True Believers: Conversations with North Koreans

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.

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)

Last orders in Pyongyang

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

Three Difficulties for the North Korean Economy and Inter-Korean Cooperation

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. …

The Complex Relationship between Sanctions and North Korea's Illicit Trade Justin V. Hastings (bio) North Korea's illicit trade and sanctions have a complex relationship.1 In this essay, I argue that while North Korean companies do engage in illicit trade to bypass sanctions, much of such trade is actually the result of the fundamental dysfunction of the Kim regime and how the North Korean economy has evolved in the past several decades. That said, North Korea has been forced by sanctions to adapt the way it does business inside and outside the country. Because much of the illicit trade does not benefit the regime directly, it may actually behoove the international community to encourage some types of illicit trade and to provide an outlet for the regime to make money other than through dealing in weapons and illicit goods. Sanctions and the Illicit Economy North Koreans do indeed engage in illicit trade as a way of bypassing sanctions and sanction-enforcement mechanisms, specifically in buying or selling goods that have been declared off limits by UN Security Council resolutions. But there are two other main reasons that North Koreans engage in illicit economic activities and trade that have little to do with sanctions. First, the North Korean system at its most basic level encourages, and in many cases practically requires, economic activities to be illicit. In the years since the Arduous March killed a significant percentage of the North Korean population and citizens responded by going into business for themselves as a means of survival,2 North Korea, particularly under Kim Jong-un, has developed a modus vivendi whereby the lines between formal [End Page 28] and informal status, state and nonstate trade, and licit and illicit economic activities are blurred. Nearly every economic actor in North Korea is involved directly or indirectly in illicit trade, or more generally the illicit economy. Central state companies defy sanctions to export proscribed goods and import sanctioned items (which have long since ceased to be merely the technology that could be used in weapons programs). Other state companies with trading licenses go abroad (usually to China) to make money via whatever means they can. Private companies masquerade as state-owned companies by paying off state officials to buy and sell both legal and illegal goods, while state officials moonlight as entrepreneurs using their public positions. Private individuals use family members and other connections in China to move consumer goods and food across the border, often outside formal checkpoints or in violation of trade regulations.3 The North Korean economy as a whole functions as what has been called a "food chain," where every level of society and the state must pay rents to their superiors for the right to operate, and Kim Jong-un and his circle serve as the apex predators collecting rents indirectly from everyone below them.4 Because all private enterprise in North Korea is technically illegal, the state benefits from a system in which officials can collect bribes and fees to allow private and hybrid businesses to operate but have the legal leeway to crack down on them at any time. The state does not really care where the income to pay rents up the food chain actually comes from. This leads to a situation where the state (and officials) can indirectly benefit from what are often large-scale, institutionalized illicit economic activities without being directly involved. Drug trafficking, for example, likely has not been directly run by the North Korean government (in the sense of using central state–owned factories for production and ships for trafficking) since the mid-2000s, but the state continues to benefit indirectly from drug-trafficking profits.5 Second, many North Koreans engage in illicit economic activities, particularly trade, as a way of mitigating state-imposed political and [End Page 29] economic risk and moving profits out of the country (such as through smuggling gold into China).6 Because North Korea has few financial institutions or dispute-resolution mechanisms that encourage commerce, and because market actors must cultivate relationships with government officials (through bribes, gifts, and a cut of profits) as a way of getting any business done, regardless of the ostensible...

