THE TWO KOREAS: A Contemporary History.

By Don Oberdorfer. Addison Wesley. 472 pp. $30

A year in Korea, Americans who have spent time there say, is like two years in any other country—not because the life is unpleasant (far from it), but because events rocket forward at twice their normal pace. Since the post–World War II separation of North and South, which followed 35 years of Japanese colonial rule, much of Korean history has been one of drama and instability. Tough, sentimental Koreans bridled beneath their superpower protectors and sought to rule their own kingdoms—in the North, a kingdom of hermits; in the South, one of world players.

The South did become a world player during its miraculous economic development of the 1960s, and a true working democracy in 1987 thanks in part to the surprising self-restraint of President Chun Doohwan, who seven years earlier had brutally suppressed a political uprising. Lurking beneath the fiscal and political successes, though, was a level of violence that became part of the Korean power game. In this regard, the Korean War continued long after the conventional fighting ended in 1953. General Park Chung-hee, who orchestrated a military coup and took over the nation in 1961, was delivering a speech in 1974 when his wife, sitting on stage, was fatally shot by a North Korean agent—yet Park proceeded to complete the speech. (In 1979, Park himself was assassinated by the chief of his intelligence agency.) Amid preparations for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, North Korea blew up a South Korean airliner, but the Olympics proceeded as planned, becoming South Korea’s great coming-out party. The North Korean saboteur, who was captured and who confessed, is now a born-again Christian. It is, as the author observes, "a land of surprises."

Oberdorfer, a former Washington Post reporter and the author of Tet!, provides a useful overview of Korean history since World War II. He describes the frustrations and strains as the two Koreas have tried to get together—the many promising moves that have ended in failure. He offers unforgettable accounts of events that he witnessed, including the assassination of Park’s wife. And, in a cloak-and-dagger story reminiscent of John le Carré, he recounts the defection in 1996 of Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-level North Korean to change sides. I wish I could have read this book before going to South Korea as American ambassador in 1986. It’s a fascinating account for anyone who cares about Korea, who worries about the United States in Asia, or who just likes a good read.

—James Lilley