The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950

Armstorng examines the genesis of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) both as an important yet rarely studied example of a communist state and as part of modern Korean history.

Charles K. Armstrong is the Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies at Columbia University. He is the editor of Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State and coeditor of Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia.

This book provides a wealth of factual information and historical background that increases the reader's understanding of North Korea's communist history and present idiosyncrasies.

In a world where the kind of Marxist-inspired, state-directed development embodied by Soviet Russia has long since been discredited as ineffective, the North Korean economy and state management continue to resist the forces of the North Korean people. Armstrong wants to explain this rather counterintuitive longevity of a state whose like can be found nowhere else in the world except in Cuba.... This work will be indispensable for anyone hoping to understand the postwar history of Korea and East Asia.

Alexandre Y. Mansourov:

Charles K. Armstrong's The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 is a pioneering work.... This eye-catching book offers a wealth of factual information on the genesis of the North Korean state. It introduces a unique comprehensive perspective for the analysis of postcolonial Korean modernization, communist state formation, and creation of new imagined national and social identities and communities in the North. It is a new classic in Korean studies and a must-read for all aspiring students of Korean history and Korean affairs.

John Feffer:

Charles K. Armstrong takes advantage of new archival materials to rethink the history and character of North Korea. In considering the critical years of North Korea's development prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, Armstrong's The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950, delivers some surprising, heterodox conclusions.

Armstrong has carefully gone over all of the newly available documents on the founding of the North Korean regime to ask why Pyongyang, in spite of the appalling suffering of its people, remains one of the last holdouts of 'unreformed' Marxism-Leninism.

Selig Harrison, author of Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement:

In The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950, Charles K. Armstrong shows conclusively for the first time that a revolutionary social, economic, and political upheaval occurred during this period, and that important ideological and policy conflicts defined the power struggles for control of the new state.

Dae-sook Suh, University of Hawaii:

Charles K. Armstrong has written a unique account of the North Korea's domestication of communism. The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 is an outstanding book.