Harvard Professor George McCune (1908-1948) was the son of the missionary George Shannon McCune, and was born in Pyongyang. He cofounded the McCune-Reischauer system of romanization of Korean, which was accepted as the academic standard until the South Korean government offered their new, more web-friendly method of standardization in 2000. A Korea scholar, this book was born out of U.S. involvement in Korea at the end of the Pacific War, and as the tensions with Russia grew along the 38th Parallel. It is an extremely valuable resource that helps document the five years of liberation, 1945-1950, including economic, agricultural, geographic, American involvement and other political details. The appendices are rich with documentation from the period.