The Two Koreas: Revised and Updated - a Contemporary History [Paperback]

Don Oberdorfer's The Two Koreas is generally a triumph of style over substance and I do not believe that it merits all of the high ratings it has received here. He does not know Korea as well as some of the other reviewers here think he does. To be sure, Oberdorfer is a compelling writer and he tells the story of North and South Korea since the 1970s with a great deal of flair. He did turn up some useful materials on American policy toward Seoul and Pyongyang during the 1980s through filing Freedom of Information Act requests. Through the use of these materials, interviews and newspaper articles, the book gives a fairly thorough if workmanlike account of Korean history from the early 1970s through the 1990s. He covers the emergence of Yusin, the Seoul Olympics, the negotiation of the Agreed Framework and other events in a fairly readable manner.

But Oberdorfer's overall knowledge of Korea and Korean history is very shallow. Oberdorfer does not speak or read Korean and he can only use Korean sources that have been translated for him. His research in Korean materials is non-existent. How can a serious expert on Korean history not cite a single Korean language source in his entire work? Those who lavish praise on the Two Korea's really need to answer this question. The author's limited knowledge of Korean history often shows in his analysis. First, his chapters on Korea before the 1970s are extremely superficial and contain very little useful information. In this sense, the book has a sort of truncated structure. Koreas history since the 1970s is incomprehensible without an understanding of the period between 1945 and 1972 when Korea was divided and the two Korean states were launched on their very different trajectories. Oberdorfer really doesn't give any reason for why he begins with the 1970s although I suspect that the real reason is that this is the time that he started covering it as a journalist.

I also believe that scholars working on a particular issue have an obligation to examine all relevant materials. But Oberdorfer does not examine any of the new Korean materials that became available at the time that he was writing the book. Even more materials were available at the time that he wrote the revised edition but again Obedorfer chose to ignore these. The documents declassified by the ROK Foreign Ministry tell a story that is different in many places than the one that Oberdorfer tells. They demonstrate in many instances that the considerations of South Korean officials were more complex than Oberdorfer makes them out to be. They also demonstrate the importance of Korean agency to many of the events that Oberdorfer describes. The book's failure to incorporate these and other Korean materials represent a significant failing.

Ultimately, Oberdorfer's telling of the events of the last three decades could have been greatly enriched by a deeper understanding of how the actions taken by Korea's leaders during this period were rooted in Korea's long history and fascinating culture. Like Nicholas Eberstadt, Selig Harrison and other Washington area journalists who write about Korea without ever bothering to learn the language or study Korean history, Oberdorfer is really just a dabbler in Korean politics. His work may satisfy those who want a basic telling of recent events but is useless to those who want to gain a deeper understanding of Korean history.

I picked up "The Two Koreas" before leaving for my first visit to Seoul and Busan hoping to get a full picture of political and economic developments on the peninsula since the end of the Korean War. I usually pre-screen my book purchases thoroughly, but in this case chose Oberdorfer's piece simply because it appeared to be the best option available on short notice.

This isn't a bad book; but it is a bit awkward. First, the only logic to the timeframe covered (roughly 1972 to 2000) is that it cooresponds to Oberdorfer's personal experience in Korean affairs as a journalist with the Washington Post. The post-war years of the authoritarian regimes of Syngman Rhee and Kim Il Song are not discussed at all, nor are the early years of Park Chung Hee's regime in the 1960s as he laid the groundwork for the South Korean economic miracle of the late twentieth century.

Second, the weight of the narrative is heavily focused on the North Korean nuclear program and the efforts of the Clinton administration to negotiate a settlement with Pyongyang in the 1990s. Large and important swaths of Korean history in the 1970s are dealt with in a largely cursory manner, but the 1994 nuclear crisis is reconstructed in an almost hour-by-hour chronology of events. Indeed, nearly half of the book is dedicated to just a handful of events in the 1990s.

Finally, the style of "The Two Koreas" is a clumsy blend of narrative history and personal memoir cum political analysis. Oberdorfer should have pursued one of two approaches to his topic. He could have written a comprehensive contemporary narrative of post-war Korea in the spirit and style of similar endeavors by veteran foreign journalists, the most notable example being Stanley Karnow's wonderful piece on the Philippines, "In our Image." Or he could have fully embraced the use of the first person and written a memoir on his experiences in Korea and how that experience has shaped his perception of Korean history and the future of North/South relations, much as Tom Friedman did with his award-winning memoir/history "From Beirut to Jerusalem." Instead, "The Two Koreas" reads like a personal, casual conversation with Don Oberdorfer over drinks at a club on Capitol Hill. He delves deeply into the topics he knows best, punched up with anecdotes from personal encounters with the key players at the time, while providing just basics on the other parts of the story he is less familiar with.

The above notwithstanding, "The Two Koreas" does provide a good introduction to some of the key players and Korean events of the past three decades, from the ax-handle murders at the DMZ in 1976 and assassination of Park Chung Hee in 1979 to the government crack-down on government protests in Gwangju in 1980 and the arrest of former presidents Roh Tae-Woo and Chun Doo Hwan in 1996 on corruption charges.

Concerning the on-going North Korean nuclear crisis, which is really the focus of this book, Oberdorfer clearly sees the program as Pyongyang's only effective card to play in relations with the United States and the international community. As the communist bloc imploded, North Korea witnessed the blossoming relationship between Seoul and the Soviet Union and China with no reciprocal rapprochment between Pyongyang and Washington. Oberdorfer suggests that Pyongyang basically stumbled upon the nuclear program as the one sure-fire way to the undivided attention of leaders in the United States and develop the dialogue and aid packages the beleagered communist state so desperately needs.

One final point should be noted. The cover states that the book has been "revised and expanded," but any potential reader should know that "The Two Koreas" does not cover critical events in the 2000-2005 timeframe, including Pyongyang's admission that the government never lived up to the original terms of the Agreed Framework in the first place.

Brief, general impressions of Don Oberdorfer's 'definitive' account of modern North and South Korea. The reviewer lives in S. Korea and was disappointed with the author's treatment of major figures in Korean history.