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Podcast: New Books in Economic and Business History
Episode: Andre Schmid, "North Korea's Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953-1965" (U California Press, 2024)
Description: Histories of North Korea typically focus on one man — Kim Il Sung — and one narrative — his grand rise to absolute power. Andre Schmid’s new book, North Korea's Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953-1965 (University of California Press, 2024), tells a much more complex and richly textured story. Moving away from the focus on Kim Il Sung, Schmid looks at how the Korean population participated in party-state projects to create “New Living”: a quest for a better life, realized through socialism. Each part of North Korea’s Mundane Revolution focuses on a question that was central to a di...