Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953–1961

Last orders in Pyongyang

본 연구는 남한의 2015 개정 음악과 교육과정과 북한의 2013 개정 음악과 교육과정을 비교 분석하여 통일을 대비하여 남북한 음악과 교육과정 통합을 위해 해결해야 할 시사점을 도출함을 목적으로 한다. 남북한 음악과 교육과정 구성, 문서 체제, 항목별 내용(성격, 목표, 내용, 교수․학습 방향, 평가 방향, 교과서 집필 방향)을 비교한 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 음악과의 정의와 역할의 진술 내용, 표현과 감상 영역을 주요한 내용 영역으로 설정하고 있는 점은 남북한 음악과 교육과정의 공통점이라고 할 수 있다. 이는 교육과정을 구성하는 기본적인 항목에서 공통점을 가지고 있는 것이기 때문에 지속시켜 나갈 필요가 있다. 둘째, 북한 음악과 교육과정의 ‘음악무용’ 과목 제시, 애국주의와 사상의 강조, 성취기준의 구체적 제시, 교과서 집필 방향의 상세한 제시 등은 남한 교육과정과의 차이점이다. 교육과정과 교과서의 역할에 대한 시각 차이와 사상적 측면은 앞으로 좁혀나가야 할 중요한 쟁점이다. 이러한 남북한 음악과 교육과정에서의 차이를 줄여 나가기 위해서는 총론과 연계한 남북한 음악과 교육과정 연구, 남북한 음악 용어 차이 극복을 위한 기초 연구, 남북한 공통 음악과 교육과정의 개발 및 적합성 검토가 후속 연구로 수행되어야 한다.This study aims to analyze the characteristics of the revised music curriculum of North and South and draw implications associated with curriculum integration between the two countries. This study set out to compare North and South Korean music curriculums in organization, document system, and content by the item(character, goal, content, teaching and learning direction, evaluation direction, and writing direction for textbooks). The comparison results were as follows: First, both the North and South Korean music curriculums set the definitions and roles of the music subject and its expression and appreciation domains as major areas, which suggests that both of them need to continue these basic items since they are common between their curriculums. Secondly, the North Korean music curriculum was different from its South Korean counterpart in offering the Music and Dance”subject, putting an emphasis on patriotism and ideology, providing specific achievement criteria, and setting directions for textbook writing in details. North and South Korea need to narrow a gap in important issues such as different views of roles of curriculums and textbooks and ideological aspects. These differences between North and South Korean music curriculums can be resolved by doing research on North and South Korean music curriculums associated with the general introduction, basic research to overcome differences in musical terms between North and South Korea, and follow-up research on the development of common music curriculums between North and South Korea and the review of their fitness.