The legitimacy of the North Korean is based solely on the leaders’ personal legitimacy, and is maintained by the indoctrination of people with symbols and the enactment of leadership cults in daily life. It can thus be dubbed a leader state. The frequency of symbols and the richness and scale of leader-symbol-making in North Korea are simply unrivalled. Furthermore, the personality cults of North Korean leaders are central to people’s daily activity, critically affecting their minds and emotions. Both symbols and cult activities are profoundly entrenched in the institutions and daily life, and if separated and cancelled, the North Korean would be transformed. This book analyses North Korea as a leader focusing on two elements, symbols and cult activities. It argues that these elements have been, and continue to be, the backbone of North Korea, shaping North Korean culture. To reveal the leader state character, the book specifically examines North Korea’s leadership cults, its use of symbols in these cults, and the nature of the symbolism involved. How has the North Korean developed the cult of the Kim Il Sung family? How does the use symbols to perpetuate this cult? How has the developed myths and rituals that sustain the cult in daily life? What images has propaganda manufactured? How does the state’s manipulation of symbols affect the symbolism that is assigned to the leader’s actions? In answering these questions, this book sheds new light on the strength and resilience of the North Korean state, and shows how it has been able to survive even the most difficult economic period of the mid-1990s. Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea will be essential reading for students and scholars of North Korea, Korean politics, Asian politics, political sociology and visual politics.

This study addresses whether North Korea–China trade dilutes the effectiveness of the unilateral sanctions imposed by South Korea and Japan, and if so, to what extent and in what way. The structural adjustment of North Koreas export pattern in size and trade type dilutes the effectiveness of the unilateral sanctions imposed by South Korea in particular. South Koreas economic sanctions significantly boost North Koreas exports to China, and the export increase has been substantial to cover the loss from the sanctions. North Korea has increased exports to the Chinese domestic market (by general trade) and those passing through China (by bonded trade). These findings show that North Korea has mitigated the economic damage of sanctions by employing various techniques for trade diversion. Changes occur because incentives for both North Korean regime and foreign firms are expedient particularly after South Koreas sanctions.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, consecutive floods in 1995-1996 and a severe drought in 1997 caused the North Korean economy to shrink, becoming abysmal by the end of the 1990s. North Korea's foreign trade followed the same path as its overall economic trend. The volume of foreign trade declined 60 percent from a peak year of $4.9 billion in 1988 to $2.0 billion in 2000. However, recently the trend has been reversing with an average annual increase of 10 percent since 2000. This paper identifies the four key problems of North Korea's foreign trade: chronic trade deficits, a limited number of trading partners, the increasing role of the inter-Korea trade and Chinese interest in the North Korean market.IntroductionNorth Korea has long been portrayed as an autarkic society governed by an absolute ruling ideology called juche, a concept of autonomy and self-suffeciency that leads to a belief that Korea should be free from any foreign intervention. North Korea's economy prominently applies the ideology of juche under three principles. First, all means of production are owned solely by the state and cooperative organizations. Second, the state formulates unified and detailed plans to guarantee a high rate of production growth and balanced development of the national economy. Third, socialist production relations are based on the foundation of an independent national economy. Under the juche principle, North Korea's foreign trade has amounted to only about i0 percent of its Gross National Product (GNP) for years, far below that of most other economies.North Korea has been secluded from the Western world, but the country has recently initiated a policy of internal reform and external engagement. The greatest contribution that Japan, South Korea and the United States could make in order to achieve durable peace and stability on the Korean peninsula would be to normalize economic relations with North Korea and enter into an extensive program of engagement.After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in i989, even optimistic diplomats predicted only seven years at the most before the demise of North Korea (Clifford, 2002). These predictions were partially true for economic collapse, but not for political sustenance. No one knows for sure how many North Koreans died from food shortages in the i990s, because North Korea is a police state that restricts most reporters and relief workers. However, the United Nations' World Food Program estimates that more than one million people have been killed by famine (Fairclough, 2005). Many children went unfed or underfed. Malnutrition has been blamed for the stunted growth of children in North Korea, where seven-year-olds are seven centimeters shorter and weigh i0 kilograms less than children of the same age group in South Korea (Lee, 2002 b). Thirty-seven percent of North Korean children are malnourished as are a third of mothers.North Korea issues no consistent macroeconomic statistics, making it impossible to gain an accurate picture of its economy. However, the Bank of Korea estimates that North Korea lost almost half of its GNP and 70 percent of its foreign trade from i990 to i998 as the country's economy contracted and its trade relations with former communist countries dwindled. North Korean factories are estimated to have operated at no more than 25 percent of capacity in the i990s (Oh and Hassig, 2000). The health care system virtually ceased to operate. Food shortages became the most pressing economic problem.The North Korean economy finally turned around in i999. The Bank of Korea estimates that the North Korean economy grew by 6.2 percent in i999, i.3 percent in 2000, 3.7 percent in 200i, i.2 percent in 2002, i.8 percent in 2003, and 2.2 percent in 2004, after experiencing nine successive years of negative growth. In particular, North Korean grain output recorded gains, and its import volume has expanded rapidly during the last few years. …

Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands

Poor Economic Performance in North KoreaDespite the severe economic hardship, North Korea has devoted its energy to strengthening its capabilities. Adhering to the so-called military first politics, the harsh North Korean regime continues to maintain its stranglehold on the people and attempts to avert political democratization. North Korea propagates a juche ideology as the foundation of its legitimacy and uses this to insulate its people from the outside world.1 The fundamental obsession with a self-reliant economy has brought about overall economic inefficiency, including a low level of technology, serious neglect of production facilities, and a decrease of labor productivity. As the resultant economic dilemma accumulated, the North Korean economy tumbled severely in the 1990s. North Korea is well aware of the serious problem of its backward economy, but denies the fact that its economic slump can be ascribed to the accumulated problems of its inefficient system. Instead, North Korea blames the hostile policy of the United States, or its weak external economic relations caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc.The economy ceased to function during the 1990s, especially after North Korea suffered severe flooding in 1995. After several years of famine, North Korea announced that the country had overcome its economic hardship through an arduous march of sustained effort by Kim Jung-il and the Korean Workers Party. Positive economic growth in the early 2000s seemed to be made possible by foreign subsidies (see Figure 1). In general, however, the North Korean economy is believed to have failed, losing all its potential and ability to overcome the economic deadlock.Furthermore, North Korea has failed to supply daily necessities and subsistencelevel food to meet the demands of its people (see Figure 2). North Korea needs at least 6.5 million tons of grain to distribute to its people, but its grain supply is far below the demand-by more than a million tons. The poor performance of the agricultural sector is due to the shortage of energy and fertilizer. North Korea was too dependent on Soviet oil and fertilizer subsidies prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.2In an effort to ride out the economic hardship, North Korea introduced bold measures to improve economic management on July 1, 2002, by increasing salaries and prices and providing its state-run enterprises with some incentives. The socalled July 1st measures are viewed as the most aggressive economic policy adopted by North Korea in recent years. The measures were targeted at curing the country's economic inefficiency within the framework of the state-controlled economy. Although North Korea is encouraging production more practically than in the past, and has pushed ahead with reform-oriented changes in the economic sector, it has yet to find better alternatives that will yield substantial economic growth. The measures were designed only to smoothly manage the planned economy, rather than introducing the merits of the market economy. The most notable example is North Korea's industry, which is still the top-priority economic expedient under its stratocracy.3Put simply, the July 1st measures worked against economic reform.4 In reality, the overall level of production in North Korea has remained in the doldrums for a considerable period of time. The shortage of capital goods has almost paralyzed production activities in most industrial sectors.During the initial period of the July 1st measures, North Korea faced severe inflation. The drastic increase in wages pushed up the purchasing power of the North Korean people. As time passed, an excess demand, caused by high wages combined with the ever-increasing speculative demand, touched off skyrocketing price increases. This is a typical monetary illusion, which refers to the tendency of people to think of currency in nominal terms. To stop high inflation, there is a need to add up production factors or improve labor productivity. …


 
 
 North Korea is a tinderbox where pride and paranoia go hand in hand. The gung-ho confrontational approach and creation of a new world order divided into good and evil, those for us and those against us, as adopted by the Bush administration, is surely the last thing the world needs in dealing with the DPRK. 
 
 One thing I did learn from two brief visits there in l994, just three months after Kim Il Sung’s death virtually paralyzed the country, and again in 1996, after floods and famine, was that the people are exceedingly nationalistic and determined to defend their notions of independence and self-reliance, however little is left of these visions in reality. Predictions of a collapse of North Korea have been made for the past ten years, but it still has not happened. They are a very resilient people. South Koreans know this and a sudden collapse of the North is the last thing they want.
 
