Korea: A New History of South and North

The harder North and South Korea work to reunify, the more entrenched their separation seems to become. Pyongyang has allowed relations to thaw from time to time in order to receive economic help from the South but pulls back from any real opening, sensing an existential threat to its repressive dynastic regime. The government in Seoul oscillates between hair-trigger deterrence policies and conciliatory “sunshine” policies toward the North. But it has become a wealthy country in the meantime—and a global cultural powerhouse to boot—whose citizens have less and less interest in integrating with the needy, puritanical North. Cha and Pacheco Pardo offer a sure-footed guide to the two countries’ divergent paths and their fraught fraternal relationship. The stalemate is further cemented by the surrounding major powers, who created the division of the peninsula in the first place. The authors determine that unification would serve the interests of the United States and Japan. But Russia and China continue to shore up the North’s struggling economy.