Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line | Seoul National University Asia Center

Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line, a historical monograph on the modern history of the last symbol of China’s confrontation with Taiwan, Quemoy Island, has been translated and published as the sixth book in SNUAC Modern Asian History Series. The original work was published in 2008 by Michael Szonyi, an expert of the late Chinese empire and modern Chinese history and professor at Harvard University, and was translated into Korean by professors Young Sin Jeong (Catholic University) and Min Hwan Kim (Hanshin University). Zininzin has published Rebirth of a Cold War Island, Jinmen (14th book in SNUAC Asian Studies in a Global Context Series) and Thinking Peace and Unity in the Two Shores (4th book in SNU IPUS’s Para Pacem Peace Series) related to the Quemoy Island and China’s relationship with Taiwan, and now has published a major study on the issue.Prof. Michael Szonyi, the author, is a scholar of China’s Ming and Qing Dynasties and studied the history of the island as he stayed there in 2001 for a conference and came in contact with the residents as well as experience the research achievements of the local scholars. He combined literature review with field research and oral history and utilized local history to seek the answer from a larger perspective as he wrote this work.

The book comprises fourteen chapters; excluding the introduction and conclusion, twelve chapters are divided into parts of three chapters each.

1. Introduction: ordinary life in an extraordinary place

Part I. Geopoliticization Ascendant:
2. The battle of Guningtou
3. Politics of the war zone, 1949–1960
4. The 1954–55 artillery war
5. Militarization and the Jinmen civilian self-defense forces, 1949-1960
6. The 1958 artillery war

Part II. Militarization and Geopoliticization Change Course:
7. The 1960s: creating a Model County of the Three Principles of the People
8. The 1970s: combat villages and underground Jinmen

Part III. Life in Cold War-Time:
9. Combat economy
10. Women’s lives: military brothels, parades and emblems of mobilized modernity
11. Ghosts and Gods of the Cold War

Part IV. Demilitarization and Post-militarization:
12. Demilitarization and post-militarization
13. Memory and politics
14. Conclusion: redoubled marginality.

Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line is a historical work that provides detailed accounts of the island’s pain and recovery in the process of the Cold War and the post-militarization, along with the two previously published domestic works. This will serve as an example for the Korean peninsula in its task of building a peaceful system through improvement of the relationship between the North and the South.