[KS] "North Korea Caught in Time: Images of War and Reconstruction"

Chris Springer springer at hiddenhistory.info
Wed May 23 11:52:34 EDT 2012




Listmembers with an interest in North Korean history may wish
to know about a book called "North Korea Caught in Time: Images
of War and Reconstruction."

This photo album, depicting North Korea in the 1950s, consists
of images I found in Hungarian archives. It also features an
essay by historian Balazs Szalontai on life in North Korea during
and after the war, based on declassified reports from Hungarian
diplomats in Pyongyang.

More information about the book can be found at


http://garnetpublishing.co.uk/book/north-korea-caught-time


While the book has been out for some time already, a detailed
review of it has just been published in the latest issue of the
University of Hawaii journal "Korean Studies."

>From the review:

"As Balazs Szalontai, the author of the background essay to this
slim but very engaging volume, notes, little has been written
on how average North Koreans lived through the perilous period
of the Korean War (1950–1953) and the years of intense reconstruction
that followed its devastation.... Though in no way claiming to
be such a study, Chris Springer’s volume of black-and-white photos
(culled from two unlikely sources, the Hungarian National Museum
and the Museum History Institute and Museum of that country’s
Ministry of Defense) does its bit to address this shortage and
offers a valuable, fascinating, but also frustrating glimpse
into the lives of the North Korean people during those watershed
years."

A much longer excerpt appears at 

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/korean_studies/v035/35.kane.html

(The full review is paywalled but accessible via Athens and Project
Muse.)






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