[Laura Huffman]

• The video lecture mentions the ‘withdrawal of Soviet and US Forces in 1947-48,’ but clearly they returned for the Korean War. Were there any Soviet ground forces involved in the Korean conflict? Could one argue that the US maintained a stronger presence on the peninsula in the long-run than the Soviets, especially considering their collapse in 1991, and the continued presence of American military forces in the ROK even today?
• What happened to the assassins of Park and his wife?
• We hear of Korea being a democracy since 1987, but if the National Security Law and authoritarianism were in place, how is that defined? Was it because this was the “First direct Presidential Elections since 1971” ? What made them ‘direct’? What did the previous elections look like? Who voted? 
• What was involved in the IMF bailout in 1997? That seems to be a seminal event in modern Korean history, but I don’t really understand why.

[Laura Huffman]

Tom and Meghann - One of the images of the young Kim Il Sung made me look twice, because it looked so much like Kim Jong Un, who, through his clothing, weight, even haircut, is no doubt trying to emulate his grandfather, and thus adopt some of his (Il Sung's) glory for his own!

[Laura Huffman]

How did Kim Il Sung establish a communist monarchy?

From the readings and the video lecture, it appears that Kim Il Sung was able to establish a communist dictatorship through the support of the Soviets, and then playing the Chinese and Soviets off of one another, in addition to purging any potential threats to his power. The communist monarchy part is much more fascinating, as it appears he used the filial piety aspect of traditional Confucianism to create support for a kind of neo-Korean emperor; himself, and by extension, created the hereditary monarchy we see in Korea today. I'm intrigued about how this came to fruition in Korea, but not in the birthplace of Confucianism, China. Mao had 10 children, but we don't see the same concept there (no doubt for a multitude of reasons). In addition to presenting himself as a political and military leader, Kim was also able to create, through his cult of personality, a messianic concept for himself - by eliminating religion (a common occurrence in communism) - he could present himself as "the Greatest Man in the Five Thousand Years of Korean History" (Lankov, 53), a uniquely Korean Buddha or Jesus, come to save North Koreans from American democracy and capitalism, but unlike the Buddha or Jesus, he had the added benefit of having progeny to continue after his death, in addition to millions of disciples to his ideology of Juche.

How did the Korean War and Cold War shape the two Koreas through 1994?

To answer this question, I would argue we need to go back even further to the Second World War, for if that hadn't happened, there never would have been two Koreas in the first place. Unlike Germany, Korea was not an adversary during the War but rather the colony of one, Japan. And while Japan was not divided or occupied in 1945, Korea was, creating the 'two Koreas' we now have today. The Korean War was sadly an exercise in futility, the great loss of lives and livelihoods only to essentially wind up where it started, at the 38th parallel. The War sculpted a narrative for the North Koreans of Americans as destroyers of worlds; I was very surprised to see that more napalm was dropped during the relatively three short years of the Korean War than was used in Vietnam, where I think its use was more widely known. One cannot really blame the North Koreans for creating an identity in opposition to the United States, and then using that to fuel the need for authoritarian dictatorship and nuclear weapons. The Cold War clearly hardened this adversarial relationship between the two Koreas, with the Korean War (a 'hot' conflict) establishing North Korean Communism versus South Korean capitalism, if not democracy. Had Korea not been divided at the end of the Second World War, I wonder about the extent to which the United States would have supported a unified Korea as a buffer state against the spread of Chinese Communism to capitalist, democractic Japan. It's fairly clear that the United States supported strongmen like Rhee who committed their own war crimes and atrocities in the name of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' and I suspect declined Chang Myon's request for assistance during the 1961 coup perhaps because they viewed Park as another strongman who would stand up to the threat posed by North Korea only 10 years after the armistice ending the Korean War (although this is just my theory!).

[Laura Huffman]

Great to meet you! I've been in NC since 1995, having moved here from NY (via Maine).

[Laura Huffman]

I appreciate this short introductory video and the infographics about modern Korea. One of the things I've always found striking about Korea that has stuck with me ever since I learned it is that it is the only country (at least that I can think of ) that was divided after a war although it was really a non-combatant. Korea was a Japanese colony before WWII, and Japan an enemy/aggressor/'loser' in the war, and yet it is Korea that is divided, like Germany was, not Japan. I'm also curious about Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and the language. Although the 'two whales' (China/Japan) in the tired trope "shrimp between two whales"  both use characters, Korean uses an alphabet instead, a pretty remarkable thing for a comparitively small country. With this video, I really appreciated the emphasis on women. I've always been interested in women's history, and have found it difficult to find reliable sources in English regarding both historic and modern Korean women and their status in society. It seems like even in my relatively minimal contact with Korean culture through Korean novels and K-dramas that there hasn't really been much of a women's movement in Korea, that many women are still expected to either not have children if they want a career (perhaps contributing to the population decline?) or, if they have children, to stay home with them, and quit their careers. I don't see many representations of working mothers in modern Korean culture. Are there day cares in Korea? How prevalent/expensive are they? When did women in South Korea get the right to vote? Aside from the well-known women president/prime-ministers in modern Korean history, how many women serve in the legislature, or are mayors? I'd love to learn as much as possible about this, and am excited for this opportunity!

[Laura Huffman]

Hello, everyone! I'm Laura Huffman from Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm the Upper School Social Studies Department Chair at Cannon School, an independent (private) school in Concord, NC. I teach Honors Accelerated World History I to freshmen and Advanced Topics: World History II (essentially AP World: Modern) to sophomores. I've just completed my 20th year teaching, my 14th at Cannon. I had the pleasure to traveling to Korea last summer with the World History Digital Education Foundation. The trip deepened my interest in Korean history and culture, so I'm excited to learn even more to incorporate into my teaching.

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