Purpose—The purpose of the article is to analyze the U.S.’s foreign policy framework toward North Korea in the post–Cold War era. Design, Methodology, Approach—We employ process-tracing technique and comparative sequential method across successive administrations and find that the U.S.’s foreign policy toward North Korea is one of a self-amplifying process. Findings—We argue that the U.S.’s foreign policy toward North Korea has remained remarkably consistent over the course of three decades. Furthermore, the policy has both hardened and narrowed in its focus on denuclearization. Practical Implications—As the U.S. deepens its pursuit for denuclearization as an end, the misalignment of goals between Washington and Pyongyang persists and even grows. Originality, Value—Through our analysis, we contribute to existing work that identifies North Korea’s liability for the engagement failures and add texture to the understanding of the current deadlock in negotiations.

IntroductionNorth Koreans suffer from human rights abuses at the hands of the Kim regime. Despite consensus regarding the serious nature of abuses, addressing (much less resolving) these issues has proven to be difficult. Complicating matters further, the problem of North Korean human rights is embedded in the context of perpetual nuclear and humanitarian crises. This has stimulated ethical debates and much soul-searching among policymakers, aid workers, and activists torn between choices of principle and pragmatism. It has also inevitability led to the politicization of North Korean human rights.The politicization of North Korean human rights in U.S. foreign policy raises an interesting puzzle: why do human rights and humanitarian aid groups with noble intentions of alleviating human suffering at times distrust one another? In an ideal world, human rights, and its close cousin, humanitarian aid, knows no politics. But among narrow policy and activist circles within the human rights and humanitarian aid communities, politics has inevitably crept into the picture as different tactics, goals, and worldviews collide.This article explores different responses to human suffering in North Korea and the evolution of the contrasting yet symbiotic relationship between engagement and advocacy approaches to human rights since the mid-1990s in the United States. More concretely, I examine how short and long term strategic goals interacted with different moral and principled beliefs. This interaction produced two different networks working to alleviate the plight of North Koreans. One response to North Korean suffering stressed continued engagement with North Korea at the strategic, but more importantly humanitarian level. As evidence of gross human rights violations mounted in the late 1990s, a second network emerged shifting their focus toward advocacy and awareness, demanding greater political rights and freedoms for North Koreans.Understanding the Political ContextTo clarify the difference between these two ideal-type camps,1 an engagement-oriented approach seeks to meet the basic needs of North Koreans and improve living conditions through humanitarian initiatives, social entrepreneurship, educational training, and market-oriented business development.2 Engagement does not necessarily mean holding negotiations with the regime. Rather, it implies various levels of interaction with North Koreans at the state or local level with the goal of building working relationships.3 At the heart of an engagement approach is the idea of building relations and partnerships at the people-to-people level.On the other end of the spectrum are the human rights universalists who advocate greater freedom, liberty, and political rights for North Koreans.4 Naming and shaming the regime by documenting violations and reporting on topics such as the location of gulags, sex trafficking, the refugee crisis, or religious persecution remain their staple. Some have engaged in activities which at times encroach on North Korean sovereignty. This includes establishing an underground system helping North Koreans escape to the safety of other countries, often in Southeast Asia or Mongolia, in hopes of seeking asylum in South Korea, or sending information about the outside world into North Korea through radio broadcasts, USB drives, DVDs, and balloons.Drawing on evidence from primary and secondary accounts, interviews with human rights activists, and participant-observation at North Korean human rights events from 2009 to 2011 (see Appendix A), I build an analytical framework which helps shed light on the politicization of North Korean human rights. I argue that variations in the interaction between short- and long-term strategic and principled beliefs resulted in a division between a humanitarian engagement and a human rights advocacy/naming-and-shaming approach to North Korean suffering. Strategic beliefs here refer to ideas held by individuals which inform decision-making on national security issues. …

IntroductionSatellite imagery has revealed steam coming from the renovated North Korean nuclear reactor at Yongbyon,1 implying that Pyongyang has renewed efforts to accumulate plutonium, which can be processed from the reactor's waste products, in order to expand its stockpile of nuclear warheads. If this is true, it represents a fresh phase of nuclear escalation from North Korea, made all the more serious since this action nullifies previous disarmament progress made in 2008 when Pyongyang demolished a cooling tower at the Yongbyon reactor,2 partially disabling its nuclear weapons program.Worryingly, the reactor needs to run for at least a year before spent fuel rods can be removed for plutonium harvesting, and the predicted date when the DPRK can begin reaping fresh weapons grade plutonium is fast approaching. Additionally, North Korea has a uranium enrichment program, which was first detected in 2002, and could also produce