[KS] "Inside North Korea": CWIHP Publishes Internal Documents on North Korea

[COLDWAR Project]

The Woodrow Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project (Christian F. Ostermann, director) has published dozens of formerly secret internal documents from the archives of North Korea's former Communist allies for the 1950-1988 period.

The documents are the result of a special effort by the Project to mine the archives of North Korea's former allies. The CWIHP Korea Initiative has been systematically exploring East European, Russian and (to a lesser extent) Chinese archives for insights into perceptions and policymaking in Pyongyang. The Korea Initiative presented its first findings at a workshop hosted in conjunction with George Washington University in March 2003 ("North Korea's Crisis Behavior, Past and Present: New Light from the Archives of its Former Allies"), at which leading Korea specialists from academia, research centers, and government agencies in the United States, the Republic of Korea and Eastern Europe provided a first analysis of the significance of the new documents on North Korea.  

The newly accessible documentation bears on such questions as North Korea's reaction to aid and external pressures, the internal workings of the Kim regime and the ideological prism of the North Korean leadership.
Included in the sensational collection are transcripts between Kim Il-Sung and Communist leaders, as well as dozens of embassy reports from European embassies in Pyongyang. 

The documents can be downloaded at no charge at http://cwihp.si.edu, or a copy of the most recent CWIHP Bulletin can be obtained by emailing your full mail address to coldwar1 at si.edu. Please feel free to distribute this message.

Christian F. Ostermann,
Director, Cold War International History Project
Woodrow Wilson Center
http://cwihp.si.edu