Arduous March Research Articles

The Prosody of Working and the Narrative of Martyrdom: Daily Life and Death in North Korean Literature during the Great Famine and the Early Military-First Age (1994–2002)

The government of Kim Jong Il (Kim Chŏngil) modified the meaning and purpose of during the North Korean famine and the early Military-First period (1994–2002). During the economic recession after the Soviet bloc collapsed, the North Korean government was incapable of providing material rewards to workers. Thus, the state attempted to transform labor into a spiritual rather than material practice. Despite the shortage of material resources and energy, the regime had to make the workers stay in their workplaces to maintain social stability. At that time, North Korean fiction often described people who worked for spiritual enlightenment rather than for material gain. In the novel and historical prose of this period, protagonists work not for their livelihoods, but for their honorable death; they voluntarily martyred themselves for their country, party, and leader Kim Jong Il. This study explores Song Sangwŏn’s Ch’onggŏm ŭl tŭlgo (Taking up bayonets) (2002) to examine how North Koreans worked, lived, and died at the turn of the twentieth century.

Major famines as geopolitical strategies

This article offers a preliminary checklist for identifying the geopolitical motivations of decision makers responsible for major famines, events defined as economic and social crises causing one million or more excess deaths. Three geopolitical motivations are identified in three major famines in the twentieth century. The 1932–1933 Ukrainian famine illustrates the strategy of starving a geographically concentrated, politically distrusted minority into submission and repopulating areas with politically trustworthy settlers and indoctrinated or assimilated traumatized famine survivors. The 1943 Bengal famine illustrates the starvation of politically distrusted populations in areas likely to be lost to invasion to make consolidation of that conquest expensive and to impede further conquest. The 1994–1995 North Korean famine illustrates the starvation of population in areas that pose a lesser risk of catastrophic regime delegitimation. Given the near certain decrease in grain production and probable declines in livestock production and fish catch in the Global South anticipated with climate change, decision makers are likely to be tempted to execute major famines to realize these geopolitical objectives. The geopolitical advantage from major famine thus merits the attention of famine-studies scholars.

The Complex Relationship between Sanctions and North Korea's Illicit Trade

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...

How humanitarian is international emergency aid?

본 논문은 국제적으로 비판과 논란의 대상이었던 국가에서 인도주의 재난이 발생할 때 국제 원조 단체들이 어떻게 반응하는가 하는 의문에서 시작되었다. 본 논문은 특히 기근이라는 특정한 재난을, 국가로서는 북한을 사례로 선택하여 그와 같은 상황에서 국제 원조 단체들의 의사 결정과 활동이 어떠한 양상을 띠는가를 들여다보고자 한다. 이를 위해 우선 국제개발과 구호원조에 있어 기근 문제를 논한 지금까지의 이론적 틀 몇 가지를 되짚어보고, 최근 국제 구호의 양상이 어떻게 정치화되어 왔는가를 논할 것이다. 이어 본 논문의 주요 사례로서 1990년대 북한에서 발생한 기근 사태를 논하면서 당시 발생했던 주요 국제 구호 단체들 (특히 국경없는 의사회)의 구호 중단 결정을 현대 구호의 ‘정치화’라는 틀을 통해 분석한다. 이를 통해 북한과 국제구호단체들 양방간의 작용과 반작용이 어떻게 일어났는가를 비판적으로 논의하고자 한다.This paper studies the case of the North Korean famine in the 1990s through the perspective of aid politicization. The key factor of its analysis regarding the consequences of aid politicization comes from the question on how international aid community responds to a humanitarian crisis in a recalcitrant nation. Observations on prominent frameworks on famine, the process of aid politicization in the second half of the 20th century and the moral dilemma debate allow for better examination on what failed in the international humanitarian response to the North Korean famine.