The image is very familiar to us: a scholar overcoming Cold War barriers to study a land where travel, let alone research, is impossible; their diligence paying off by locating materials that allow them to circumvent the obstacles and the propaganda created by the world’s “most isolated” regime; the resulting research offering a never-before-seen view into the inner truths of this nigh-impenetrable land.Or, at least, so we would have it.This is the image we North Korean researchers have often taken for ourselves.1 Playing off of old colonial images of the “hermit kingdom” now transferred to Pyongyang, our work has tended to capitalize on ideas of North Korea as a scholarly terra incognita, as though it was the last blank space on the map in an otherwise globalized world. This tendency, encouraged by the commercial instincts of publishers, has emphasized the solitary scholar working in a challenging environment while downplaying how this self-representation reinforces many of the shibboleths prominent in the media that our own research ostensibly seeks to dispel.In suggesting that this self-representation is, at best, a tad on the dramatic side and, at worst, self-serving, the seven articles in this special issue make one very simple point: the study of North Korea may not be so difficult after all. Ranging from investigations into science fiction literature to explorations of textual exchanges between the North and South, from the uses of quantitative data to ruminations on possible research agendas for anthropologists, and from treatments of Chinese soldier war memoirs to forays into international politics, this special issue shows that just because we cannot go to North Korea does not mean research is impossible. This special issue demonstrates that what might be called the “North Korean archive” is much broader and deeper than normally assumed. Indeed, arguably more sources exist for North Korea than for many other historical periods, including virtually any era leading up to the Chosŏn dynasty. As much as limits exist to these sources, the authors of this special issue ensure that the days of declaiming, “We can’t get there” or lamenting, “There are no sources” should be behind us.So, too, do they ask a wide array of research questions, based on the methodology of each author’s discipline. In so doing, they expand our understanding of what it is possible to ask when it comes to North Korea and cut through some of the Cold War conceptual categories that have boxed in our research. The result is a more varied and diverse understanding. Brought together as part of a workshop sponsored by the Institute for Korean Studies at George Washington University and organized by Professor Gregg Brazinsky and Professor Jisoo Kim, these authors worked together through an online workshop and roundtable to consider the past, current, and future directions of research on North Korea. Everyone present agreed significant shifts were underway. True, there remain questions that cannot be answered, yet there are plenty of materials for new questions with lots of answers. The articles themselves simply get on with the work of doing research, showing that rich research possibilities exist by deploying different sources and asking novel questions.At the heart of this special issue is the question of opening up access, which, however infeasible geopolitically, is certainly possible for scholarship. Degree of access, of course, fluctuates depending on the nationality of the scholar, with many European scholars having more contact with North Korean scholars. Given relations between Seoul and Washington, American scholars have less access than almost all but their South Korean colleagues. Sonia Ryang begins her article with a question directed to colleagues in a field whose research is arguably the most disrupted by North Korea’s barriers to research regardless of their nationality: anthropology. “How could one carry out an anthropological study of North Korea,” she asks, “if one were not able to conduct long-term or even short-term ethnographic fieldwork on the ground?” Ryang’s question is relevant to other disciplines as well. Yet rather than be dissuaded, Ryang moves beyond the question itself, insisting on the possibility of research from a distance. Ryang argues that a text-based approach—“a reading of heterogeneous texts”—can offer a starting point to examine North Korea on its own terms and even, she goes on to argue, be turned back to question anthropological methodology itself.2 In arguing for critical treatment of North Korean texts, Ryang brings her anthropology closer to the methodology of the other social scientists and humanists in the special issue, all of whom confirm that there are, in fact, lots of materials for studying North Korea outside its boundaries.3There is, in short, a more expansive North Korean archive. Two of these types of sources (interviews and the archives of former socialist allies) are more familiar and another (Pyongyang published texts) less so. Each has its own idiosyncratic shortcomings and advantages, but when combined and engaged with critically, this expanded archive offers ways of diversifying possible research subjects and lines of inquiry.It is now an almost hackneyed usage among late twentieth-century scholars to call for an escape from Cold War–era approaches. Yet in the Korean peninsula, where the Cold War has yet to cease, where security problems still dominate the headlines, where in South Korea, National Security Laws still constrain research on North Korea, and where anti-communist rhetoric is still very much alive, the conceptual categories and narrative strategies of the Cold War, however much critiqued in other settings, remain powerful in shaping much writing about North Korea. The contributors represent a growing shift in scholarship that recognizes how studies on North Korea have been shaped by the Cold War at the same time as they have helped maintain the particular peninsular-specific structures of the Cold War—the division system. The significance of diversifying scholarly approaches is not just about North Korea but also about the division system itself.One of the longest-standing modes of research into North Korea has been interviewing people who left the country. From the 1950s to 1980s, these emigrants consisted largely of defectors, whose testimonies were dominated by South Korean intelligence services. With the changes in the Northeast political economy—in particular the rise of the Chinese juggernaut and the interlinked marketization in North Korea—as well as the food insecurity of the early 1990s, the irregular numbers of defectors became a virtual flood of migrants.4 Although defectors formerly consisted mainly of ex-officials and were almost always male, the new emigrants came with more assorted socioeconomic backgrounds. Women were predominant, they held more diverse motivations for leaving, and they originated primarily, though not exclusively, from locations close to the Chinese border.5 That this change in number and origin occurred at the same time as the fall of the Berlin Wall, together with a renewed attention to Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons, ensured that the flow of people out of the North attracted global media attention. A celebrity culture of a sort resulted, with key exiles gaining an international profile through such media as TED Talks. Publishers followed suit, often framing memoirs and biographies as the latest generation of that venerable Cold War genre, escape literature.6 Many NGOs took up the cause, framing the testimony of migrants in the language of liberal human rights—a vocabulary newly acquired and often fitting awkwardly in the speeches of those making tours of university campuses. The formation of the Committee on Human Rights in North Korea led to a flurry of English-language publications on human rights issues.7Academic research soon followed the arrival of North Koreans. Nothing in English rivals the quantity or quality of the long-term, consistent surveys and interviews conducted by various South Korean agencies and NGOs. Yet in English, too, refugee accounts emerged as a dominant mode for investigating not just the lives of North Koreans but also the nature of the regime. For the most part, these works have highlighted human rights issues or have conducted broad surveys framed by the traditional concerns of political science—namely, regime legitimacy and durability.8 Some work has rested exclusively on interviews while others have adopted interdisciplinary approaches, combining interviews with complementary written sources and often moving beyond a human rights or security framework.9 The result has been a mini-industry of interview-based studies, resulting in a boom that in both quantitative and qualitative terms produced much empirical data and analytical insights.These studies have not come without problems, however. Some English-language researchers have been blunt about the perils of interviews, questioning the representativeness of available interviewees who have skewed to the border regions, who, after all, were a self-selected group, and who for whatever personal reasons had left the country.10 In Korea, critiques have arisen concerning the negative side effects of the interview boom.11 Monetary payments to interview subjects who are often living precariously, critics have pointed out, have led some North Koreans to seek out interviews, leading to a cycle of repetition where different researchers often rely on the same subjects. Such repeat interviewees, together with word-of-mouth accounts of their experiences, have led some critics to question whether interviewees respond according to what they perceive to be the needs of researchers. Others have wondered whether stories appealing to human rights–style narratives become privileged in the telling, as interviewees “perform” the status of refugees to the organizations that support them. Such open discussions of methodology have been less thoroughly aired in English, where, as Jay Song points out in her contribution to this special issue, foreign researchers have tended to downplay the effect of their presence or, for many, the effect of the act of translation on the interviewing process.At stake here is how individual interviews are used to make larger claims about North Korean political culture. Lest we forget, for decades the Soviet field faced a similar dilemma. It, too, relied on studies based on information derived from exiles, much in the way we today turn to interviews. Today, scholars are well aware of how the negative assessments of defector testimony received an audience among journalists, intelligence services, and scholars who were primed by Cold War rivalries to see them as evidence testifying to the validity of their own preconceptions of totalitarianism—a type of circular confirmation bias that distorted understanding of the complexities of the Stalin and Khrushchev eras.12 With these challenges in mind, Jay Song’s article calls for more transparency in the interviewing field and for qualitative data derived from migrants to be combined with other types of information, in particular quantitative data now readily available through online databases. Similarly, Sonia Ryang argues for more rigorous and critical methodology while also asking for interviews “faithfully documenting how people live their lives in North Korea without veering into political judgement.”If refugees, exiles, and defectors are a long-standing source of information that have recently been revitalized and offer still greater potential, the same might be said of documents from ex-socialist states. Early studies depended on reports from North Korea’s allies, as did American intelligence services.13 Since the end of the Cold War, the opening of the archives of North Korea’s erstwhile allies has been a boon, especially for studies on political and international history. Reports by diplomats stationed in Pyongyang have been fruitfully used to extend our understanding of the origins of the Korean War, elite politics in the Korean Workers’ Party, and Kim Il Sung’s ascension to power, to name just a few.14 Many of these documents have been conveniently translated into English and Korean from languages as various as Albanian to Romanian in a collaborative project between the Woodrow Wilson Center and Kyungnam University. The former director of this project, James Person, points out in his contribution to the special issue that these translated items consist of only a small fraction of the original declassified documents and fall largely into the diplomatic, political, and military realms. This selection on what to translate reflects the dominant biases of the field and, not unsurprisingly, the security orientation of the agencies funding the translations. There is, in short, much work still to be done in these documents, and as Person shows, when combined with other sources, these archives have the potential to transform some of our foundational conceptions of even seemingly well-worn topics, such as the history of factionalism.Work in these multinational, multilanguage documents has special temptations and dilemmas, however. As many scholars inside and outside the Korean studies community are aware, some research emerging out of these archives has been subject to serious controversy.15 Among the lessons learned is that work in these archives will require scholars to meet demanding linguistic standards that abide no shortcuts and a willingness to collaborate openly and honestly with peers around the world. Wide-ranging discussions have followed, spilling over into such issues as the institutional hierarchies endemic to Korean studies, the hegemony of the English language and the United States on the international stage in a project like Korean studies, the (in)effectiveness of peer review, the stakes of academic publishers in downplaying scholarly transgressions, the ease of e-publishing to erase such transgressions, and the gatekeeping power of mainstream professional institutions such as this journal.In pointing out the possibilities and challenges of this underused assortment of documents, Person raises another dilemma. Until recently the flurry of activity in ex-Soviet sources has been conducted with an eye to extracting information to better examine known yet ill-understood events. Often the results have been more precise knowledge. Yet such searches for more data, however useful, nevertheless tend to use these documents transparently without examining the intellectual and cultural milieus in which the documents were produced. As historians have recently shown, the Soviet Union is best understood as a multinational empire, which ruled by privileging the center over peripheries and establishing hierarchies among the peoples that constituted it.16 Despite Soviet claims to pan-racial solidarity—claims often used in its Cold War rivalry with the United States over human rights and racism—these relations remained mired in chauvinism and structured by racial categories. This dynamic frequently contoured Moscow’s relationship with the Asian reaches of its empire. Other scholarship, especially in reference to East Germany, has shown how race consistently framed “comradely” relations within the socialist world.17 Given we know that deep affinities existed between the domestic, racialized politics of the United States and its diplomatic and cultural policies abroad (an issue that no good history of US-South Korean relations can ignore), it becomes imperative to ask the equivalent question for Soviet and East European politics: How did their racialized and cross-cultural assumptions extend to their treatment of North Korea?18 Or more specifically to our purpose, how did these biases shape the reports of Pyongyang-based diplomats that today are being used by researchers to reconstruct these histories? Race and privilege have all but been left out of consideration in these studies. As Person shows, diplomatic reports were full of dismissive and often smug remarks. Although he is unable to explore within the confines of this single article the extent of these biases or how these fit into broader cross-cultural relations, it is clear that a concern with the historical conditions for the production of these documents—in particular, the politics of racial representation—will be crucial for any future research based on them. As we all know by now, cross-cultural writing reflects not just on the subject but also on the writer—a dynamic to which self-proclaimed socialists, whatever their public claims to the contrary, were not exempt.Several of the articles in the special issue, however, are based on another source base that has been conventionally neglected and only recently taken up by a growing number of researchers. These are texts—newspapers, magazines, and monographs—printed in Pyongyang under the official of the Korean Workers’ and published by various of or These as well as publications of various make up the rich and varied reading culture of North Koreans in their In this special issue, authors these sources, from stories to quantitative data, magazines, and Many more could be to this sources are available to researchers not in archives but in that have been open to the In the United materials as part of a project to publications for intelligence are now at the of Many of its especially remain Moscow’s former now the as a type of for North Korean the including Korean of Soviet texts, and even Other in and the of also offer while the in former socialist in and are more have become available for of through the of in South Korea is more because of National Security Laws that to with North Korea, as Kim in the of her Seoul has more than many other some materials are available in such as the one at the National which more history. Many more sources in A history of how National Security Laws have shaped access to materials and how the Korean produced types of by scholars with special access to intelligence sources, especially in the early to be work like that done by Kim on the early funding in the of North Korean studies needs to be for even as this international field as sources, could into these to a rich array of in fact, than any single could in a These texts, however, have recently remained as more than propaganda without much research much about the dominant of the North Korea With a on and there was that such materials to offer who were more in about and Sonia Ryang called this the of North Korean The for the for the of and the of the of for or the of the name just a not much information relevant to the lines of publications such as the the or the might be into for the of examining the and of yet for the most part these remain This is now lines of become more these sources have shown their for these new the last scholars have more than any others these documents to an assortment of Ranging from the early work of which of changes in and institutions over to treatment of North Korean beyond of and this work has led the even in the of South Korea’s National Security In a of how much is in the by this Kim is a with from these largely Pyongyang-based sources that now numbers in the of as pointed out in her roundtable contribution to the the number of from the to today more than works on from to to of which is available to of the peninsula, a of scholars working in the United States such as Kim, and Kim an article in this special and in such as and have taken up this of a archive to shift from the elite politics and security on this scholarship, the articles in this special issue confirm a future more varied approaches to North Korea that arguably are no within a single that concerns with security and elite politics This is most rather than or see documents published in Pyongyang as the authors in this special issue them as a part of a more expansive North Korea archive. of them would no readily that these published with the of the are of propaganda and the of the regime. Yet their research on reading them and the as Kim it in her to the of Gregg Brazinsky on this point in his treatment of a different yet type of soldier source whose production has been by the official of a to its raises one of the of these sources, relationship between official and the of have tended to he points out, that that reflects the official narrative was written under and or only with official as truths or, as he inner or Brazinsky shows that a of such materials of their scholarly of the of in these texts, which like any other of documents their own idiosyncratic with they can to power of official in shaping the of the in ways more than the Cold War of while also showing the ways the as authors of this and used it to their own have similar in to archives in the In the study of it was these types of published sources that the early accounts of largely by and cultural historians decades and the opening of Soviet Yet do not have to so to such a of a still a time when documents published by the were as virtually no research for what up the was still called the of Korean history. the with which scholars the same documents that a generation is in As the articles in this special issue it is now the turn of sources published in Pyongyang to be taken for more than their propaganda is not to that these sources, like any historical do not have their own are after all by the are often sponsored by or are and by and written in a to have no space in such challenges such just one from just after the Korean with the of might be in the but it to get outside the categories in which the is might that what in their but remain as to the of those let alone their broader political is known about the politics behind these it can be that by the early individual publications the emerging of Kim Il for his others did reasons for this of these mean the early of the was not but by some Or could this be as to on the part of These can be but into the of Other issues by the regime as of new for or not of as to the of the in these As more research is done these sources, more will become clear about not just the possibilities but also the limits of their the those are more varied and than in work that published sources as that North Korean claims about the nature of or that the history and of to a single is also to point out that the articles in this special issue are with more than just sources, written or are also on their sources, both old and with novel questions, in the disciplines of each of the at the North Korea of a in Seoul will the with to for a North Korea Such have produced many yet they on a very that North Korea is best understood through its other a so that it a special methodology all of its Such an to research on an of North Korea’s own propaganda that it is any other in the in of a articles in this special issue work on a that the approaches of our disciplines are up to the of studying North Korea without to In other North Korea as a subject of scholarship no it or critical research, attention to the history of our conceptual the biases of the sources, and the historical of the twentieth-century peninsula, cannot to not always The between the and the particular, from an on North Korea’s to within which any be in this the study of North Korea to and approaches. True, there is no access to formerly of documents to the way it is in East Germany, where now the archive is can interviews be done inside the in the Chinese have been to better the possibilities of the 1950s Yet there is no time for to for North Korean archives to open or to be for

Why does North Korea want to possess nuclear capabilities? In order to find the answer to this question, we must have an accurate understanding of the history and structure of the North Korean regime. So far, we have only formed conjectures and predictions regarding North Korea based on our own perspectives; we now need to deal with and consider North Korea “as is” to reach viable solutions to the issues North Korea presents. This volume contains analyses of the most salient, critical issues pertinent to understanding the North Korean regime, penned by representative Korean scholars of North Korea. As such, the book examines the historical formation of North Korea, the identities of those power elite, and the relative stability (or instability, as the case may be) of the new regime under Kim Jong-un. Also an important aspect to consider is the possibility of socio-economic change in North Korea. Though North Korea has remained relatively static vis-à-vis its political and military systems, it is in the process of becoming rapidly marketized, having continued various attempts to modify its economic policy. In the social realm, said economic shift has elicited the polarization of the disparate classes and the expansion of individualism. Such social transformations, obscured by the easily visible political reality of North Korea, can provide solid grounds for determining the future of the North Korea regime. Moreover, it is imperative that we accurately understand the motivation behind North Korea’s intention to develop nuclear weapons—namely, the expansion of deterrence. We must recognize the reasons for the North Korean hostility toward the United States from the very beginning of the DPRK formation and the North Korean fixation on nuclear weapons development. Further, we need to understand the nature of relations between China and North Korea—relations on which the international community has focused since North Korea began its nuclear testing—as well as the history and structure of relations between North and South Korea. Only when we accurately understand North Korea can we reach solutions to the North Korean nuclear issue. The studies in this volume by Korean scholars will reveal the veiled background of the visible phenomena and thereby help the readers to correctly understand the North Korean behaviors hitherto misunderstood (or even those that were impossible to understand).

Our main objective is that North Korea and South Korea become politically and economically a united country. Even before the unification occurs, both North Korea and South Korea must reconcile their difference and work to live with each other. 109 years ago, the city people called the second Jerusalem, Pyongyang, experienced a huge revival and therefore the need to restore peace in this place is vital for saving the souls and proclaiming the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Additionally, Christian Mission seeks a transformation in a person’s life. Therefore, understanding and analysing the key reasons to the North Korean way of thinking and lifestyle is undeniably a must when looking at the Christian Mission perspective. In order to accomplish a nation-wide reconciliation and unification between North and South Korea, a proposal of unification based on the study of North Korean human rights and problem concerning defectors must be overseen. When the Korean Church can approach this matter in truthful and righteous manner, it can act as a very important mediator. The Understanding of peace and strategy by Unification Mission policy is developed by the strategic policies of North Korea Mission concerning the problems and the realities in North Korean human rights and the search for an improvement, North Korean breakaways, illegal trafficking of defector women and orphans, yoduk prison camp, dualism in North and South Korean relations, etc. The problems of North Korean mission concerning the identity of christianity can be seen by the change in lens of diverse missions . The the globalized world is perceived in the lens of capital logic. Poorer countries and its people are becoming evermore poorer and the difference between the financial traits of North Korea and South Korea has caused a problem. In this aspect, christians must seek to help North Korea mission. It is not only a commandment from Jesus Christ, but also an important part of both nations’ survival and freedom which should also be a task for every christians. Therefore, the Korean Church must strive and work for the unification of Korea as a mediator. Only then, can the church truly be a hope to the people of Korea and the values of North Korean mission policies must be created in every christians.

2016년 대북제재 이후 북한경제 변화와 신남북협력 방향 (Changes in the North Korean Economy and Guidelines to New Strategies of Inter-Korean Cooperation after UNSCR since 2016)

IntroductionThe North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens from Japan by agents of the North Korean government happened during a period of six years from 1977 to 1983. Although only 16 (eight men and eight women) are officially recognized by the JapaThe nese government, there may have been as many as 70 to 80 Japanese abducted. Analysts believe that some victims were abducted to teach the Japanese language and culture at North Korean spy schools, while other victims were also abducted with the intent of stealing their identities.The abduction of Japanese citizens by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, can be distinguished from other foreign policy issues that Japan faces for the following two reasons. First, this is a rare-probably the only- major diplomatic issue in which Japan is a victim of an egregious act committed by an external entity. For the first time, Japan is conducting diplomacy in order to recover the original status and receive due compensation. As is usual for a novice, unfortunately, Japan has not scored well. The Japanese government says that the abduction issue is the highest priority among the issues between Japan and DPRK and has been putting forth a remarkable effort.1 Yet the goal Japan set might have been too ambitious and might have left too little room for negotiation.The second reason for the uniqueness of the abduction issue is the remarkable convergence of basic policy lines across the Japanese political spectrum. Very few members of the Japanese Diet are openly opposed to pressuring the DPRK on this issue. According to a survey by the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea,2 dubbed Sukuukai in Japanese, 82 percent of the Diet members supported the idea of additional economic sanctions in the event that the DPRK does not show the results of reinvestigation that will lead to the repatriation of all victims.3Public Outrage and Stalemate4The abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea took place in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. At the time, very little was known about the location or fate of the missing people. When a newspaper article reported in 1980 that the missing people might have been kidnapped by a foreign agent, it did not attract much attention from the politicians and was dismissed as mere speculation by the police. This started to change after two incidents. The first was the arrest, in 1985, of a North Korean agent who was carrying the passport of Tadaaki Hara, who disappeared from a beach in Miyazaki Prefecture in June 1980. Then, in 1987, an arrested North Korean agent named Kim Hyong-hee, who perpetrated the bombing of Korean Air flight 858 on November 29 of that year, told the police that she learned the Japanese language from an abducted Japanese person whose name was Yaeko Taguchi. Taguchi had disappeared from the same beach as Hara did, but in 1978. The circumstantial evidence seemed to suggest that North Korea was somehow involved in the missing persons incidents.In early 1988, following Kim Hyon Hee's confession, the abduction issue was raised in the Diet of Japan for the first time. In March, answering a question in the Diet, Seiroku Kajiyama of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) announced that missing persons incidents in the 1970s and the 1980s might have been the result of abductions by North Korea. However, Kajiyama's statement did not lead to substantial action by the foreign ministry. The ministry told the family members of the missing people, to their dismay, that without formal diplomatic relations with North Korea or concrete evidence of North Korea's responsibility, the Japanese government could do little about the issue.Following the end of the Cold War and improved relations between North and South Korea, Japan sought to engage with North Korea in a more friendly manner. In 1990, a Japanese delegation led by Shin Kanemaru, a heavyweight of the LDP, and Makoto Tanabe, a senior member of the Socialist Party, visited North Korea in order to facilitate the negotiations on diplomatic normalization. …

Asian Perspective 40 (2016), 547-552 BOOK REVIEW ESSAY Dystopia Walter C. Clemens Jr. Robert Collins, Pyongyang Republic: North Korea’ s Capital of Human Rights Denial (Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2016). Robert Collins, Markedfor Life: Songbun, North Korea’s Social Classification System (Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012). Suki Kim, Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korean Elite (New York: Crown, 2014; Broadway, 2015). Pyongyang Republic by Robert Collins presents a deep analysis of the system by which North Koreans are ruled and the conse­ quences for human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Collins documents the ways that North Korea’s elites and subelites pursue their privileged existence in the DPRK capital. His earlier work, Markedfor Life, analyzed the DPRK’s political caste system that generates opportunity for some but severe limitations on the social mobility ofmost North Koreans. Each book details the broad context in which the stories ofindividual defectors have occurred. Collins draws on Korean and English-language doc­ uments and writings as well as interviews conducted by him and others with North Korean defectors and some DPRK officials. The persons strongly favored by the DPRK system probably number more than 1 percent. The Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) enrolls 3.2 million members—about one-eighth of the total popu­ lation, a larger percentage than in other communist countries. Some 42 percent of adults in Pyongyang belong to the KWP, according to Collins. Many if not most other residents are candi­ date members or belong to a member’s family. 547 548 Dystopia The data in Pyongyang Republic (pp. 83-84) show large dis­ crepancies in the estimated size of the city’s population. A 1990 cen­ sus puts it at 3,289,000—some 15.2 percent ofthe then total DPRK population. A 2008 census, however, showed a slight decline to 3,255,388. A UN analysis that same year put the number at only 2,581,076, while a DPRK state security document obtained by South Korea showed a population of 2,100,000. Given that the overall DPRK population has increased since 1990, these lower estimates suggest that Pyongyang’s population has shrunk to about 10 or 11 percent ofthe North’s total population ofroughly 25 million. Thanks in part to military service, there are just 71 males for every 100 females in Pyongyang, compared to a 96:100 ratio in Seoul. The streets of Pyongyang now boast many more autos than in previous years. Most cars belong to state, party, or economic organizations. The first numbers on the license plates reveal a pecking order. The hierarchy extends from 01 for KWP central committee section chiefs, to 13 for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to 21 for court judges, while 22 through 50 are reserved for eco­ nomic enterprises. Pyongyang is not only the hub for what passes for luxury but it is also home to the greatest concentration of DPRK citizens suf­ fering from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). This paradox has a simple answer: elites who suffer from TB can obtain the appropriate medications more readily than other North Koreans. Having already absorbed a variety of medicines, the haves acquire a resistance to the usual drugs used to fight TB. To make matters worse, members of the privileged classes often defy a doctor’s orders and fail to complete the appropriate regimen. (The tougher sanctions imposed on the DPRK by Seoul in early 2016 made no exception for MDR TB medications. The Eugene Bell Foundation warned in March 2016 that supplies in its twelve treatment cen­ ters in North Korea would become exhausted in April.) Of course there are class and wealth differences even among the residents of Pyongyang. The top ring contains a core of privi­ leged elites surrounded by circles ofthe less privileged. The second ring is made up of cadres. A third ring consists of people who are poor by the most elevated Pyongyang standards but who still live more comfortably than most North Koreans outside the capital. Walter C. Clemens Jr. 549 While Collins lists many educational institutions favored...

USA and North Korea work together on tuberculosis

IntroductionHow should North Korea's structural economic problems, which have been evolving for decades, be addressed? North Korea's socialist economy, which had begun its downward spiral in the mid-1980s, plummeted dramatically to a near-collapse condition coincidently with, and in the wake of, global disintegration of the Cold War structure in the early 1990s.1 Economic data supplied by a number of organizations, including the United Nations, estimate that North Korea's total imports in 2008 were US$2.7 billion, while recording exports of US$1.2 billion in the same year. Since 2000 onward, North Korea has suffered severe hard-currency pressures, stemming from huge trade deficits averaging US$1.0 to $1.5 billion annually. For its economy to survive, North Korea has to earn foreign currency. The core problem here is that the North Koreans have, at least at present, no ability to foster the nation's industries that sufficiently demonstrates their export competitiveness, especially in the short term.In a general pattern, countries at the incipient stage of their economic development tend to have interests in exporting goods such as fishery products that can not only be easily produced by relatively low-skilled or manual labor, but that can also be easily converted into hard currency. This has been the case for South Korea. By the mid-1960s, its fishery products accounted for 20 percent of its total exports. Even by the early 1970s, fishery products remained as South Korea's main export staple, accounting for about 10 percent of its total exports.North Korea shows the same story at present. Fishery production in North Korea still occupies a heavy position in respect to its export performance and potential. For about a decade since 2000, North Korea's fishery products have accounted for about 20 percent of its total exports; 75 percent of the exports have gone to South Korea in the form of inter-Korean trade (Minchok Naebu Korae). South Korea's fishery imports from North Korea have increased by an annual growth rate of 20 percent- 25,000 tons in 2000, 50,000 tons in 2005, and 60,000 tons in 2008 (equivalent to US$40 million in 2000, US$60 million in 2005, and US$120 million in 2008, respectively). Although North Korea had exported significant amounts of fishery products to Japan, Japanese economic sanctions toward North Korea, including a trade ban in the aftermath of North Korea's underground nuclear test in October 2006, dramatically severed North Korea-Japanese economic ties, halting Japan's trade with North Korea almost completely. On the other hand, recent fishery trade between North Korea and China has been tending to decrease.2Considering the current trend in inter-Korean trade-and if cooperation is implemented successfully-South Korea's fishery imports from North Korea are projected to rise by 150,000 to 200,000 tons within five years. Because there is a huge gap in the fishery product market prices between the North and South, the imported products would gain tangible benefits from higher selling prices.3From the North Korean perspective, a prediction such as this suggests that the country may gain another source of foreign currency that would contribute to the improvement of its trade balance by utilizing renewable natural resources. It also has the effect that about 20 percent of South Korea's total fishery imports would be replaced by cheaper North Korean products.The potential benefits from this exchange will be significant to South Korea as well as to North Korea. The South can cover 10 percent of its total domestic demand by means of fish and shellfish imported from its geographically closest neighbor. This means that South Korea may secure a stable import source at a cheaper price, while, at the same time, the North may secure an export market. A dream of mutual prosperity will come true by means of this cooperation, making the confidence-building tasks between the two Koreas more promising. …

IntroductionFluctuating political relations between North and South Korea made it difficult to sustain, at least in past, any meaningful and lasting economic cooperation between two Koreas. This paper reviews history and scope of economic cooperation between two Koreas, leading to conclusion that economic cooperation between North and South Korea should remain unaffected by political turmoil between two Koreas.Historical Background of Economic CooperationThe first official joint statement between two Koreas was released on July 4, 1972, nearly nineteen years after Korean War ended on July 27, 1953. The SouthNorth Joint Communique states that reunification will take place without reliance on or intervention by foreign nations; it will be achieved by a peaceful means; that the two sides shall take measures to stop propaganda broadcasting against other side, stop military aggression and prevent any military clashes; and that the two sides shall institute various exchanges in economic, social and cultural areas; cooperate in holding inter-Korean Red Cross talks; open a Seoul-Pyongyang hotline; and set up a South-North mediation committee.Regardless of cooperative spirit expressed in 1972 communique, economic cooperation between two Koreas did not take place for many more years because of two related reasons: lack of progress on political front and several provocative actions carried out by North Korea. On October 9, 1983, for instance, four South Korean cabinet members were killed by North Korean agents in Burma. On November 29, 1987, Korean Air 858 was exploded by two North Korean agents forty-five minutes away from Bangkok, killing all 115 passengers and crew members aboard. As Soviet Union was dissolved in 1989, ending Soviet Union's economic support to North Korea, focus of North Korean issues shifted to development of nuclear weapons in North Korea. In fact, current nuclear crisis began during 1989 when Yongbyon's nuclear facility was identified through U.S. satellite photos.On October 21, 1994, United States and North Korea concluded four months of negotiations by adopting Framework in Geneva, which called for North Korea to freeze and eventually eliminate its nuclear facilities, a process that would require dismantling three nuclear reactors, two of which were still under construction. In exchange, North Korea was promised two light-water nuclear reactors (LWRs) and annual shipments of heavy fuel oil during construction of reactors. The LWRs were arranged for construction through Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO). On March 9, 1995, KEDO was formed in New York with United States, South Korea, and Japan as organization's original members. On June 1, 2006, KEDO Executive Board announced that it had formally terminated its project to build two LWRs in North Korea due to continued and extended failure of North Korea to comply with its relevant obligations under 1994 Agreed Framework. KEDO was more a political arrangement than an act of economic cooperation. We thus turn our attention to economic cooperation.Dawn of Economic CooperationAlthough trade between two Koreas began in late 1980s, first meaningful event in inter-Korean economic cooperation occurred on January 13, 1998, when Chung Ju-young, founder of Hyundai chaebol, traveled to North Korea through China and signed an agreement with North Korea on what would later be known as Mt. Kumgang tourism project. Chung's visit to North Korea was made possible by election of Kim Dae-jung as President of South Korea in December 1997.During his inaugural speech on February 25, 1998, President Kim Dae-jung announced his Sunshine Policy for dramatic improvement of inter-Korean relations, which led to President Kim winning Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. …

IntroductionNorth Korea has been in the headlines with increasing frequency lately thanks mainly to the nuclear standoff with the United States, natural disasters, or famines. Although overshadowed by these events, what is quietly taking place in North Korea and is of much greater long-term importance to the people of North Korea are the economic reforms that have been under way since July 1, 2002.Opinions are divided on the prospects for the reforms' success. Some believe that the current reforms are merely a desperate attempt on the part of the current regime to salvage the central planning that has been rendered unworkable due to the economic collapse brought about by the withdrawal of economic aid and favorable trade terms by the former Soviet Union, followed by a string of natural disasters in the 1990s. They believe that the regime will revert back to the predominantly commanddriven economy once the economy recovers from its current illness (Klingner, 2004). Others believe that the current reforms are similar in essence to the Liberman-style reforms attempted unsuccessfully in the Soviet Union and its Central and East European satellite countries in the 1960s and 1970s, and hence are not likely to work in North Korea. Seliger (2005), for example, points out that the present economic structure of North Korea in terms of degree of industrialization is closer to those of the Soviet Union and its European satellites of the 1960s and 1970s than that of China of the 1970s or Vietnam of the 1980s, and the Chinese and Vietnamese reform experiences are not an appropriate comparison. Seliger also points out correctly that the agricultural reform in North Korea does not go as far as the Chinese model. Others, including myself, are more optimistic about the chances of success of the current North Korean economic reforms, although the optimism must in all practicality be based on the premise that the current nuclear standoff with the United States will be satisfactorily resolved.I attempt in this paper to analyze and assess the significance of current economic reforms in North Korea and their prospects for success in light of the country's history of an open-door policy and economic reform attempts, as well as the current geopolitical and economic climate of Northeast Asia. The conclusion I derive is that the prospects for success of the current economic reforms in North Korea are far better than the pessimists would like us to believe. The paper consists of five sections. The first section presents a historical overview of the North Korean macroeconomic performance and North Korea's open-door policy attempts prior to July 1, 2002. The second section is a brief description of the July 2002 economic reforms and the subsequent follow-up measures. Lessons from the economic reform experiences of other socialist economies are discussed in the third section. The fourth section addresses the prospects for success of the current North Korean economic reforms. The last section offers conclusions.A Brief Historical Overview of the North Korean Macroeconomic Performance and Pre-July 2002 Open-Door Policy AttemptsNorth Korea emerged from the end of World War II and the end of Japanese occupation as a predominantly industrialized economy. North Korea's economic growth was remarkable: it surpassed that of South Korea during the initial period after the war and registered positive growth throughout the 1970s. By the end of the 1970s, however, the North Korean economy was beginning to show serious problems typical of all centrally planned economies, manifested in serious inefficiencies due to lack of incentives and difficulties of planning coordination. The collapse of the former Soviet empire in 1991 dealt a serious blow to the North Korean economy, which had been depending on the Soviet Union to meet much of its energy and raw materials needs on favorable terms, and on the Soviet bloc countries for an export market. …

IntroductionGiven the gravity and urgency of North Korean issues, the U.S. cannot avoid addressing highly uncertain prospects in the North. Although Korea is a middle-sized country-the North and South Koreas together are roughly the same size as Britain and have a combined population of 70 million, Koreans feel small because they live amid giants. Their geopolitical neighbors are China, Japan, Russia, and America, whose spheres of influence overlap in Korea. As a result, the peninsula has been over the past 50 years the site of recurrent collisions between great power interests.Ever since the Korean War, two rival governments, communist in the North and capitalist in the South, have been locked in mortal combat. Half a century later, there is still no peace on the horizon. By American estimates, North Korea has i.i million troops; South Korea has 700,000, which, however, are augmented by 37,000 American armed forces. All men have military experience, and millions (the number of reserve troops is 4.7 million in North Korea and 4.5 million in South Korea) are eligible for call-up in case of war (Kim, 2003, pp. 8-9). Since Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack on July 8, 1994, the future of North Korea became the core of Northeast Asian security issues. Arguments focus on North Korea's current situation, policy directions, and the results of its policies.The U.S. has recently questioned how to confront sponsoring terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction. Policymakers face two choices: engagement or confrontation. In the past, the Clinton administration had engaged with North Korea to prevent its development of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The Bush administration quickly put North Korean relations on hold until a policy review was conducted. By early July 200i, the new administration's policy, under the influence of Colin Powell, validated a continuation of the U.S.-North Korean dialogue. However, North Korea expressed strong concern through other channels that the Bush administration operated under a di∂erent and more di[double dagger]cult set of principles than the Clinton administration. North Korea's view of the Bush administration's tougher line on relations was validated in 2002. In the past, the U.S. State Department had labeled North Korea, Iraq, and Iran as rogue states whose military policy and support of other groups threatened Washington's security. In his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, however, Bush labeled Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an axis of evil, thus extending his war on terrorism. A series of one-sided hard-line actions taken by both sides since then has caused their relationship to deteriorate along the following pathway: engagement [arrow right] containment [arrow right] confrontation [arrow right] regional crisis [arrow right] international crisis. Consequently, daily headlines about this newly strained relationship between the two old enemies filled the news media around the world though this stando∂ has been somewhat overshadowed by the Iraq war since March 2003.In our dialogue, we will first discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Second, we will analyze four ways of dealing with the nuclear deadlock, backing our views with a survey of MBA students. Third, we will argue why the U.S. should publicly announce its clear-cut position on North Korea's nuclear program once and for all. Finally, we will argue why engagement is the only viable option to resolve the latest altercation between the U.S and North Korea on nuclear weapons.North Korean Nuclear Weapons ProgramIn i989, it became undeniably obvious that North Korea was assembling the elements of a nuclear weapons program. However, its nuclear technology emerged as early as the late i950s; the program gained momentum in the i960s and again in the mid-i980s. North Korea initially obtained a small research reactor from the Soviet Union and later began construction on a larger reactor at the Yongbyon site. …

IntroductionThe KIC is of interest to the United States and the two Koreas for six primary reasons.3 First, South Korea wants the United States to consider products made in the KIC as South Korean in origin for the purposes of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Second, the KIC has become a growing source of foreign exchange for North Korea. Third, the KIC is part of South Korea's strategy to ease tensions with North Korea. Fourth, the KIC is an important part of the North Korean economic reforms. Fifth, the KIC raises issues of security, human rights, and working conditions in North Korea. Sixth, U.S. government approval is needed for South Korean companies to ship to the KIC certain U.S.-made equipment that is currently subject to U.S. export controls.Table 1 shows the brief history of the Kaesong Industrial Complex. The KIC started in August 2000, with the signing of a contract between Hyundai Corporation and North Korea's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee. In November 2002, the KIC took a big step forward when the North Korean government released the Regulations for the Kaesong Industrial District. During the three years of its preparation, the North and South Korean governments worked on ensuring free passage across the DMZ, and on establishing tax, accounting, banking, and labor laws to be applied to the KIC. Although the KIC is geographically located in North Korea, general North Korean laws do not apply; instead, it is governed by a special set of laws. A ground-breaking ceremony was held in Kaesong to officially inaugurate the KIC in 2003; in June 2004, the first 15 companies set up their plants; and by December 2004, the first Kaesong-made products rolled off the production lines.4Table 2 shows that South Korean firms in the KIC produced a total of $525 million dollars in goods during the period 2005-2008, and exported $96 million of their output for the same period, 18 percent of their total production. All products made in the KIC are shipped to South Korea for sale there, or for export via South Korean customs clearance. The major export destinations are China, Europe, the Middle East, and Russia. Companies in the KIC use labor-intensive manufacturing processes, with raw materials and intermediate goods supplied from South Korea to Kaesong for final assembly. As the KIC has expanded, however, there has been more scope for companies to produce some of their manufacturing inputs locally. Furthermore, the number of North Korean workers in the KIC increased from 7,621 in 2005 to 38,931 in 2008, a five-fold increase. However, the KIC has faced a most serious challenge since February 2008, when a conservative government replaced the liberal governments that had ruled South Korea for ten years.As of February 28, 2009, 93 South Korean firms were operating in the KIC, with a total of 36,650 North Korean workers along with 952 South Korean workers; it is important to note that there were 1,370 South Korean workers and about 40,000 North Korean workers before North Korea began its border clampdown in November 2008. Another 45 factories are under construction. The project was supposed to be carried out in three stages for years to come; the first stage was well under way and was expected to be completed in 2010, and the complex was supposed to employ 100,000 North Korean workers and have 450 tenant companies by the end of 2010. However, such rosy projections about the KIC ended when North Korea cut the reconciliation dialogue with South Korea after its President Lee, a conservative, took office in February 2008. Lee pledged to get tougher with North Korea, which refuses to abandon its nuclear program. Lee has intentionally raised awareness of North Korea's human rights problems and called for efforts to scrap the nuclear programs. In response to such tough policies by South Korea, North Korea has adopted a series of hard-line policies against South Korea.The rest of this paper is organized as follows. …

IntroductionThis paper investigates gender disparities among children raised in North Korea, perhaps the last remaining bastion of communism. Ever since the separation of the Korean Peninsula into two Koreas in 1948, the socialist agenda of North Korea has aimed at equal status for women, whereas South Korea is one of the most strongly patriarchal societies in the world.1 Considering North Korea's official proclamation of being an egalitarian society, the question remains as to whether or not the communist system in the North has managed to reduce cultural gender gaps.Previous studies on North Korean gender issues are scarce or rely on qualitative evidence, given the overall lack of information on North Korea. These studies usually limit themselves to examining the role of women in North Korean communist society. Conclusions are commonly drawn on material released by North Korea's Foreign Languages Publishing House, such as the collected works or speeches of North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung2 and the official constitution.3 The main conclusion of these articles is that women have become liberated in North Korean society. This is due to the communist agenda that has largely integrated women into the labor force and abolished the Confucian patrilineal family registration system. However, it is also noteworthy that the role of women in North Korean society is mostly limited to a producer or reproducer role.4Recent studies on North Korean gender bias are based mainly on data from defectors. During and after the North Korean famine of the 1990s, the number of North Korean economic refugees increased drastically, allowing information to be obtained via the interviewing of North Koreans living abroad. For instance, 46 percent of the respondents in a 1999 survey conducted among 332 refugees said that their husbands were the main decision-makers when it came to purchases, whereas only 37 percent answered that the wife was.5 This indicates a clear, though not severe, patriarchal bias within North Korean households. In contrary, another refugee study suggests that the mid-1990s famine could have led to a change in gender roles, division of labor, and gender-preference within North Korean families.6 In the 1990s, the collapse of the heavy-industry-oriented North Korean economy combined with the food crisis might have strengthened the positions of females in North Korean society. Housewives found efficient ways to contribute to the family income by engaging in the emerging informal and light-industry-oriented economy, while mothers began to prefer daughters since they were perceived as requiring less food to survive during crisis periods.In 1999, demographic researcher Daniel Goodkind raised an interesting question that shed light on the extent of gender discrimination in North Korea: Do parents in North Korea prefer sons? Child malnutrition data based on a 1998 UN survey report were analyzed along with sex ratios at birth taken from the North Korean population census data of 1993.7 The study did not find evidence of female disadvantage based on a lack of increased pre- and post-natal female mortality or a lack of aggravated malnutrition, both of which factors may be due to North Korea's socialist ideology.This paper investigates gender disparities in North Korea in 2002. Methodologically, this study was based on quantitative and reliable data, and thus it goes beyond ad hoc, qualitative, and non-random data gathered from refugee interviews. Moreover, as distinct from Goodkind's study, this paper focuses on a more recent period while directly investigating intra-household allocation biases within North Korean families, as opposed to relying on demographic and anthropometric indicators alone.Historical Gender Inequality and Socialist AchievementsConfucianism was adopted by Korea during the Chosun Dynasty (1392-1910), and largely affected the status of women and girls in society. It has been argued that the status of females was higher before the Chosun Dynasty, as women could remarry, become head of the family, and receive equal inheritance. …