North Korea's Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953–1965

In 2017, during a lecture at the US Library of Congress, historian Andre Schmid implored his audience to consider “Is a history of North Korea without Kim Il Sung possible?” before emphasizing that one could “get beyond a Cold War analytical dead end” by sifting through published materials that North Korean people regularly encountered.¹ Now, seven years later, with the publication of his long-awaited monograph North Korea's Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953–1965, Schmid's answer to his question is apparently “Perhaps not.” Not only is the name of the first North Korean leader a part of the title, Kim Il Sung's political ascent is one of several narrative threads holding Schmid's voluminous work together. Nevertheless, Schmid devotes considerably more attention to those who shaped the “Party-state” discourse in widely read publications, arguing that the personality cult around the DPRK leader “emerged out...