uranium-based nuclear arms. Despite the lack of concrete intelligence regarding the efficacy of Pyongyang's uranium enrichment for weapons building, it would be fair to assume that if left to its own devices, the DPRK's pool of nuclear explosives is set to grow.However, Pyongyang's behavior does not preclude an improvement in disarmament prospects leading to nuclear rollback. Turning to the South African nuclear disarmament model, hope for North Korean nuclear disarmament can be salvaged by the fact that Pretoria decommissioned its entire nuclear munitions manufacturing capability along with all operational atomic bombs. Hence, if the latter can relinquish its nuclear deterrent, so can the former.Learning from South Africa's Nuclear DisarmamentRevisiting the decommissioning of the South African nuclear weapons program from 1990 to 1991,3 permits the parsing of ideas for North Korean denuclearization despite the disparate nature of both states. South Africa's status as the only country to indigenously build and dismantle its nuclear arsenal should provide pointers as to how North Korea can be encouraged to relinquish nuclear arms.Concerning factors driving President F.W. de Klerk to order the dismantlement of Pretoria's nuclear weapons program in 1989, it can be substantiated that: (1) weakening Soviet support for Angola and Mozambique lessened the security threat that these two adversarial states posed against South Africa's northern borders4; (2) years of sanctions due to the imposition of apartheid had battered the South African economy, leading to a desperate need for externally driven economic rehabilitation5 (which would be jeopardized by pariah status from nuclear arms possession) and; (3) De Klerk strongly believed in the morality of nuclear disarmament.6As such, South African nuclear disarmament was brought about by a pacification of serious national security threats, the realization that sanctions induced economic autarky was intolerable, and the positive effect of international nonproliferation norms. Correspondingly, if the North Korean security paradigm improves, benefits from economic interdependence become tangible and prestige or legitimacy from rogue status cessation can be gained, Pyongyang might agree to denuclearize.North Korean Economic, Norms-Based and National Security RealitiesNorth Korea has a moribund economy. Despite the autarky promoting state ideology of Juche, North Korea seems incapable of surviving without foreign assistance. For instance, its economy suffered a dip as soon as socialist support was withdrawn in 19917 and shrunk by almost half from 1990 to 1999.8 Additionally, the North Korean economy only grew once from 2009 to 2011 with gross domestic product only increasing by 0.8 percent in 2011.9 Moreover, the DPRK has been constantly unable to feed its population in contemporary times with crop failure in 2014 brought about by drought,10 and serious food shortages from 1995 onward due to natural disasters and economic mismanagement, thereby degrading labor productivity and societal sustainability. …

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. …

IntroductionDoes economic integration between South and North Korea generate positive spillover effects on their relationship? Or, are geopolitical factors and security issues still powerful enough to dominate Korean politics, limiting the effect of economic integration? The level of economic integration between the two Koreas has deepened over time. The amount of bilateral trade was only about $1.1 million three years after they officially began their trade relationship in 1988. It increased to $400 million in 2000 and then $2 billion in 2012. Currently, South Korea is North Korea's second largest trading partner, accounting for about 38 percent of its total trade in 2007. Considerable research argues that economic integration generates positive spillover effects on economic partners socially and politically.2 Scholars of liberal peace, for instance, claim that bilateral economic interdependence reduces the likelihood of militarized conflict between trading partners.3 Strong economic ties and material gains generated from it may promote economic partners' incentive to maintain or strengthen their relationship and avoid threats that may disrupt their partnership. Frequent interactions can also increase common knowledge, understanding, and interest on various issues. To the extent it occurs, economic partners are likely to narrow their policy preference gaps over various foreign policy issues.4 In this regard, it is reasonable to suspect that increasing economic integration between the two Koreas may have promoted their foreign policy preference similarity, increasing political cooperation in international organizations.Meanwhile, from a realist perspective, military tension and external forces on the peninsula, such as the U.S. and China, are still powerful factors that drive Korean politics. From this perspective, inter-Korean relations and their foreign policies have been shaped and affected by geopolitical issues and regional super powers. Therefore, bilateral economic integration may have a negligible impact on inter- Korean relations.Both claims have solid theoretical grounds. Nevertheless, virtually no empirical studies have tested these claims and show whether economic integration has gen- erated any positive spillover effects on inter-Korean relations. This article examines whether deepening economic integration has promoted cooperation between the two Koreas by analyzing their voting (dis)similarity in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the time period, 1991-2011. Also, it tests whether their voting decisions are strongly influenced by the positions of the U.S. and China on the issues. Empirical results show no significant evidence that economic integration promotes cooperation between South and North Korea in the UNGA. However, the