The book offers, as Professor Reyes writes in his Preface, a brisk account of relations between Korea and Japan prior to 1895, followed by a close examination of Korean diplomatic relations from the Russo-Japanese war to the outbreak of the Korean War. Throughout his narrative, Dr. Hu intersperses analyses of Korea’s status as a country from the standpoint of international law. Ultimately, the work is a study for Dr. Hu of how the Korean peninsula first lost, and then regained its international legal personality in the 20th century, albeit at the tragic price of its unity.

The dissertation is, however, more than just an exercise in diplomatic history coupled with technical legal commentary. The book is itself an important document of how “the Korean question” was perceived by international lawyers in the 1950s when Dr. Hu was writing. Sixty years later, it is salutary to reflect on that perception in light of the tensions between North and South Korea that continue to beset us in the 21st century. The reader might ask whether international lawyers could and should have done something more after World War II to achieve Korean unity and whether, in light of the failures of the 1950s highlighted by Dr. Hu, international law should be re-thinking its premises today.