This study investigates South Korea’s rural modernization project conducted under the name of the New Village Movement during the rapid industrialization period of the 1970s. The focus is on a specific event called the Roof Improvement Project within this Movement. In the 1970s, rural poverty was often portrayed through images of monochromatic village landscapes populated by dilapidated mud-walled houses crowned with coverings of faded grass thatch. Replacing the thatched roofs with something more colorful and modern was quickly identified as one of the most effective ways of showcasing ‘rural development.’ By 1978, an astonishing 2,618,000 thatched houses throughout the countryside had their old roofs replaced with a new material known as ‘slate.’ The rural ‘change’ particularly manifested through the brightly colored slate roofs lining the highways. This technicolor display propagandized development and, ultimately, legitimized the military regime’s rule. However, the new ‘modern’ roofs actually eroded farmers’ financial status and bolstered the accumulation of capital by specific industries. To trace the flow of capital extracted from farmers, this study also delves into the history of two large corporate groups - KCC and Pyŏksan - that were able to solidify the early foundation for their current business formation in the 1970s.

International relations in East Asia from the 10th through the 12th centuries had been understood through a triangular relationship framework with the Khitan and the Song in a bipolar relationship and either Koryŏ or Western Xia as the third state. It is widely acknowledged that this framework has the advantage of simplifying international affairs under restricted conditions, which allows for an easy comprehension of the situation at the time. However, even the Song and the Khitan, which were considered to be major powers at the time, were merely two nations among equals. The period spanning the 10th to 12th centuries was not characterized by any single nation overpowering others. Consequently, the countries in East Asia during that time had to seek allies and strive for survival in response to the shifting international landscape. There are difficulties in understanding the international order of that era based solely on triangular relationships.The relationship between Koryŏ and the Khitan also did not lead to a situation where one country overpowered the other. Of course, there is a lot of room to believe that the Khitan has an overall advantage. However, as can be seen from the fact that the Khitans requested reinforcements from the Song to attack Koryŏ, the Khitans were also not confident that they were overpowering Koryŏ. Therefore, rather than confining the relationships among East Asian nations at the time within a rigid triangular framework, understanding the constantly shifting international situations at the time and the fact that all states prioritized their own security would bring us closer to the historical truth.

Korean medical personnel migrated across the globe since 1964, including Africa. However, analyses of the transnational nature of Korean medicine have largely focused on the influence of Korea as a recipient, particularly the United States. This study attempts to understand the formation of Korean medicine in a wider geographical space, beyond the entrenched dichotomy of donor and recipient countries, which has often been centered on the United States or Japan. This paper examines how the diplomatic competition between North and South Korea unfolded in the geopolitical context of the Cold War and how medicine was mobilized to achieve its goals. In the 1960s, medical diplomacy was effective in establishing diplomatic relations and gaining the cooperation of recipient ‘Third World’ countries. In the 1970s, however, South Korea's episodic medical aid was no longer well-received in the face of aggressive North Korean aid, and South Korean medical missions became more of an ‘export’ rather than ‘cooperation’.

This paper unveils the impact of architectural aid and knowledge exchange on the development of urban housing in North Korea during the 1950s and 1960s. By capturing the diplomatic maneuvers of the DPRK and detailing the aid it received, this paper situates the urban development of North Korea within the broader fabric of global urban experiments. North Korea received foreign architectural assistance more swiftly than Vietnam, enabling the early adoption of advanced architectural technology and theory in urban construction compared to South Korea. However, the intricate relationships and evolving aid dynamics with fraternal socialist countries within the Cold War paradigm later emerged as one of the motivating factors for North Korea to prioritize independent architectural development. Meanwhile, amidst the emphasis on Juche construction and rapid industrialization, the field of architecture, both in academia and on construction sites, faced the challenge of minimizing materials and resources to enhance productivity. Various agents within North Korea’s architectural workforce presented diverse viewpoints and engaged in complex negotiations with the party regarding resource conservation. Drawing from a vast array of primary sources from North Korea and socialist countries, this research elucidates the heterogeneous comprehension of aid acquisition and the indigenous adaptation of the practice and theory of architecture in postwar North Korea.

Won Pyong-Oh (1929-2020) and his ornithological research played a significant role in the emergence of South Korean ornithology and nature conservation, which previous scholarship has attributed to US scientific aid and the resulting interactions that occurred in the 1960s. Focusing on his family’s scientific activities—including the work of his father Won Hong Gu (1888-1970) and his eldest brother Won Pyung Hooi’s (1911-1995)—from the colonial period to the 1960s, this paper argues the crucial role played by transwar interactions between the Won family and Japanese biologists in Won Pyong-Oh’s ornithological turn. In particular, it traces the Won family’s natural history collection activities as what I call “science as a family affair,” that is, a division of scientific labor between senior and younger family members as a principal investigator and an assistant/collector. By tracing these activities within the family as well as their continued engagements with Japanese biologists, this paper will reveal that Won Pyong-Oh’s ornithological research and conservationist work developed in the wider context of the reconstruction of Asian ornithological and conservationist networks in the 1960s.

