You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This study evaluates how the ideology of Socialist Realism, developed by the Soviets in policies and the practices of art, has been influential in the Asia-Pacific region from 1917 until today. Focusing primarily on Russia, then China, Vietnam, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia, this book demonstrates how each society adopted and adapted the Soviet example to make some of the most important imagery of recent history. Included is an examination of how the practice of Western art history, the nature of art history in Asia and the forces of the Cold War have led to this influence being inadequately acknowledged across Asia and more widely. The book will be relevant to those interested in art history, Asian studies, political history and cultural history.
The dimensions of time and space fundamentally cause and shape the variability of all human language. To reduce investigation of this insight to manageable proportions, researchers have traditionally concentrated on the “deepest” dialects. But it is increasingly apparent that, although most people still speak with a distinct regional coloring, the new mobility of speakers in recently industrialized and postindustrial societies and the efflorescence of communication technologies cannot be ignored. This has given rise to a reconsideration of the relationship between geographical place and cultural space, and the fundamental link between language and a spatially bounded territory. Language ...
This ambitious book is constructed to provide the reader with unusually broad and deep insight into North Korea, illustrating how the Kim Jong-un regime calculates, balances, and addresses the various key policy challenges it faces. This will be accomplished through the extensive experience of the authors—Korean, European, and American—in North Korea and with North Koreans. There is no substitute for such direct experience in order to address the numerous myths and misconceptions that have grown up and persisted over the years about how the North functions, and how it perceives the world. Moreover, the usual focus on a single issue—for example, just nuclear or just economic matters—fails to provide a sense of how important the inter-relationship of these separate parts is in understanding the whole. The experience brought to bear in the book and the breadth of coverage provides badly needed, critical insights about North Korea at time when policy in Seoul and Washington toward the North is at a crucial hinge point.
South Korea-oriented articles in the 2007 yearbook deal with online grassroots journalism and participatory democracy, the Lone Star scandal, changing perceptions of inward direct investment, the impact of China’s economic ascendance, modern cityscape and mass housing production, new ancestral shrines, and the political economy of patriotism. Additional articles highlight lessons of negotiations with North Korea, the plight of North Koreans in China, and Korea-China border issues. The yearbook is essential reading for anyone interested in modern Korea.
This book highlights the increasing risk of North Korea’s collapse and considers the necessary actions that would enable the neighboring powers to prepare for such an event. North Korea's deteriorating economic conditions, its reliance on external assistance, and the degree of information penetration all provide hints of its collapse. Whether the chance is high or low, the collapse of North Korea and subsequent Korean unification would drastically alter the geostrategic landscape and profoundly affect the national interests of the regional powers—South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. The most desirable scenario for a post-unification Korean Peninsula is a successfully...
North Korea's foreign policy behavior has long intrigued scholars, puzzled laymen, frustrated negotiators, and aggravated policy-makers. This book brings together the work of ten of the world's foremost scholars on North Korea to critically analyze the key factors that are shaping North Korea's foreign policy behavior and its future direction.
North Korean Review is the first academic journal in North America or Europe to focus exclusively on North Korea. The purpose of NKR is to provide readers with an improved understanding of the country's complexities and the threat it presents to global stability. International and interdisciplinary, NKR is a refereed journal published twice a year. Topics include culture, history, economics, business, religion, politics and international relations, among others.
The legitimacy of the North Korean state is based solely on the leaders’ personal legitimacy, and is maintained by the indoctrination of people with leader symbols and the enactment of leadership cults in daily life. It can thus be dubbed a "leader state". The frequency of leader symbols and the richness and scale of leader-symbol-making in North Korea are simply unrivalled. Furthermore, the personality cults of North Korean leaders are central to people’s daily activity, critically affecting their minds and emotions. Both leader symbols and cult activities are profoundly entrenched in the institutions and daily life, and if separated and cancelled, the North Korean state would be transf...