For more than half of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula has been   divided between two hostile and competitive nation-states, each claiming to   be the sole legitimate expression of the Korean nation. The division   remains an unsolved problem dating to the beginnings of the Cold War and   now projects the politics of that period into the twenty-first century.    Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey  is designed to provide readers   with the historical essentials upon which to unravel the complex politics   and contemporary crises that currently exist in the East Asian region.   Beginning with a description of late-nineteenth-century imperialism,   Michael Robinson shows how traditional Korean political culture shaped the   response of Koreans to multiple threats to their sovereignty after being   opened to the world economy by Japan in the 1870s. He locates the origins   of both modern nationalism and the economic and cultural modernization of   Korea in the twenty years preceding the fall of the traditional state to   Japanese colonialism in 1910.Robinson breaks new ground with his   analysis of the colonial period, tracing the ideological division of   contemporary Korea to the struggle of different actors to mobilize a   national independence movement at the time. More importantly, he locates   the reason for successful Japanese hegemony in policies that included--and   thus implicated--Koreans within the colonial system. He gives readers   access as well to an understanding of the unique aspects of Japanese   colonialism in Korea--in particular how the relatively intensive economic   development of the colony in the mid-1930s laid the foundation for   subsequent development of human resources as well as the economy of the   postwar period. Robinson concludes with a discussion of the political and   economic evolution of South and North Korea after 1948 that accounts for   the valid legitimacy claims of both nation-states on the peninsula. He thus   carefully analyzes the sources of authoritarianism in South Korea while   detailing its relationship to stunning economic growth after 1960 and to   the democracy movement through the 1970s and 1980s. He closes with a   description of South Korean politics, noting that although procedural   democracy triumphed after 1987, the development of a true pluralism   representing all interest groups remains a work in progress. Korea's   Twentieth-Century Odyssey  succinctly and deftly captures the key   contours of the country's past. Its balanced analytical narrative of the   historical forces that shaped the political, economic, and social dynamics   of the two Koreas make it a first-rate introduction to modern Korea and an   excellent companion to courses on modern Korean society, politics, and   history.

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