North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula: A Modern History - Hardcover

French, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1842779044 ISBN 13: 9781842779040

Publisher: Zed Books, 2007

Synopsis

This reissue of Paul French's acclaimed introduction to North Korea provides an up-to-the-minute overview of the politics, economics and history of the DPRK, with added chapters dealing with recent events. A new foreword examines why North Korea has not gone away as a country or as an issue and argues that an understanding of the country is more important now than ever. A new in-depth postscript offers analysis of recent years and why Pyongyang felt compelled to test a bomb.

About this title

About the Author

Paul French is the Chief China Representative of Access Asia, a market research and business intelligence company specialising in China and North Asia's economics and markets. He was educated in London and at the University of Glasgow. He is the co-author of One Billion Shoppers - Accessing Asia's Consuming Passions (1998) and author of Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times, and Adventures of an American in Shanghai (2006). He lives in Shanghai.

Review

"This longer historical view is essential, if one is to grasp not only what drives the North Korean regime but what it shares (to the growing irritation of the Americans) with the South." - John Gittings, Guardian
"French certainly knows his stuff, and there is no shortage of good arguments and facts as he details this thesis and its worrying implications. This is a book packed with information without being emotional or rhetorical as the subject tends to make people." - Asia Times
"North Korea stuck with the Stalinism and is now on the point of collapse, with millions suffering from starvation and the remainder overworked and underfed. Explaining how and why this has all come about and what might happen in the future is French's task in this book."- John Walsh, Professor at Shinawatra International University, Bangkok.
"Throughout the book, French is careful to consider the role of historical events and outside state actors in shaping North Korea." - Asian Review of Books
"North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula - A Modern History serves as an excellent introduction for anyone hoping to develop an understanding of why the world deals with this isolated regime the way it does, and how the regime continues to survive despite failures that seem obvious from the outside." - The Ethnic Conflict Research Digest

About this edition

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1842779044
• ISBN 13: 9781842779040
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352