Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War

by Suzy Kim

Winner of the Hong Yung Lee Book Award of the Center for Korean Studies, University of California, Berkeley

In Among Women across Worlds , Suzy Kim explores the transnational connections between North Korean women and the global women's movement. Asian women, especially communists, are often depicted as victims of a patriarchal state. Kim challenges this view through extensive archival research, revealing that North Korean women asserted themselves from the late 1940s to 1975, before the Korean War began and up to the UN's International Women's Year.

Kim centers on North Korea and the "East" to present a new genealogy of the global women's movement. Women of the Korean Democratic Women's Union (KDWU), part of the global left women's movement led by the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), argued that family and domestic issues should be central to both national and international debates. They highlighted the connections between race, nationality, sex, and class in systems of exploitation. Their intersectional program proclaimed "no peace without justice," "the personal is the political," and "women's rights are human rights," long before Western activists adopted these ideas. Among Women across Worlds uncovers movements and ideas foundational to today's era.

Genres: History

348 pages, Hardcover

Published February 15, 2023

About the author

Suzy Kim is Associate Professor of Korean History at Rutgers University.

Reviews

[Ennu Leiwo · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think everyone around me is getting annoyed as i keep referring to this book all the time lol. but what a great way it was to start familiarising oneself with Korean history, learning and unlearning the narratives of history we've had pushed down our throats since forever...

[csillagkohó · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

3,5 // soms wat te hard gericht op quotes en formele minutia uit conferenties (zeker in de vroegere hoofdstukken), maar toch een coole duik in thema's die zowel in geschiedenissen van het feminisme als het communisme onderbelicht blijven

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

History of left-wing feminist movements such as the WIDF; their emphasis on intersectionality and strive for equality .
The majority of the book is a discussion of specific figures and their activism, as well as the collective work of diverse groups of women standing against oppression.Specifically, Kim focuses on the peace movement against the Korean war that was widely suppressed in America. She talks about an overall suppression of transnational feminist history during this time as a direct result of Cold War propaganda.
I really enjoyed the chapter that discussed works of Chinese, Soviet and Korean folk art and their reflections of social change. Kim discusses the fact that in Korea, language shifted to correlate motherhood with revolution, comparing maternal responsibility with that of collective duty toward the building of a new society. She also discusses various ideological changes, both in attitude and in policy, that had the end goal of liberating women from household responsibility; the personal became political in an unprecedented way.

The book was tedious in some places. The writing was a little hyperbolic and overly poetic in places that it didn't need to be. EG when discussing the women's movements oftentimes she would detail specific events that weren't really politically relevant but rather served to emphasise the beauty of transnationally etc. Which honestly just felt unnecessary

[Syntaxx · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for my 'history of korea' class during our unit on north korean industrialization.