repeated changes in the government from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party and back again. This paper summarizes Japan's policy concerning North Korea after the Cold War, examines the structure of this policy, and, based on this structure, analyzes Japan's current policy regarding North Korea. The analysis then turns to the future. Normalizing relations between Japan and North Korea may be the primary goal of Japan's policy, but the following four motives can also be identified. First, for Japan, the normalization of relations with North Korea is significant as a remaining postwar process. The second motive involves responses to security issues. Third, there is the issue of the safety of Japanese lives. Fourth, Japan's economic opportunities in North Korea must be considered. Japan has sought ties with North Korea with these four motives, which will remain unchanged in the future. However, Japan does not aim to normalize relations with North Korea without restrictions, and Japan's policy concerning North Korea is bound by the following three factors. The first factor is the international environment. Second, Japan-North Korea relations are constrained by the attitude of South Korea. Third, Japan's domestic politics also determine Japan's North Korea policy. While the four motives will remain the same for Japan, these three factors determine Japan's attitude toward North Korea, all three of which are pushing for Japan to negotiate with North Korea.

Jung Eun Jang’s Religious Experience and Self-Psychology seeks to contribute to our understanding of the 1907 Korean Revival Movement that took place in Pyongyang, by applying to the movement self psychology, developed by Heinz Kohut. While the effort is laudable, it is compromised by an inexpert application of Kohut’s theory and a maladroit treatment of Korean history.