Publisher Description
In this book, former North Korea lead foreign service officer at the U.S. embassy in Seoul, Patrick McEachern, unpacks the contentious and tangled relationship between the Koreas in an approachable question-and-answer format. While North Korea is famous for its militarism and nuclear program, South Korea is best known for its economic miracle, familiar to consumers as the producer of Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars, and even K-pop music and K-beauty. Why have the two Koreas developed politically and economically in such radically different ways? What are the origins of a divided Korean Peninsula? Who rules the two Koreas? How have three generations of the authoritarian Kim dictatorship shaped North Korea? What is the history of North-South relations? Why does the North Korean government develop nuclear weapons? How do powers such as Japan, China, and Russia fit into the mix? What is it like to live in North and South Korea? This book tackles these broad topics and many more to explain what everyone needs to know about South and North Korea.
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About Patrick McEachern
Patrick McEachern is a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in residence at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He is coauthor of North Korea, Iran, and the Challenge to International Order and author of Inside the Red Box: North Korea’s Post-Totalitarian Politics. He has been a foreign service officer for sixteen years, serving in Tokyo, Seoul, Washington, DC, and Bratislava, Slovakia. He was a North Korea intelligence analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and North Korea lead at the U.S. embassy in Seoul.
About Paul Heitsch
After producing, directing, and engineering spoken word recordings for over twenty years, Paul Heitsch began narrating audiobooks in 2011, and has recorded many bestselling titles as both himself and under a pseudonym. A classically trained pianist, Paul is also a composer and sound designer, and is currently the director of music for the James Madison University School of Theatre and Dance, and an adjunct instructor for the JMU School of Music. He and his family live in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia (although Chicago will always be his hometown).