 My contact was admittedly limited and mainly through the arts. (I was there twice as a guest of the biannual Pyongyang International Film Festival of Non-aligned and Other Developing Countries, showing my feature film Aya in 1994.) North Korean film and performance is often focused on the threat from outside. The belief in such a threat was echoed by people I met, and when constantly reinforced through state-controlled media, it becomes part of a nation’s psyche. To use such a threat to boost the need for unity under one strong leader is, however, a strikingly familiar practice of the DPRK’s enemy number one, the US.
 
 Few North Korean films have achieved distribution in the West. One exception is Hong Kil Dong (1985), a popular tae kwan do romance story, based on a legend well-known both in North and South Korea. It was released in France and Finland. A long-running series, The Nation and Destiny, described as ‘a multi-part feature film’ is akin to a string of linked mini-series of feature films, each bloc focussed on a fictionalized character from recent history. The heroes are often people who have served the dictatorship in the South and become disillusioned and defected to the DPRK. Or Korean War heroes such as Ri Jong Mo, who served 34 years in prison in South Korea before he was freed and allowed to return to the North. 
 
 Most North Korean films end with a suggestions that whatever heroic deed or sacrifice the hero(ine) made, it was all for the sake of the Great Leader, and an exhortation to fight to defend the country and its honour. They may conjure up old Soviet films, hardly the trendy programming our festivals or SBS want in order to boost their ratings. But we should be allowed to see them. The very propaganda that the North Korean people are subjected to can tell us much about the attitudes in the North toward the South and the outside world. However flawed or limited, this is a perspective we never hear or see.
 
 It struck me when I watched the South Korean blockbuster Swiri four years ago that the portrayal of the North Korean agents bore a striking resemblance to those of South Korean agents that appear in so many of the North Korean films I had seen. If we look at older films made in Seoul that deal with the divided nation, their melodramatic stories and caricature portrayal of the communist villains are not dissimilar to those we see in North Korea. In the context of much publicized account of the kidnapping of South Korean filmmakers, a story that has been around for some time, and has been questioned by many film industry insiders in Seoul, and the more recently admitted kidnappings of Japanese, we forget that kidnappings were widely practiced by the dictators in Seoul as well. Well-known composer Isang Yun was kidnapped in Germany, transported to Seoul, imprisoned, tortured and released only after international intervention. He is only one example. Former president Kim Dae-jung is another. Isang Yun’s story has also been fictionalized in four episodes of The Nation and Destiny.
 
 In the last couple of years South Korean films have come a long way in their more nuanced portrayal of characters from both sides. And films dealing with the Korean War now attract audiences in Korea, which was not the case some years ago. But we forget that a film such as JSA – Joint Security Area (directed by Park Chan-wook and shown in the Melbourne International Film Festival 2001) could not have been made before the introduction of Kim Dae-jung’s ‘sunshine policy’ and that it is only in recent years that South Koreans can express their opinions openly about North Korea. To make direct contact with North Koreans still requires permission. 
 
 SBS has in the past four years belatedly jumped on the bandwagon and shown several films of the South Korean new wave, after ignoring Korea for years. Yet, despite a substantial film industry in North Korea, including animation both locally made and on commission for countries like France, Italy, Japan, we have not to date seen a single North Korean feature film on our multicultural broadcaster, or on any other channel or in any of our film festivals in recent years. 2003, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, would have been the perfect opportunity to show films from both sides. It does seem extraordinary that no festival or broadcaster here has attempted to take up the challenge. 
 
 Of course it is not the filmmakers or artists who decide on reactivating the nuclear weapons program, and this is not usually what their films deal with. But seeing their work, however controlled it might be by the system, can help us in some small way to understand that we are dealing with an enormously proud people who feel under siege, even more so after being designated as part of ‘the axis of evil’. 
 
