To the Diamond Mountains

A Hundred-Year Journey through China and Korea

By (author) Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Not available to order

Publication date:

15 November 2010

Length of book:

216 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442205055

This compelling and engaging book takes readers on a unique journey through China and North and South Korea. Tessa Morris-Suzuki travels from Harbin in the north to Busan in the south, and on to the mysterious Diamond Mountains, which lie at the heart of the Korean Peninsula's crisis. As she follows in the footsteps of a remarkable writer, artist, and feminist who traced the route a century ago—in the year when Korea became a Japanese colony—her saga reveals an unseen face of China and the two Koreas: a world of monks, missionaries, and smugglers; of royal tombs and socialist mausoleums; a world where today's ideological confrontations are infused with myth and memory. Northeast Asia is poised at a moment of profound change as the rise of China is transforming the global order and tensions run high on the Korean Peninsula, the last Cold War divide. Probing the deep past of this region, To the Diamond Mountains offers a new and unexpected perspective on its present and future.

Prologue: May Day on the Yalu River
Chapter 1: On the Move: To Harbin and Hulan
Chapter 2: Manchurian Ghosts: Changchun and Shenyang
Chapter 3: Of Sacred Mountains: Liaoyang and the Thousand Peaks
Chapter 4: Borderlands: From Shanyang to Dandong
Chapter 5: Across the Bridge: To Sinuiju and beyond
Chapter 6: Diversion: On Time
Chapter 7: The New Jerusalem: Pyongyang
Chapter 8: Both Sides Now: Kaesong, Dorasan, and the Line in Between
Chapter 9: In the Palace of the Murdered Queen: Seoul
Chapter 10: Islands in the Bay: To Busan
Chapter 11: The Road to the Mountains: South from Wonsan
Chapter 12: Traveling Hopefully

Tessa Morris-Suzuki's new book is a brilliant addition [to the literature on North Korea]. Seamlessly weaving scholarly research and humanitarian concerns into a gracefully structured travelogue, the author traces, with remarkable insight, the persistence of human lives beyond politics and ideologies in northeastern China and the divided Korea. . . . This book introduces us to a kaleidoscope of individuals, places, and topics, which together reveal the complexly interwoven issues facing a region whose destiny will impact the future of the world. . . . Beautifully written and full of insights, it offers both scholars and general readers a superb reading on Northeast Asia.