two Koreas show relatively similar voting patterns over economic issues and Palestinian issues, while they tend not to agree on nuclear, security, and human rights issues. Meanwhile, their vote coincidence is strongly influenced by the United States' and China's positions on votes. These results imply that political rather than economic factors are still significant in explaining non-cooperation on the Korean Peninsula.In the following pages, we first examine the theoretical basis of the relationship between economic integration and states' cooperation. Next, we explore states' voting behavior in the UNGA in general and that of the two Koreas in particular. Research design, the data and variables used in this article, and the empirical results are reported in the next section. Finally, we conclude with a summary of the findings and their implications.Economic Integration and Cooperation Between StatesEconomic integration, which is typically defined as the free flow of goods, capital, and labor across national borders, has deepened in many places in the world. The Korean Peninsula is not an exception from this global trend. Ever since the devastating Korean War in 1950-1953, the two Koreas lacked a formal economic relationship until 1988. …

IntroductionChina maintains a special relationship with North Korea, because of the traditional friendship that was first established by Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung during the Korean War in the 1950s. Although North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006 caused uncertainty regarding bilateral relations, high-level official visits continued (see Table 1). Table 1 shows the mutual visits by top leaders between North Korea and China since 2006. Every year for the past seven years, there has been at least one ministerial-level visit from one side to the other. On the Chinese side, former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, current Prime Minister Li Keqiang (vice prime minister at the time of the visit), current President Xi Jinping (vice president at the time of the visit) and current Vice President Li Yuanchao have all paid visits to North Korea. Despite fluctuating tension between North Korea and South Korea, relations between China and North Korea have entered a different stage, especially noticeable when new leaders came into power in both countries. Xi Jinping was elected president of China during the 18th Plenary Conference of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on November 15, 2012. After the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December of 2011, Kim Jong-un became the 1st Chief of Committee of National Defense Committee on April 13, 2012.Since 2006, the United Nations has authorized four rounds of sanctions on North Korea, which mainly limit the import of nuclear- and missile-related equipment and technologies.1 As a result, trade between North Korea and the rest of the world has been affected. The trading of goods and services that were excluded from the sanctions still continue between North Korea and the outside world, including China. Tourism is also an important sector that has not been stopped by the sanctions.From the demand side, China is the neighbor of North Korea, and being a large market, China's economic environment provides a sound basis for tourism. China's per capita GDP reached about 6,000 USD at the official exchange rate and about 9,000 USD in purchasing power parity in 2012. According to empirical research, the tourism and leisure industry of a country will have strong growth when per capita GDP reaches 3,000-5,000 USD. Consequently, customers will have high expectations of service quality.2As more Chinese citizens travel abroad for sightseeing, more destinations are being approved by the Chinese government, after examination of mutual diplomatic relations and the security situation in those destinations. A destination must have unique value to offer to tourists. Several aspects of North Korea are attractive to Chinese tourists. The war in the 1950s left a deep impression on many Chinese, as well as on their relatives and friends, particularly those who served as voluntary soldiers. These individuals go to North Korea hoping to revisit former battlefields to see how they have changed.Members of the younger generation, born after the 1970s, grew up during the fast economic development and all around policy reform that has taken place across China in recent decades. The outlook of China changed, or became modernized, greatly after the 1980s. This makes it hard for members of the younger generation, especially those living in urban areas, to understand China's past, as they cannot find tangible elements or memories from China's history. North Korea's slow change and growth since the 1950s, plus its isolationist policies, make it a showpiece which resembles China's history. For younger Chinese, North Korea is an ideal place to learn about China's past, due to its centrally planned economy, egalitarianism, and strictly managed society. For these individuals, the main attraction is related to the spiritual, rather than the material, side. On the other hand, some Chinese investors are trying to find business opportunities in North Korea and they also join tours of the country.Curiosity will drive people to tour new destinations. …

