Professor Gregg A. Brazinsky capped 2025 with the publication of his latest monograph: Cold War Comrades: An Emotional History of the Sino-North Korean Alliance.
In this major new interpretation of Sino-North Korean relations, Brazinsky argues that neither the PRC nor the DPRK would have survived as socialist states without the ideal of Sino-North Korean friendship. Chinese and North Korean leaders encouraged mutual empathy and sentimental attachments between their citizens and then used these emotions to strengthen popular commitment to socialist state building. Drawing on an array of previously unexamined Chinese and North Korean sources, Professor Brazinsky shows how mutual empathy helped to shape political, military, and cultural interactions between the two socialist allies. He explains why the unique relationship that Beijing and Pyongyang forged during the Korean War remained important throughout the Cold War and how it continues to influence the international relations of East Asia today.
Cold War Comrades is Brazinsky's third book. He previously authored Winning the Third World, which focuses on Sino-American rivalry in the Third World, and Nation Building in South Korea, which explores U.S.-South Korean relations during the Cold War. Currently, he is working on his next book project, which examines American nation-building in Asia during the Cold War.