In this Teaching Forum special, Prof. Kim shifts attention away from current-affairs concern and re-imagines North Korea in the context of the regional (geopolitical), cultural and environmental histories of East Asia, going beyond its most recent incarnation as a bizarre remnant of the supposedly defunct Cold War world order. He focuses on three historical moments: the sinking of the American armed merchant ship General Sherman at Pyongyang, today's capital of North Korea, in 1866, the significance of the North Korean city Kaesong in the East Asian trade of such goods as ginseng, and Resident-General Ito Hirobumi's effort to marshal the support of Korean elite for the new Korean Emperor Sunjong (1907-1910).