This eagerly anticipated work is the fullest English-language treatment concerning regional identity and discrimination against northerners in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). Readers may have first encountered the question of regional discrimination in Kim's excellent first book on the 1812 Hong Kyŏngnae rebellion.11 As a fuller regional history of a “place on the political and cultural margin” (p. 143), Voice from the North is a mature book written by a scholar in her prime, reflecting a familiarity with the Chosŏn north that has appreciably deepened over a decade of research and numerous publications.
The professed aim of this latest ambitious study is to examine the “northern region of Chosŏn Korea, P'yŏngan Province in particular, from a regional perspective and through one man's [Yi Sihang's] life” (p. 3). The book offers four succinct main chapters, of which three are focused readings of Yi's career and life. The fourth chapter describes the commemoration...
