A Global Take on Korea’s History
Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo, two deeply knowledgeable Korea hands, retell the story of the modern history of Korea — both North and
South — in a vivid and fast-paced account, with particular appeal to a general readership. With their deep academic and policy-relevant experiences and their different geographic perspectives — Cha in Washington, DC, and Pacheco Pardo in London and Brussels — the two tell the story in way that is genuinely global.
The narrative traces the balance-of-power politics in the late 19th century through the era of Japanese colonial domination from 1910-45, before turning to the trauma of division and the Korean War from 1950-53. We learn much about the dynamics of rapid economic development in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the shortcomings of communistinspired heavy industrial planning in North Korea and the brutal politics of dictatorship under the Kim dynasty. Across this often-tortured history, both Koreas have had to contend with the challenges of geostrategic vulnerability, weak relative power and the self-interested ambitions of rival, external states.
Seamlessly, the authors use their institutional knowledge and experiences to cover the complex twists and turns of nuclear crises, North-south rivalry, democratic transition in the South in the 1990s, and the era of diplomatic promise and disappointment in the first two decades of the 21st century, and South Korea’s rise to global prominence before concluding with a clear-sighted chapter exploring the prospects for North-south unification in the future.