From the 1948, North and South Korea had been a reflection of the bipolar world view generated by the Second World War. The North lives under Communist rule and the South leans towards the Capitalistic worldview, primarily mooted by the United States of America.
After the Korean War (1950-53), the two countries stood divided till recently. Now a time has come when a South Korean Farmer’s Cooperative wants to publish thirteen North Korean novels.
Earlier South Korean greats like Park Wan Suh brought out novels about the war. Some have been translated to English. They spoke of the sadness of the war and the way it divided people from similar cultural backgrounds — much in the tradition of other countries recovering from the backlash of colonial regimes that dominated Asian history during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
