Introduction: A victory of survival When the guns fell silent along the Imjin and the Yalu in July 1953, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) had survived—but only just. The Korean War had levelled cities, annihilated industrial plant, uprooted millions, and killed perhaps a tenth of the peninsula’s population. From that near-ruin, Kim Il-sung … Continue reading Building a State Behind Barbed Wire: North Korea’s Post-War Reconstruction and Stalinist Transformation (1953–1979)