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In North Korea: First Eyewitness Report
Anna Louise Strong, writer, lecturer and world traveller, was the first correspondent to report from North Korea and the only American correspondent to travel extensively through that country interviewing people in all walks of life. This booklet is based on her observations there. Miss Strong has achieved international eminence as a correspondent for her reports from the major capitals of the world and her coverage of some of the most historic events of our times. Among her many books are The Soviets Expected It, Peoples of the USSR, and I Saw the New Poland. Her latest, just published, is Tomorrow's China.
66 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2011
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About the author
Anna Louise Strong
132 books67 followersAmerican journalist and activist, best known for her reporting on and support for communist movements in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 31, 2020
A rare glimpse into North Korea pre-Korean war, and the numerous advancements in worker power and crating a independent Korea. Strong writes in a beautiful way that humanizes the people, while offering funny and inspiring stories.
July 24, 2023
Really quick and easy read and mostly filled with interviews with various people in northern Korea prior to 1950, ranging from miners and farmers to ministers and even Kim Il Sung. Very detailed look specifically at the processes of state formation, land reform, and nationalization of industries. Strong is a little condescending to Koreans at times but her journalism is good and she reports what people told her faithfully.
January 10, 2019
Propaganda 101.
A must for all that want to learn more on basics of propaganda.
A must for all that want to learn more on basics of propaganda.
September 23, 2021
Fascinating reporting from Anna Louise Strong’s visit to North Korea in the summer of 1947.
She claims she had ample autonomy to roam the Russian zone of Korean, and comments on her discussions with individuals on both coasts.
As she writes, Koreans established People’s Committees shortly after Japan surrenders and were in both north and south Korea. In 1945, there were no political parties in Korea; Japanese did not allow them. The US dismissed the People’s Committees when they arrived; the Soviets let them exists, and allowed or encouraged people friendly to the Soviet Union gradually to gain influence. She describes the first elections at all levels of organization: village, county, province and zone.
Her reporting captures changes that were implemented in North Korea rather rapidly (i.e., within about a year of Japanese surrender): passed (March 1, 1946) and implement land reform (April 1946), created modern labor laws (limiting daily hours, equal pay for men and women, minimum vacation—all in contrast to the rules in the Japanese colony), education for all. From visits to two farming communities, she reported the impact of the land reform law, citing availability of food, new houses being built, and electric being established in those villages, all contrasting with the lack of such items in colonial Korea.
The author was also sympathetic (perhaps too soft an expression) about communist efforts in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Thus, she has a bias. But the picture she paints of northern Korea (i.e., Soviet zone) aligns with more recent work, such as Suzi Kim’s Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution 1945-1950. In contrast, Strong’s reporting provides sharply different images from the pro-American South Korean perspective, as captured by Henry Chung’s The Russians Came to Korea (published 1947), nearly contemporaneous with the author’s work. Interestingly, both often cite the same event, but provide dramatically different explanations. For example, Strong’s reporting indicates that the North Koreans had far more independence in their elections than does Chung, who uses the word stooge, often Russian stooge, to refer to the government of North Korea.
There are some comments made by Strong that I cannot verify, or in which she reports what people tell her and does not verify independently. For example, Strong claims that “by the second year [of land reform], 1947, the year of my visit, the situation had changed. Farms had expanded in North Korea, there was a good crop, and a half million people moved north. They were counted at the quarantined stations at over 1,500 per day.” (page 59). Left-leaning individuals, including Communists, left South Korea to avoid jail and persecution. Yet, I can’t verify they came for opportunity.
The current book edition was first released March 15, 2011. The author published the original pamphlet in 1949. I got the impression (possibly false) that the current text was based on a pdf scan of the original, with some optical character recognition technique achieving a high percentage of correctness—but not 100 percent.
FB. A unique eyewitness account of life in North Korea in the summer of 1947, nearly two years after Japanese rule. The author’s observation aligned with later analysis, with greater documentation, such as Suzi Kim’s Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution 1945-1950, and differs sharply from other contemporary reporting, such as in Henry Chung’s The Russians Came to Korea (published 1947). Both Strong and Chung represent different world views, on display in their works.
She claims she had ample autonomy to roam the Russian zone of Korean, and comments on her discussions with individuals on both coasts.
As she writes, Koreans established People’s Committees shortly after Japan surrenders and were in both north and south Korea. In 1945, there were no political parties in Korea; Japanese did not allow them. The US dismissed the People’s Committees when they arrived; the Soviets let them exists, and allowed or encouraged people friendly to the Soviet Union gradually to gain influence. She describes the first elections at all levels of organization: village, county, province and zone.
Her reporting captures changes that were implemented in North Korea rather rapidly (i.e., within about a year of Japanese surrender): passed (March 1, 1946) and implement land reform (April 1946), created modern labor laws (limiting daily hours, equal pay for men and women, minimum vacation—all in contrast to the rules in the Japanese colony), education for all. From visits to two farming communities, she reported the impact of the land reform law, citing availability of food, new houses being built, and electric being established in those villages, all contrasting with the lack of such items in colonial Korea.
The author was also sympathetic (perhaps too soft an expression) about communist efforts in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Thus, she has a bias. But the picture she paints of northern Korea (i.e., Soviet zone) aligns with more recent work, such as Suzi Kim’s Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution 1945-1950. In contrast, Strong’s reporting provides sharply different images from the pro-American South Korean perspective, as captured by Henry Chung’s The Russians Came to Korea (published 1947), nearly contemporaneous with the author’s work. Interestingly, both often cite the same event, but provide dramatically different explanations. For example, Strong’s reporting indicates that the North Koreans had far more independence in their elections than does Chung, who uses the word stooge, often Russian stooge, to refer to the government of North Korea.