From October to December 1950, a large-scale massacre took place in Sinchon, Hwanghae Province. North Korea dubbed this incident “Sinchon Massacre” and claims that 35,383 people were slaughtered by the US military. In times of external and internal crises, North Korea has recalled the memory of the Sinchon Massacre to stir up anti- American sentiment among its people and achieve regime integration. However, the atrocious crimes of murder, arson, rape, and torture that North Korea attributes to the US military had actually been committed by members of the right-wing peace preservation corps in retaliation for the North Korean regime’s preventive custody measure. Nevertheless, North Korea shifted the blame for the Sinchon Massacre to the US military because there was a need to embrace the members of the base class who had betrayed the regime during the UN occupation of North Korea. To this end, North Korea included the air raids that indiscriminately killed civilians in the scope of “massacre” and named Harrison as the individual ultimately responsible for driving the North Korean people out to the site where they were eventually massacred. Moreover, former members of the peace preservation corps were classified into “active instigators” and “passive participants”－the scope of the former group was minimized, and the latter group was reeducated through home confinement and other forms of social punishment. Yet, the “counterrevolutionary” ideology prevalent in post-war North Korea proved to be an obstacle in achieving regime integration. In particular, it led to animosities and jealousies among members of production facilities, such as cooperative farms and factories, negatively impacting economic reconstruction and productivity growth. In an effort to resolve this issue, North Korea aimed to achieve societal integration and productivity growth by historicizing the Sinchon Massacre and fostering anti-American sentiment. Accordingly, the site of the massacre was transformed into the museum, and the move also served as a subtle warning to the former “hostile elements.”

There is a growing interest among historians in South Korean society’s engagement with the environment. Yet, many studies tend to accept a narrative based on a type of ‘post-materialist value’ thesis: Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the South Korean public, preoccupied with basic economic sustenance, showed minimal interest in the escalating environmental degradation. Environmental issues gained prominence only after the 1990s, it is presumed, as South Korea’s economic growth reached a certain threshold, accompanied by the rise of a substantial middle class that showed interest in quality-of-life and supported the expansion of the new environmental movement. Recent historical studies have challenged this narrative, revealing that ‘pollution’ problems had already surfaced as routine societal concerns in the 1970s. However, there remains a need for a critical examination of how the meanings and nature of environmental issues, including pollution, were understood and contested prior to the 1990s. Moreover, the assumption that environmental awareness naturally arose in response to a given trajectory of ‘development’ needs to be interrogated. This study addresses these limitations in previous studies. It investigates the intertwining concerns and discussions about pollution with those regarding the negative consequences of ‘high growth’ in South Korea from the late 1960s to the early-to-mid 1970s. Specifically, the study focuses on the emergence of radical political-economic perspectives on the environment, later embraced by the anti-pollution movement of the late 1970s and 1980s. The paper also explores the transnational influence and connections within these discussions regarding the problematic relationships between ‘growth’ and ‘pollution.’

This paper examines the unfolding of North Korean discourse on “<i>konghae (pollution)</i>” in the context of the Cold War and developmentalism during the 1970s. Scrutinizing how the North Korean regime justified its own environmental management approach by critiquing the handling of the <i>konghae</i> issue in capitalist states, this study elucidates the impact of North Korea’s Cold War framing on the intertwined dynamics of development and the environment. In particular, the import of Japanese polluting industries into South Korea triggered the introduction of the term <i>konghae</i> into the North Korean vernacular and the subsequent proliferation of related discourse, which may have also been influenced by the growing global consciousness of environmental matters and the corresponding dialogue on potential solutions.</br>While Cold War framing impeded North Korean acknowledgment of its own developing pollution problem, discourse on pollution expanded as it became harder to ignore the growing phenomenon of pollution within the country and awareness of pollution became more common. This led to efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to respond to environmental concerns in North Korea, such as the enactment of the Environmental Protection Law in 1986 and the incorporation of environmental rights into the Constitution in 1992. This paper highlights the significance of the 1970s as a pivotal pre-transition phase during which North Korea’s environmental discourse evolved from a confined focus on <i>konghae</i> to a broader, more comprehensive conception of the environment. Despite this progression, the developmentalist idea that technological advancement can resolve environmental challenges persists in the DPRK.

During the period of rapid economic growth since the 1970s, Korea imported many polluting industrial facilities from Japan, resulting in the generation of huge amounts of hazardous waste. While the problems of environmental degradation such as these were an integral part of Korea’s development process, they have received only scant attention in the official history of the country’s economic development, often being dismissed as peripheral issues. This paper aims to go beyond this tendency by rewriting the history of economic growth that underlay the disputes caused by the importation of polluting industries from Japan in the 1970s. Its features can be summarized as follows.</br>First, Japan was the most damaging pollution exporter to Korea in the 1970s, and it was also the direct channel to import the knowledge of pollution, and alternative logic against the pollution issues.</br>Second, discussions over industrial pollution in the 1970s occurred in the antagonistic relationship between four groups: the government, media, opposition party, and scholars.</br>Third, a group of experts played various roles, including bureaucrats, researchers, and policy makers, leading the discussion of pollution in Korean society in the 1970s.</br>It has been well over 50 years since 1970. Nevertheless, Korean society still does not hesitate to create areas and people that become shadows in the wake of development. This explains why we should focus on the “sick body” rather than the “numbers” in this age of science and technology.