Open-access edition of "Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War" by Suzy Kim

FAIN: DR-292403-23

Cornell University (Ithaca, NY 14850-2820)
Mahinder Singh Kingra (Project Director: November 2022 to April 2025)

In Among Women across Worlds, Suzy Kim excavates the transnational linkages between women of North Korea and a worldwide women's movement. Women of Asia, especially those espousing communism, are often portrayed as victims or pawns of a patriarchal Confucian state. Kim undercuts this standard analysis through detailed archival work in the international women's press, and finds that North Korean women asserted themselves in unexpected places from the late 1940s—just before the official beginning of the Korean War—to 1975, the year designated by the UN as International Women's Year.

Media Coverage

Review (Review)
Author(s): Elisabeth Armstrong
Publication: Journal of Social History
Date: 1/28/2024
Abstract: Suzy Kim's book Among Women, Across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press) is a tour de force that will upend the longstanding silence about the vibrant complexity of Marxist feminisms that has pervaded scholarship on the transnational women's movement. For those of us who have begun to excavate this lost story of transnational feminism, Kim's work shows that Korean women are central to the post-World War II origins story.
URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922404

Associated Products

Single Publication (Open Access eBook or Collection)
Publication Type: Single Publication
Title: Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War
Year: 2023
ISBN: 9781501767326
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Author: Suzy Kim
Abstract: 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.
Primary URL: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501767326/among-women-across-worlds/
Primary URL Description: This URL links to the book's webpage on the Cornell University Press website, which allows users to download the Open Access ebooks as either ePub or PDF files for free.
Secondary URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/book.99765
Secondary URL Description: This URL links to the book's record on the Project MUSE site, indicating its status as an Open Access title. NB: Although updated files with changes to the copyright page indicating that Open Access publication has been supported by the NEH have been disseminated to our ebook partners like Project MUSE and JSTOR, these platforms may not have replaced the existing file with the revised file.
URL 3: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv2b07v5h
URL 3 Description: This URL links to the book's record on the JSTOR site, indicating its status as an Open Access title. NB: Although updated files with changes to the copyright page indicating that Open Access publication has been supported by the NEH have been disseminated to our ebook partners like Project MUSE and JSTOR, these platforms may not have replaced the existing file with the revised file.
Type: Single author monograph

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