For the Koreans, no sport has surpassed football in terms of its popularity and national importance, from the Japanese colonization era onwards. However, its importance has developed over time as a result of unusual and agonizing historical events, including the tragic split between North and South Korea.This volume attempts to assess football’s changing political and cultural place in Korea over the course of the twentieth century, from the Japanese colonial period via the Korean W...

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology, ICISC 2014, held in Seoul, South Korea in December 2014. The 27 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 91 submissions during two rounds of reviewing. The papers provide the latest results in research, development and applications in the field of information security and cryptology. They are organized in topical sections o...

'China's reemergence as a global economic powerhouse has compressed into a single generation an industrial and urban revolution on a scale the world has never seen. Its transformation looks to many foreigners, and to millions of newly prosperous Chinese, like a near-miraculous escape from the agonies of its recent history - late imperial, warlord-republican and Maoist. The great merit of Jonathan Fenby's vivid account of the years since 1850 is to underline how heavily that history still w...

Zhou Enlai, the premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 until his death in 1976, is the last Communist political leader to be revered by the Chinese people. He is considered "a modern saint" who offered protection to his people during the Cultural Revolution; an admirable figure in an otherwise traumatic and bloody era. Works about Zhou in China are heavily censored, and every hint of criticism is removed -- so when Gao Wenqian first published this groundbreaking, provocative b...

Acclaimed by the Daily Mail as 'definitive and harrowing', this is the final volume of 'The People's Trilogy', begun by the Samuel Johnson prize-winning Mao's Great Famine.'The seminal English language work on the subject' Sunday Times'A major contribution to scholarship on modern China, one that is unequalled, certainly in the English language … both revealing and rewarding reading – for specialists and n...

‘Impressive … Fascinating’ Sunday Times‘An authoritative history’ Financial Times‘Gripping and richly researched’ Rana MitterA superb new history of the rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule.The rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule are told with unique insight in this new history by Michael Sheridan, drawing on eyewitness rep...

'EPIC' Financial Times'PERCEPTIVE' The Sunday Times'BLISSFUL' Daily Telegraph'FASCINATING' Independent on Sunday'TERRIFIC' Henry Winter'EXCELLENT*' Simon Kuper*The fascinating story of football in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, from the award-winning author of Inve...

A practical and accessible guide to an ancient but rapidly changing culture—now revised and updatedPerfect for business, pleasure, or armchair travelers, China A to Z explains the customs, culture, and etiquette essential for any trip or for anyone wanting to understand this complex country. In one hundred brief, reader-friendly essays alphabetized by subject, this fully revised and updated edition provides a crash course in the etiquette and politics of contemporary China...

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central-geographically, historically, and politically-to the future of the Western Balkans and, in turn, its potential future within the European Union. But the fate of both Kosovo, condemned by Serbian leaders as a "fake state" and the region as a whole, remains uncertain...

The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea for over 60 years. Most of that period has found the country suffering under mature Stalinism characterized by manipulation, brutality and tight social control. Nevertheless, some citizens of Kim Jong Il's regime manage to transcend his tyranny in their daily existence. This book describes that difficult but determined existence and the world that the North Koreans have created for themselves in the face of oppression. Many features of this world are u...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZEThe extraordinary and essential story of how China became the powerful country it is today.Even at the high noon of Europe's empires China managed to be one of the handful of countries not to succumb. Invaded, humiliated and looted, China nonetheless kept its sovereignty. Robert Bickers' major new book is the first to describe fully what has proved to be one of the modern era's most important st...

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central-geographically, historically, and politically-to the future of the Western Balkans and, in turn, its potential future within the European Union. But the fate of both Kosovo, condemned by Serbian leaders as a "fake state" and the region as a whole, remains uncert...