There are some comments made by Strong that I cannot verify, or in which she reports what people tell her and does not verify independently. For example, Strong claims that “by the second year [of land reform], 1947, the year of my visit, the situation had changed. Farms had expanded in North Korea, there was a good crop, and a half million people moved north. They were counted at the quarantined stations at over 1,500 per day.” (page 59). Left-leaning individuals, including Communists, left South Korea to avoid jail and persecution. Yet, I can’t verify they came for opportunity.
The current book edition was first released March 15, 2011. The author published the original pamphlet in 1949. I got the impression (possibly false) that the current text was based on a pdf scan of the original, with some optical character recognition technique achieving a high percentage of correctness—but not 100 percent.
FB. A unique eyewitness account of life in North Korea in the summer of 1947, nearly two years after Japanese rule. The author’s observation aligned with later analysis, with greater documentation, such as Suzi Kim’s Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution 1945-1950, and differs sharply from other contemporary reporting, such as in Henry Chung’s The Russians Came to Korea (published 1947). Both Strong and Chung represent different world views, on display in their works.
October 21, 2022
“Few facts about Korea are allowed to reach the American people. Information from South Korea is heavily censored by General MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters, while facts from North Korea never appear at all. This pamphlet is an attempt to bring such facts.”
Right before the start of the Fatherland Liberation War (known as the Korean War in the West, that is if it is known at all), Anna Louise Strong presents a radical perspective of the division of the Korean Peninsula using her prior knowledge and firsthand experience in the country. Her experience and the experiences of many other witnesses have vindicated north Korea’s narrative of history post Japanese occupation, and proved the true intentions of the US occupation of south Korea or the ROK (derived from the homogenous “Korean People’s Republic” that the US dissolved in favor of a police state). We get to see the attitudes of the north Korean people concerning their democracy, Russian occupation, and liberation. This should be required reading for anyone interested in current Korean politics and Korean history. Today the north is a third world state after the brutal bombing genocide that killed 10% of the Korean population, or 33% of the north Korean population where the bombing was most concentrated (~3.5 million). In contrast, the south is very wealthy, and performs crippling mock-invasions of the DPRK annually with the support of US troops [It can be said that south Korean troops are also US troops, since for most of their existence they have been under the complete control of the US, from founding to 1994. Henceforth, the US has exercised “wartime control” over the entirety of the south Korean armed forces, meaning that in a real invasion, the US would take over. Indeed, the only times the south Korean armed forces have been utilized has been in service of the US (in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq)] and with the intention of crushing the DPRK’s economy and inducing mass misery. In south Korea the forces of suppression are still robust, the National Security Law being its main form. Aside from a few condescending remarks, the report is near-perfect. Considering the abysmal lack of knowledge on Korea in the US, the report will allow you to do away with the stupid clamor of the general population.
Right before the start of the Fatherland Liberation War (known as the Korean War in the West, that is if it is known at all), Anna Louise Strong presents a radical perspective of the division of the Korean Peninsula using her prior knowledge and firsthand experience in the country. Her experience and the experiences of many other witnesses have vindicated north Korea’s narrative of history post Japanese occupation, and proved the true intentions of the US occupation of south Korea or the ROK (derived from the homogenous “Korean People’s Republic” that the US dissolved in favor of a police state). We get to see the attitudes of the north Korean people concerning their democracy, Russian occupation, and liberation. This should be required reading for anyone interested in current Korean politics and Korean history. Today the north is a third world state after the brutal bombing genocide that killed 10% of the Korean population, or 33% of the north Korean population where the bombing was most concentrated (~3.5 million). In contrast, the south is very wealthy, and performs crippling mock-invasions of the DPRK annually with the support of US troops [It can be said that south Korean troops are also US troops, since for most of their existence they have been under the complete control of the US, from founding to 1994. Henceforth, the US has exercised “wartime control” over the entirety of the south Korean armed forces, meaning that in a real invasion, the US would take over. Indeed, the only times the south Korean armed forces have been utilized has been in service of the US (in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq)] and with the intention of crushing the DPRK’s economy and inducing mass misery. In south Korea the forces of suppression are still robust, the National Security Law being its main form. Aside from a few condescending remarks, the report is near-perfect. Considering the abysmal lack of knowledge on Korea in the US, the report will allow you to do away with the stupid clamor of the general population.
December 13, 2022
A prelude to the Korean War. Strong does well to contrast the administrations in the north and south for an audience with infamous ignorance of the issue.
The determination and resilience of the Korean people is astounding, and the WPK is seen charting a bold and brilliant path toward socialist construction, avoiding many of the mistakes made in both the Soviet and Chinese approaches.
As a minor criticism, I'd push against Strong's comparison of the WPK to the Bryan-led Populist Party. The comparison is made to draw in sympathy from progressive Americans (and perhaps to highlight the coalition between communists and less-class-conscious patriots), but even after absorbing the People's Party, the WPK still had a political character closer to the Bolsheviks (post-absorption of the left SRs) than to such a short-lived and emaciated organization.
The determination and resilience of the Korean people is astounding, and the WPK is seen charting a bold and brilliant path toward socialist construction, avoiding many of the mistakes made in both the Soviet and Chinese approaches.
As a minor criticism, I'd push against Strong's comparison of the WPK to the Bryan-led Populist Party. The comparison is made to draw in sympathy from progressive Americans (and perhaps to highlight the coalition between communists and less-class-conscious patriots), but even after absorbing the People's Party, the WPK still had a political character closer to the Bolsheviks (post-absorption of the left SRs) than to such a short-lived and emaciated organization.
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May 4, 2025Me when I lie (good examination of East Asian agitprop)
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews