Kornel Chang, "A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under U.S. Occupation" (Harvard UP, 2025)

04/05/25 • 55 min

Four decades of Japanese colonialism in Korea ended abruptly in August 1945. It took three weeks for U.S. troops to arrive, which started almost three years of U.S. military occupation. By the end of the occupation, Korea was permanently divided into North and South, with Seoul set on an authoritarian path that would persist for decades.

Kornel Chang covers these tumultuous three years in A Fractured Liberation: Korea under U.S. Occupation (Harvard University Press: 2025), and describes how the U.S.’s increased fears of Communism and the Soviet Union ended up puncturing Korean political aspirations.

Kornel Chang is Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University-Newark. He is a scholar of U.S. immigration and foreign relations, focusing on U.S.-East Asian relations. His first book Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands (University of California Press: 2012) is a history of Asian migration to the Pacific Northwest, revealing how their movements sparked some of the first battles over the border in North America. It won the Association for Asian American Studies History Book Prize and was a finalist for the John Hope Franklin Book Prize.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of A Fractured Liberation. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of A Fractured Liberation. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Previous Episode

Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the central but underappreciated importance of global decolonization to the divergence between mainstream liberalism and the Black freedom movement in postwar America. Dr. Klug reconsiders what has long been seen as a matter of primarily domestic policy in light of a series of debates concerning self-determination, postcolonial economic development, and the meanings of colonialism and decolonization. These debates deeply influenced the discord between Black activists and state policymakers and formed a crucial dividing line in national politics in the 1960s and 1970s.

The result is a history that broadens our understanding of ideological formation—particularly how Americans conceptualized racial power and political economy—by revealing a much wider and more dynamic network of influences. Linking intellectual, political, and social movement history, The Internal Colony illuminates how global decolonization transformed the terms of debate over race and social class in the twentieth-century United States.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Next Episode

Lavanya Vemsani, "Reframing India in World History" (Lexington Books, 2024)

Reframing India in World History breaks the stereotypical portrayal of India based on misconstrued historical theories. Prevalent constructions of Indian history are tinged with colonial historical frameworks and presentation. It is important to understand India for what it is in the past based on self-determined frameworks derived from Indian history to reclaim India’s place in the world history. Based on new evidence-based research, Lavanya Vemsani explores patterns of civilization that are indigenous to India to investigate its history from the beginning to the present. This book covers topics central to a comprehensive understanding of the nation including a discussion of long held cultural notions, civilization continuity, and the historical crises deriving from conquests and colonization.

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