 It can also give us a perspective on their sense of history through the stories that the people are subjected to in their media. It is not only they who are subjected to propaganda, but our audience, as well, when we are deprived of such insight in this climate of a new world order.
 
 
 Citation reference for this article
 
 MLA Style
 Hoaas, Solrun. "The Celluloid Divide." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/12-hoaas.php>. APA Style
 Hoaas, S. (Jan. 2005) "The Celluloid Divide," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/12-hoaas.php>. 

Cultural integration based on the people's consciousness, emotions, values, attitudes, and so on is the determinant of the persistence and validity of political, economic and institutional unification. Thus, it is paramount for the unification of South and North Korea in which the people have long lived separately in two absolutely different and hostile systems. However, the analysis of various surveys reveals a huge gap between South and North Koreans in terms of unification perceptions, mutual recognitions, and acceptability toward each other's culture. While one out of every four South Koreans feels that unification is either not needed or is impossible, the overwhelming majority of North Koreans consider unification necessary. There is a marked difference in the North and South Koreans’ receptiveness towards each other, and North Koreans are bewitched by the Korean wave (Hallyu) while South Koreans shun North Korean culture. The gap in the landscape of the minds of South and North Koreans is growing over time. This reality shows the possibility that the inter-Korean integration process might cause serious discordance between the people of two Koreas and new social conflicts. Efforts need to be made in advance to clearly recognize this reality, to learn from the experiences of precedent post-socialist countries, and finally to use all these lessons for the peaceful future of inter-Korean unification.

The North Korean Economy By Nicholas Eberstadt. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transactions Publishers, 2007, 329 pp, (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-7658-0360-3As the editor of North Korean Review, I know that there are two American economists with the knowledge and experience required to solve the puzzle of this secretive country's economy and the military implications of its economic policies: Marcus Noland of the Institute for International Economics and Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. Whether or not readers agree with this book's diagnoses and suggested remedies on North Korean economy, they can surely benefit from considering the clear and energetic presentations in Nicholas Eberstadt's book. In my opinion, anyone who has some interest in Northeast Asia (China, Japan, and Korea) should read The North Korean Economy.This book consists of ten chapters. Chapter i, "Reform, Muddling Through, or Collapse," concludes that numerous small attempts by state planners to liberalize the ailing economy have been completely inadequate to pull the economy out of its nosedive. Eberstadt insists that policy makers must be prepared for the possibility that North Korea will continue to strive to amass an ever-growing nuclear arsenal, even as it gives assurances to the contrary.Chapter 2, "Our Own Style of Statistics: Availability and Reliability of Official Quantitative Data," states that in an age of globalization, North Korean statistical authorities stand in virtually complete isolation from all international counterparts. Apparently, there is scant evidence of any improvement in North Korean statistical output over the years since September 1998, when Kim Jung Il formally assumed state power.Chapter 3, "International Trade in Capital Goods, 1970 to 1995," examines the North Korean international trade in "capital goods"; that is to say, machinery, equipment, the manufactured parts used as capital stock in the production process. Eberstadt thinks that the ratio of capital goods to gross domestic capital formation in the North Korean economy during the 1980s and 1990s may have been lowest in the world.Chapter 4, "Interlocking Crisis in Food, Energy, and Transport Equipment: Indications from Mirror Statistics," analyzes North Korea's trends in three sectors of strategic significance to the entire North Korean economy: food, energy, and transport. This chapter states that Pyongyang appears to be pursuing an "aid-based" solution to its food and energy crises, the same one that has been used by the country for half a century.Chapter 5, "Socioeconomic Development in Divided Korea: A Tale of Two Strategies," presents a comparative economic analysis of the two Koreas. Ever since the Korean War, the two rival governments have pursued two different strategies in their economic policies: a highly centralized economic system by North Korea and a government-directed capitalism by South Korea. Some fifty years after the Korean War, South Korea defeated North Korea economically. The only question remaining is whether victory will eventually eradicate North Korea or prompt it to reconstruct itself as a modern state compatible with the economic and strategic realities of Northeast Asia. …