IntroductionIn the past, because of political tensions and environmental reasons, the border region of Russia, China, and North Korea did not receive much attention, especially in terms of economic growth potential, even though specialists had designated the area economic territories in the early 1990s.1 The border however, is now increasingly reattracting attention from Northeast Asia experts because of its potential as a treasure trove of natural resources and a global logistics hub. Although, in the political point of view, conflicts of interests between North Korea/South Korea, China/Russia, Russia/Japan, and Japan/China are still unresolved, regional cooperation for the mutual benefit of all parties-especially in trade, investment, and energy supply-is being increasingly reassessed.In this Russia has planned to diversify its natural resource exports, balance regional development within the country, and expand its regional political influence. China has accelerated its efforts to develop its three northeast provinces (Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning), secure its way out to the East Sea (Sea of Japan), and improve accessibility to natural resources, such as oil and gas buried in Russian Siberia.2 North Korea spurs development of its Rason Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in order to overcome prolonged economic difficulties.3 South Korea searches for ways to secure energy resources along with its efforts to develop logistics routes connected throughout the Eurasian continent, which was highlighted in 2013 in the Eurasia Initiative of the Park Geun-hye government.4 Japan places top priority on ensuring resources near the Tumen River estuary as well. The region, frequently called as such by South Koreans since the late 1980s-and which includes the border areas between Russia, China, and North Korea, part of the Russian Far East and Siberia, and part of Northeast China-has reemerged as a crucial juncture because of the mutual interests of all parties interlinked in the economic and the political spheres.5In addition, because of climate change and the progress of global warming, the availability of a potential route to the Arctic Ocean is emerging. Moreover, this situation increases the availability of Russian Far East ports and natural resources development in the northern region. Logistics infrastructures and their operating systems to access the resources therein are still vulnerable. The closed customs system between China and Russia could be a constraining factor for building a seamless cross-border logistics system. The most critical barrier to growth, however, would be the disconnected maritime and/or inland logistics network to North Korea, under the influence of political factors. As a way to solve political tensions with isolated North Korea, economic cooperation in the northern logistics market (including the Korean Peninsula, China, and Russia) presents itself as a necessary task to accomplish. To achieve this goal, an understanding of the current status and implications of the northern logistics market and prospecting in the direction of future changes are necessary.Historical Background of the Northern Economic Bloc6RussiaImperial Russian territorial advancement toward the present Russian Far East began with the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, signed with Qing China to define the respective boundaries mainly along the Amur River.7 Subsequently, Russia advanced to Alaska in 1741.8 During the decline of the Qing in the mid-nineteenth century, Russia conquered Vladivostok in 1859 and established the present borderline of the Russian Far East.9 In 1891, Russia started constructing the Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR), completed in 1903.10 With the demise of Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union established fifteen regions for economic development from 1920 to 1957, setting up nineteen basic economic regions, including Siberia afterward. The rapid growth of this region attempted by the Soviet Union was based on rich physical resource endowment, while scarcity of the labor force was supplemented with enforced migration by the state authorities. …

IntroductionFirst-time visitors to South Korea, especially if they arrive at night, cannot miss the sea of red and white neon crosses perched atop the multi- story commercial buildings that populate the urban landscape. A cross on such a building means that somewhere inside, likely smashed between an English language academy and an Internet cafe is a small but dynamic Christian church. Korean Christianity is notable for its lack of nominal Christians. South Korean Christians are believers, going to church several times a week, arriving in the pre- dawn hours for morning prayer (saebyeokgido), and attending home Bible studies. On the surface, the dynamism of Christianity (and other religions) appears to be just another point of contrast between South Koreans and their northern kin, but perhaps of a different sort in North Korea are more numerous than one might expect, or hope.After a recent trip to North Korea, I concluded that the few elite North Koreans I was exposed to were indeed, believers.1 They are true believers in a system that to outsiders appears so brittle it could crumble at any moment, but to them best explains the world around them. Like people everywhere, North Koreans are trying to make sense of their environment, but they are denied the information necessary to arrive at independent conclusions or to challenge the narrative of the ruling regime. Being aware of the faith of these is essential to understand the nature of the bonds that hold North Korea together; to explain how they have successfully executed two successions that many experts predicted would topple the regime, and to appreciate the reason why there is no obvious solution to the problems that stem from the division of the Korean peninsula.Traveling to North Korea was a difficult decision. Apart from the cost, it raised some moral questions. The hard currency brought in by the small tourism industry is a source of direct support for the Kim regime. I did not want to travel there unless I could learn something valuable. I needed a plan and gradually devised one; instead of going to North Korea with the idea of attempting to break away from my minders to see the real North Korea, I would make my minders the subject of my research. Rather than trying to find the hidden