The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History

Oberdorfer first toured Korea in 1953 courtesy of the U.S. Army and returned often on the Asia beat for the Washington Post. In the present volume, his accounts of the conflicts of the last 20 years, appraisals of leaders based on interviews in Korea, Japan, Washington, and Moscow, and incisive policy analysis form a detailed and insightful history of North and South Korean politics and U.S. policy. Particularly engrossing is the analysis of relations between Moscow and Washington and their defiant clients, which turned domestic rifts into world conflict from the 1950s through the potentially nuclear crisis of 1994 and the present famine. The obvious comparison is with Bruce Cumings’s commanding Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (LJ 2/15/97). Cumings analyzes the evolution and nature of Korea’s political economy over the last few centuries. Oberdorfer brings to life the events, leaders, and decisions of the last 20 years. Larger public and academic collections will want both volumes.?Charles Hayford, Evanston, Ill. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc