Immunity to Resistance? State-Society Relations and Political Stability in North Korea in a Comparative Perspective

IntroductionThe year 2013 marked the sixty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Mongolia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The relations were established within a shared ideology, at a time when both countries sought allies to strengthen their independence. Mongolia's rejection of communism and adoption of a multi-party system and market economy in 1990 were to radically change its relationship with the DPRK.However, despite their many differences and North Korea's pariah status in the international arena, Ulaanbaatar has made repeated efforts to maintain active diplomatic relations and engage North Korea. It has hosted talks in Ulaanbaatar between the DPRK and Japan, expressed interest in leasing a seaport in North Korea and, to mark the 65th diplomatic anniversary, Mongolia's head of state has visited Pyong-yang. These initiatives raise a number of questions. How have Mongolia's relations with the DPRK evolved over these sixty-five years, and can Ulaanbaatar continue to engage North Korea now that Mongolia is a democracy, has embraced a market economy, and subscribes to vastly different values and principles? Can Mongolia convince the DPRK to take part in a dialogue on regional security, as Mongolia's head of state suggested at the time of his 2013 visit to Pyongyang?Sources regarding Mongolia's relations with the DPRK remain limited and difficult to access. This article draws on literature, media reports, official Mongolian press releases and statements, and, finally, a number of informal interviews and discussions with Mongolian policy makers and politicians.1 As such, this article approaches Mongolia's relations with the DPRK through Mongolia's DPRK policy, rather than analyzing Pyongyang's attitude towards Ulaanbaatar.Establishment of Diplomatic Relations: 19482The establishment of diplomatic relations in 1948 served Mongolia and the DPRK well. Both Mongolia and North Korea only maintained diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Though de facto following Soviet priorities, the DPRK relations provided an opportunity for Mongolia to reaffirm its independence, particularly towards its southern neighbor China. In the 17th and 18th century, the territory of Mongolia had been administered as the Chinese province of Outer Mongolia. In 1911, with the collapse of the Manchu Qing dynasty, Mongolia proclaimed its independence yet entered a decade of disarray. The country adopted its first constitution in 1924 and proclaimed, under Russian protection, the Mongolian People's Republic (MPR). Following Russia, Mongolia became the second country to adopt communism. Mongolia's independence, however, remained fragile, and it would take two decades-and some Soviet pressure-for China's Chiang Kai-shek to reluctantly recognize the MPR (Chiang's recognition, however, was short-lived, and Mongolia-Taiwan relations remain ambiguous to this date).On October 15, 1948, barely a month after the DPRK had been proclaimed, and on Pyongyang's initiative, the Mongolian People's Republic and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea established diplomatic relations.3 The diplomatic relations of the two states-and for that matter those with the Soviet Union-were predominantly based on shared ideology. Migeddorj Batchimeg, currently a member of parliament and former presidential advisor on national security,4 defines the initial relations between the two countries as an ideology-driven friendship.5 Indeed, during the Korean War Mongolia provided North Korea with food aid, horses (some of which were formally awarded the DPRK title heroic horse), and other material assistance. Mongolia further took in a number of young children orphaned during the war and continued to provide food aid to North Korea after the Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953.6The early and rapid recognition of the two nations did not translate into frequent high-l evel visits and a thriving exchange between the two nations. …

The core questions addressed by Noland (2019) are how, and whether, engagement could foster market-orientation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and reduce direct state control over the country's economy. Noland presumes that the DPRK regime's objective is to obtain revenue with minimum changes to its internal practices and associated risks to political stability, and argues that the nature of engagement is important in inducing desired changes in the country. Noland highlights the modality of economic exchange in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), and analyzes whether the KCI model could serve as a means of transformative engagement. Through his analysis, Noland demonstrates that the labor practices in the KIC appear to be both exploitative and limit the extent the DPRK workers are exposed to new ways of organizing work, and concludes that it is unlikely to generate the desired changes. In order to encourage real institutional change, Noland concludes that the DPRK's partners must emphasize “more transformative approaches,” especially by means of introducing international norms and voluntary codes into the country. Otherwise, Noland assesses that the economic growth would merely enable the DPRK to achieve its status of “a de facto nuclear state.” In order to promote “effective transformative engagement,” Noland focuses on the means to expose DPRK workers to “new ways of organizing work.” To advance this argument further, it is also necessary to address the broad question of how the empowerment of workers could lead to real institutional changes in the country. As Babson (2019) notes, for the DPRK's economic growth, the regime would need to reform the economic system by embracing the role of markets, stimulating private initiative, and transforming international relations. The reformative measures include (but are not limited to) building institutions for legal and financial systems, trade and macroeconomic management; state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform; and shaping the economic leadership and core agencies as well as the role of the international financial institutions. Additionally, it should be noted that “animal spirits” among the empowered workers and entrepreneurs are an essential ingredient for any market growth. What options are available for external partners to affect such a reformative process? How can these countries help the empowered DPRK workers challenge state control over the economy and promote a desired realignment of the incumbent domestic coalition? These broader questions may deserve scrutiny as well. In this regard, experts are debating the extent to which the SOE reform since 2014 and the increasing level of private business activities could affect the DPRK's future economic development and relations with its external partners. Sakai (2018) argues that the DPRK regime does not intend to pursue a Chinese-style of economic reform and continues to oblige all DPRK citizens and entities to obey absolutely the “leadership,” while emphasizing the importance of “self-development spirit,” as opposed to international cooperation. Sakai offers a cautious view with regard to the opportunities for external partners to affect the DPRK's reformative process. To the contrary, Mimura (2017) highlights a possible window of opportunity to affect the DPRK's thinking about foreign partnership by focusing on the internal debate surrounding the new economic strategy since January 2018. Mimura observes that SOE autonomy is a key subject in the debate and focuses on the increasing autonomy for SOE managers, as opposed to the state planners, in making decisions on issues related to human resource management and production and sales of excess commodities. Babson (2019) also points to an increasingly blurred boundary between SOE and private business activities, referring to the emergence of successful entrepreneurs in both SOEs and private ventures. Babson recommends to explore options for enterprise organization models that would best support the DPRK's future economic development and relations with its partners. Such endeavor would complement Noland's proposal on the empowerment of DPRK workers. The DPRK's new line of economic policy is surely intended to secure the survival of the regime which would reject any external pressure if it felt threatened. The transformative engagement approach could succeed so long as the DPRK leadership became confident of its merits, which would likely require a prolonged period of adjustment, at a minimum. The DPRK's future decision to abandon its nuclear weapons, if it ever happens, would be affected by the regime's confidence in the security environment in which the economy is a crucial, but not necessarily the sole, factor. Political rapprochement is also another essential element in undertaking effective transformative engagement.

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. …

International energy assistance needs and options for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)

In his News Focus article “Nukes for windmills: quixotic or serious proposition?” (17 Sept., p. [1698][1]) (and the broader article on North Korean science, “A wary pas de deux,” 17 Sept., p. [1696][2]), R. Stone quotes an unofficial envoy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as suggesting that the DPRK would be willing to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for clean energy technologies. The desire of North Koreans for renewable small-scale energy systems is consistent with what we have learned in our contacts with DPRK researchers and engineers in the context of our North Korean wind power project ([1][3]). The key energy elements of the 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and the DPRK—the two large (1 GW) light-water reactors (LWRs) and the 500,000 tonnes/year of heavy fuel oil that were to have been provided to the DPRK until the reactors were completed—were political compromises with severe practical drawbacks. The LWRs could not be operated safely without an interconnection to South Korea's grid, and the bottom-of-the-barrel, high-sulfur heavy fuel oil has reportedly accelerated degradation of an already dilapidated thermal power plant fleet ([2][4]). Small and mini hydroelectric systems are a good match to the DPRK's terrain and climate, and parts of the DPRK seem to have at least a fair wind resource. Renewable options put the focus on economic redevelopment on the local level, rather than on the less tractable national level. Renewable energy systems are not going to be enough by themselves to makeover the DPRK's energy sector in the near term, but can certainly contribute to the redevelopment of the DPRK energy infrastructure. They are also relatively resistant to diversion to military use and would engage a broad group of North Korean citizens with visitors from the outside as technological skills are transferred. 1. 1.[↵][5] 1. J. Williams, 2. P. Hayes, 3. C. Greacen, 4. D. Von Hippel, 5. M. Sagrillo , Bull. Atom. Sci. 55(no. 03), 40 (May/June 1999). [OpenUrl][6][CrossRef][7] 2. 2.[↵][8] 1. D. Von Hippel, 2. P. Hayes, 3. T. Savage, 4. M. Nakata , Modernizing the US-DPRK Agreed Framework: The Energy Imperative (Nautilus Institute Report, Nautilus Institute, Berkeley, CA, 2001) Discussions of the Agreed Framework and an analysis of the DPRK energy sector can be found in (available at ), and D. Von Hippel, P. Hayes, and T. Savage, The DPRK Energy Sector: Estimated Year 2000 Energy Balance and Suggested Approaches to Sectoral Redevelopment (Nautilus Institute, Berkeley, CA, 2003) (Nautilus Institute Report prepared for the Korea Energy Economics Institute). [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.305.5691.1698 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.305.5691.1696b [3]: #ref-1 [4]: #ref-2 [5]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1. in text [6]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DBull.%2BAtom.%2BSci.%26rft.volume%253D55%26rft.issue%253Dno.%2B03%26rft.spage%253D40%26rft.atitle%253DBULL%2BATOM%2BSCI%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.2968%252F055003014%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [7]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.2968/055003014&link_type=DOI [8]: #xref-ref-2-1 View reference 2. in text

NLL and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)The Northern Limit Line (NLL) is a disputed maritime extralegal boundary in the Yellow (West) Sea, dividing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly referred to as North Korea, and the Republic of Korea (ROK), commonly referred to as South Korea. Initially imposed in 1953 as a temporary measure in response to concerns about ROK President Syngman Rhee threatening the Armistice (AA),2 it was also a restraint on the DPRK. original purpose of the NLL remains: it is a mechanism to separate the two Koreas. was necessary because the Armistice Agreement, although granting military control of the islands to the commander-in-chief of the United Nations Command (UNC), did not give a clear position on the territorial waters surrounding the islands. Thus, the dispute includes both the legitimacy of the NLL itself and conflicting territorial claims to the waters surrounding the five islands. five islands are U-do, Sochong-do, Taechongdo, Paengnyong-do and Yeonpyeong-do.From a legal perspective, there are two major regimes that apply to the NLL dispute: the Armistice (AA) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). full text of Article 15 of the AA is as follows: This Armistice shall apply to all opposing naval forces, which naval forces shall respect the water contiguous to the Demilitarized Zone and to the land area of Korea under the military control of the opposing side, and shall not engage in blockade of any kind of Korea.3The DPRK is bound under the AA to respect waters contiguous to the islands as ROK waters, but the international norm of the time, 3 nautical miles, has since become 12 nautical miles. Regardless, the NLL reserves for the ROK waters that go beyond the definition of contiguous, using either the 3-or 12-nautical-mile norms.The right of the DPRK to dispute the NLL has been disputed. Roehrig argues that the DPRK did not lodge a formal protest until 1973, and cites the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation between South and North Korea.4 Article 11 of the agreement stipulates: The South-North demarcation line and the areas for nonaggression shall be identical with the Military Demarcation Line provided in the Military Armistice of July 27, 1953, and the areas that each side has exercised jurisdiction over until the present time.5Article 11 of the 1991 North-South Joint Declaration does not necessarily mean that the DPRK has lost the legal right to dispute the NLL. DPRK could plausibly argue, due to the ambiguity of the Article 15 of the AA, that it has been prevented from exercising its full jurisdiction over its own territorial waters. From 1953 to 1973, however, the DPRK failed to take clear action where the NLL was concerned. may not have been from acquiescence to the state of affairs as they were so much as acknowledgment of its weaker position in the aftermath of the Korean War. renewed aggression in 1973 was instigated in the hope of achieving a peace agreement with the U.S.,6 encouraged by the withdrawal from Vietnam.7 objective may also have driven the 1999 and 2002 clashes, with the DPRK applying pressure while simultaneously proposing negotiations with the U.S.8 differing positions of the U.S. and ROK on the NLL render it a useful area that the DPRK can exploit in an attempt to weaken their diplomatic relations.9It has been customary for the ROK and supporters of the NLL to argue that its compliance with the median line principle, commonly used in settling disputed maritime areas, makes it legal. Experts in the law however, have written that the NLL breaches a number of UNCLOS articles. Van Dyke, Valencia and Garmendia, using case studies, demonstrate that the median line principle does not mean the NLL complies with UNCLOS. Most striking is Article 76, which proclaims that states can't use straight baselines to cut offthe territorial seas of other states. …

This article shows that despite geographic and demographic obstacles, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had achieved a considerable degree of self-reliance in economic development by the late 1970s and was nearly self-sufficient in food grain production until the mid-1980s. However, the DPRK's economy became highly strained and increasingly vulnerable to external shocks due to its failure to make a changeover from extensive to intensive sources for its economic development, its rigid central planning system and huge defense expenditures as DPRK-Soviet and DPRK-China relations deteriorated in the post-1960 period. Moreover, this article shows that the structure of the DPRK's economy compounds its economic plight. Pursuing a self-reliant development strategy, the DPRK regime has promoted a comprehensive and integrated national economy in which each sector of the economy is closely interlinked while the foreign trade sector has been reduced to a minimum. The insular nature of the DPRK's economy makes it prone to negative ripple effects and vicious cycles of economic downturns whenever a shock, whether internal or external, is introduced into the system. Seen in this light, the weather-related natural disasters of the mid-1990s were not the major cause of acute food shortages. Rather the cause of hunger lies in the deeply rooted structural problems of the DPRK's economy.

Plasmodium vivax malaria has been one of the most troublesome diseases in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Given that a majority of malaria cases are concentrated near the demilitarized zone, concerted elimination efforts from both the Republic of Korea (ROK) and DPRK are essential for a malaria-free Korean Peninsula. This study assessed the impact of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and tafenoquine on malaria incidence in DPRK. We patterned the current model structure from the previously developed Plasmodium vivax malaria dynamic transmission model for ROK. Model parameters were adjusted using demographic and climate data from malaria-risk areas in DPRK, and the model was calibrated to annual malaria incidences from 2014 to 2018 in DPRK, as reported by the World Health Organization. Subsequently, we estimated the preventable malaria cases over a decade after introducing RDTs and tafenoquine compared to using microscopy alone and primaquine, respectively. Sensitivity analysis was performed to account for uncertainty in model parameters. When comparing RDTs to microscopy, a one-day reduction in diagnostic time due to the introduction of RDTs led to a reduction in malaria incidence by 26,235 cases (65.6%) over the next decade. With a two-day reduction, incidences decreased by 33,635 (84.1%). When comparing a single dose of tafenoquine with a 14-day primaquine regimen, the former prevented 1,222 (77.5%) relapse cases and 4,530 (11.3%) total cases over the years. The continuous and simultaneous implementation of RDTs and tafenoquine emerges as a potent strategy to considerably reduce malaria in DPRK.

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

This chapter focuses on the recent development of both the internet and the telecommunications system in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). By identifying and reviewing the reasons and trends involved in this process, it analyses the political, economic and social consequences of the information revolution in one of the world's most isolated countries. The DPRK is not only a focus of the international community through the nuclear debate, but its computer industry also alarms the intelligence services. According to Samsung electronics, development of the internet in North Korea could have a future. North Korean computer and communication technology has a future, if it is cheap and competitive. The regime may use it for its own purposes in order to enhance propaganda. But the more the DPRK is linked to and integrated with the world, the more outside influence will challenge the stability of the regime. Keywords: Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK); North Korea; Samsung electronics; telecommunications system

Note: Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, the Department of Defense or any other government agency. The Agreed Framework Between the United States and the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) is in our interest because, if it is carried out, it will eliminate the North Korean nuclear weapons program. If unchecked, this program threatens two key U.S. interests stability in Asia and checking the spread of nuclear weapons. The stability of Asia is critical to U.S. security and prosperity. The foundation of Northeast Asia's economic growth and political stability is security, and the linchpins of security have been our commitment to our defense relationships with South Korea and Japan. North Korea's long-standing challenge to security and stability in Northeast Asia acquired more ominous dimension with the emergence of major North Korean nuclear weapons program. Since the early 1980s, North Korea has operated large nuclear complex, chiefly at Yongbyon. U.S. intelligence believes that the purpose of the complex is the production of weapons grade plutonium. In addition to small 5 MW(e) reactor in operation since 1985, 50 MW(e) and 200 MW(e) reactor are under construction. We estimate that the DPRK nuclear program had generated enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons and was poised to leap forward in terms of plutonium production. The North Korean program represented an unacceptable threat to the United States' and our allies' interests for number of mutually-reinforcing reasons: * An unchecked nuclear capability in the North, coupled with its oversized conventional force, could be used for extortion or blackmail against the ROK as well as greatly increasing the costs of war in Korea. * A nuclear arsenal in North Korea could ignite nuclear arms race in Asia generally. * Failure to curb North Korean efforts would undermine the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system. * North Korea could export nuclear technologies and components to pariah states or terrorists worldwide. * With upgraded missile delivery systems, which the North is developing, the nuclear threat could project across most of Northeast Asia. The DPRK signed the NPT in 1985, entered into safeguards agreement with the IAEA in January 1992 and agreed with the ROK in 1992 to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Despite these obligations, in 1989 the DPRK defueled its 5 MW(e) reactor and reprocessed the fuel. In 1992 the DPRK refused to cooperate with the IAEA to clarify the amount and disposition of the plutonium from that load of fuel. The DPRK remained out of compliance with its NPT and IAEA obligations up to mid-1994. Talks aimed at the resolution of the problem faltered. In 1993 North Korea announced it would withdraw from the NPT and then suspended its withdrawal. In June 1994 the DPRK defueled its reactor for the second time and refused to allow the IAEA to take steps that could have helped shed light on the amount of plutonium removed during the earlier defueling. It declared it would end its IAEA safeguards agreement, refuel the reactor, and reprocess the spent fuel. In light of these threats, acts, and the lack of progress in bilateral talks, the United States, in cooperation with the ROK and other allies and friends, took steps to obtain UN Security Council sanctions resolution on the DPRK. North Korea declared that sanctions were, in its view, an act of war. In light of the DPRK's massive conventional capability and its threats e.g. to turn Seoul into a sea of fire we augmented our defensive capability, and in consultation with the ROK, considered wide range of options for additional force augmentations. …

have been a surprisingly high number of clashes between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) since the signing of the Armistice Agreement in 1953. While it is well known that the brinkmanship strategy of the DPRK regime was a crucial cause of the clashes between the ROK and the DPRK, the ROK's role in provoking the DPRK has generally been ignored. Most incidents prior to the early 1990s could not have been thoroughly examined because the ROK government maintained a complete control over the domestic mass media, even though a few specialists on the NorthSouth relationship and newspapers in the ROK have begun to analyze the ROK's responsibility in very recent conflicts. More specifically, some scholars argued that the relationship between the ROK and the DPRK deteriorated significantly after the inauguration of President Lee Myung-Bak in February 2008, due to a new policy toward Korea in the Lee government.1 The so-called North Wind (Pukp'ung) incident shortly before the April 1 1 general election in 1996 is another case deserving attention. Since early April of that year, the DPRK's gunboats and heavily armed soldiers had darted in and out of South Korea. In particular, nearly 200 DPRK soldiers armed with machine guns and mortars repeatedly crossed the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). After an investigation conducted by the Kim Dae-Jung government two years later, it became clear that the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) had been the instigator in the DPRK's violation of the Armistice Agreement. This was because the unstable security situation during the election would have benefited the conservative ruling party rather than the

America's North Korea nuclear policy has been a failure. Instead of achieving its goal of preventing North Korea from possessing and proliferating nuclear weapons, it has had the opposite effect. This failure was a result of the George W. Bush administration's blanket rejection of the previous administration's approach to North Korea, the tendency to ignore the advice of experts, neoconservative influence on foreign policy, and divisions within the administration resulting in an inconsistent approach. This article suggests a bold new approach in which the United States offers North Korea full diplomatic recognition and a formal end to the Korean War as first steps toward the goals established in the 2007 Six Party Talks on North Korea, i.e., that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapons programs, and cease its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Taking these moves as a starting point rather than a reward for compliance will deepen North Korea's commitment to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation by removing its gravest external security threat—the United States.

The article considers the international legal status of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and South Korea (Republic of Korea), its preconditions, and consequences. It was emphasized that the DMZ provides for the liquidation of military facilities and if that is not possible, a ban on their use for military purposes may be introduced at the stage of post-war relations between states or during the armistice. It is established that the creation of the demilitarized zone began in 1945 when two "allies" (the United States and the Soviet Union) shared control of the Korean Peninsula. It is emphasized that by 1948 the Soviet leadership had established a communist regime in the area north of the 38th parallel, and a US-backed military government had been formed in the south. The article notes that although the Korean War (1950-1953), aimed at resolving the question of "which regime represented the 'real' Korea," is still not over (North and South Korea are still formally at war, as the peace treaty after the de facto the end of the Korean War in 1953 was never signed), the conditional end of the conflict was the signing of the 1953 Armistice Agreement. The main content of the study is the analysis of the DMZ between North Korea and South Korea, the legal status of which is governed by the Armistice Agreement of 1953. The analysis of the agreement in the article is prohibited within the DMZ (Article 1, paragraph 6). The Military Ceasefire Commission and the Neutral Observation Commission, which were established under the 1953 Ceasefire Agreement, are mentioned. provided by this agreement, it is responsible for the implementation of a certain part. Discussion issues are being raised regarding the creation of the World Peace Park in the DMZ. The article examines the problems of the Joint Security Area (JSA), which is located in the border village of Panmunjom and is a meeting area for representatives of the North and South. It is noted that despite the presence of the DMZ and numerous attempts to establish relations between the two countries, there are still constant risks of escalation of the conflict between North Korea and South Korea, which causes constant tension for citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the international community.

Chapter 6 - Confronting a Nuclear North Korea