North Korea, I would focus on the visible North Korea, and the North Koreans the regime wanted me to see.Kim Il- sung Mausoleum: A Fitting IntroductionTo understand the faith of North Koreans, it is first necessary to understand the cult of the Kims. Among the personality cults of the 20th century, the Kims' stands out for its longevity and virility. There has never been a Korean parallel to de-Stalinization, or even a modest reevaluation that Kim Il- sung was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong, as Deng Xiaoping famously said of Mao Zedong. Although Kim Il- sung ruled North Korea since the 1940s his personality cult was not founded until the early 1970s, just as the North Korean economy was beginning to slip into terminal decline.2 The personality cult was a way to cultivate loyalty and concentrate power at the very top while North Korea was transitioning from a singleparty Communist state to a personal dictatorship. From its inception it appears Kim Il- sung's son, Kim Jong- il, managed and developed the cult with an eye toward making it the cornerstone of the Kim family's dynastic rule.3 Since his death in 1994 Kim Il- sung has remained the eternal president. My minders never once mentioned the death of Kim Il- sung, only his demise.The essence of the Kim cult is best understood by a visit to Kim Il- sung's mausoleum on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Located at the end of a kilometer- long boulevard visitors are struck by its sheer size. In front of the mausoleum is a square just a bit smaller than Tiananmen in Beijing, but the complex itself dwarfs the mausoleums of Mao and Stalin. We were unloaded at a special pavilion across a moat from the mausoleum. …

IntroductionThe survival of the North Korean political system in the face of a wide range of challenges has generated vigorous debates within the academic community. One school of thought, the so-called collapsists, argues that the leadership's reluctance to introduce radical economic reforms foreshadows a dramatic collapse, as the regime's grip over society is increasingly undermined by the process of marketization.1 In contrast, the expect the regime to muddle through the economic crises. In their opinion, the state's unusually pervasive control over society can offset the absence of radical reforms. Since reforms would actually undermine regime stability, the leadership has good reason to refrain from such steps.2The Spring has reignited this debate. While the collapsists emphasize that the regime might eventually face popular unrest akin to the upheavals that rocked North Africa and the Middle East in 2011-2012, the resilientists argue that the experiences of the Spring cannot be applied to the vastly different socio-cultural environment in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).Despite the different scenarios, the aforementioned studies were commonly focused on the capabilities of the North Korean state, rather than the peculiarities of the social environment in which it operated. Their elite-centered perspective reflected both the scarcity of reliable information about the political attitudes of ordinary citizens and the conspicuous absence of mass protests against the regime. To date, the North Korean political system has never encountered any serious challenge from below, serious socio-economic problems notwithstanding.To be sure, certain scholars, having analyzed the views of North Korean refugees, assessed the regime's durability from the perspective of social stratification. They raised the question of why mass protests have not occurred in the DPRK, and whether they might occur in the future.3 Still, there is a need for further investigation, for some of these studies have lacked a comparative perspective, while others have concentrated solely on the totalitarian institutions of Communist regimes, or compared North Korea with Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, whose socio-political systems had little in common with the DPRK.Due to space limitations, this article does not aspire to provide a full explanation for the durability of the North Korean regime. Nor does it cover such general causes of non-resistance as political repression and isolation from external influences. Instead, it seeks to examine whether certain specific social and subnational groups that proved able to show resistance against other one-party states might play, or have played, a similar role in the DPRK. The selected groups are: (1) industrial workers; (2) private entrepreneurs; and (3) religious, ethnic, and regional identities. Notably, in various other countries the regimes' general durability, and their penchant for harsh repression, did not preclude the occasional occurrence of resistance. However, in the DPRK, even localized protests have been unusually rare.To compare North Korea-a hybrid regime combining totalitarian and neopatrimonial features-with countries whose socio-political conditions were sufficiently similar, the scope of this analysis includes both a variety of Communist regimes and the Baathist party-states in Syria and Iraq. These regimes were selected on the basis of the following similarities: one-party rule supported by mass organizations, a strong army, and a formidable security apparatus; use of lethal force to suppress dissent; a period of statist economic policies, followed by greater tolerance toward private entrepreneurship; an ideology of militantly anti-imperialist secular nationalism and Arab socialism; and extensive political nepotism (including dynastic succession in Syria). By comparing the DPRK with various types of regimes (prereform Communist systems, partially market-oriented Communist systems, and Baathist party-states), the article also seeks to investigate whether the dynamics of North Korean society is largely unique, or if it can be at least partially explained by means of analogy. …