Among Women across Worlds

Winner of the Hong Yung Lee Book Award of the Center for Korean Studies, University of California, Berkeley In Among Women across Worlds, Suzy Kim explores the transnational connections between North Korean women and the global women's movement. Asian women, especially communists, are often depicted as victims of a patriarchal state. Kim challenges this view through extensive archival research, revealing that North Korean women asserted themselves from the late 1940s to 1975, before the Korean War began and up to the UN's International Women's Year. Kim centers on North Korea and the "East" to present a new genealogy of the global women's movement. Women of the Korean Democratic Women's Union (KDWU), part of the global left women's movement led by the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), argued that family and domestic issues should be central to both national and international debates. They highlighted the connections between race, nationality, sex, and class in systems of exploitation. Their intersectional program proclaimed "no peace without justice," "the personal is the political," and "women's rights are human rights," long before Western activists adopted these ideas. Among Women across Worlds uncovers movements and ideas foundational to today's era.

Suzy Kim is Professor of Korean History at Rutgers University. She is the author of Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950.

Introduction: Decolonial Genealogies
Part 1: War and Peace
1. Women Against the Korean War
2. Anti-Imperialist Struggle for a Just Peace
Part 2: Third World Rising
3. Struggle Between Two Lines
4. Women's Work Is Never Done
Part 3: Cultural Revolutions
5. Aesthetics of Everyday Folk
6. Communist Women Around the World
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index