The Evolution of the Informal Economy in North Korea

I. IntroductionNorth Korea's Public Distribution System (PDS) of grain broke down during the so-called Arduous March in the mid- and late 1990s. This economic crisis led many households to rely on informal economic activities (IEAs) that had been previously repressed by the North Korean authorities. The authorities decided to tolerate such household activities, without which a considerably worse economic disaster would occur. Consequently, the informal economy in North Korea substantially increased in this period.The informal economy existed in other socialist countries such as the Soviet Union. The majority of economists maintain that the Soviet informal economy was large (Grossman 1987; Ofer, and Vinokur 1992; Kim 2003). For example, Grossman (1987) estimates that in the late 1970s, private income accounted for 33% of the total income of urban households. By using classified Soviet archival material, Kim (2003) provides annual estimates of the informal economy from 1969 to 1990. The average share of Soviet households' informal expenditure in total expenditure was 23% during the above period. Furthermore, certain economists ascribe the collapse of the Soviet socialist system to IEAs that range from household's private economic activity to bribery and even organized crime (Treml, and Alexeev 1994; Grossman 1998; Solnick 1998; Wintrobe 1998).1 These debates produced a number of studies on the informal economy in a socialist system.2The emergence of the informal economy in North Korea also elicited considerable research attention. Scholars have not only analyzed the size and determinants of the informal economy, but also its effects on the economy (Lee 2007; Kim, and Song 2008; Haggard, and Noland 2009; Lee 2009; Kim 2009; Kim, and Koh 2011; Kim, and Yang 2012). Most research that uses surveys of North Korean refugees finds that the size of informal economy in the North Korean households is at least 70% in terms of the share of total income as well as labor force participation rate. Therefore, North Korea's informal economy is extremely large with a scale that was not found in any former socialist countries.Compared with the size of the informal economy, its evolution over time attracted relatively less attention mainly because of the deficiency of the data. This is a significant research gap because the dynamics of the informal economy may have important implications for the future of not only the North Korean economy but also its society. Although studies on this issue have been conducted, their findings are based either on aggregated figures or on some case studies. For example, Kim and Song (2008) find that labor participation rate in plot-related activities or stockbreeding significantly increased from 2002 to 2004, whereas market trading did not during the same period. Kim and Yang (2012) evaluate the effects of different market policies by the North Korean government (i.e. appeasement policy vs. anti-market policy) on the informal economy, and find little evidence on an increasing trend of the informal economy from 2002 onwards. However, the above studies are based on a simple test of whether significant discrepancies occur in the size of the informal economy between different periods at the aggregated level; that is, the participation rate in the informal economy. As regards case studies on the development of the informal economy, Kim and Yang (2014) report the specialization of IEAs by illustrating diverse cases that include suraegi, which indicates a manufacturing dealer. By using in-depth interviews of 39 North Korean refugees, Lee et al. (2014) assert that markets for consumer goods and services have been expanding. However, these studies are insufficiently rigorous because of the method of analysis based on the small sample.This study aims to contribute to the literature in two respects. First, we use a large dataset of North Korean refugees settled in South Korea accumulated from 2004 to 2011 to investigate the dynamics of the IEAs in North Korea at the individual level. …

고난의 행군 시기 북한 기록영화에서 조형된 집단적 마음: <내조국 빛내리>를 중심으로

고난의 행군 시기 북한 기록영화에서 조형된 집단적 마음: <내조국 빛내리>를 중심으로

Study of Social Roles of the North Korean Army during ‘the Arduous March Time’

Study of Social Roles of the North Korean Army during ‘the Arduous March Time’

Sexual Practices of North Korean Women to Compete Norms: Focusing on the Sexual Experiences of Everyday Arduous March After

Sexual Practices of North Korean Women to Compete Norms: Focusing on the Sexual Experiences of Everyday Arduous March After

North Korea’s economic policy as a duet with control and relaxation: dynamics arising from the development of public markets since the North Korean famines in the 1990s

ABSTRACTThis study is to analyse the changing economic policies of the North Korean government with focus on public markets (Gongseol Sijang) and it covers 20 years from the Kim Jong-il period to the current Kim Jong-un regime. First, as of 2015, public markets in Pyongyang occupy 26 areas from farming districts to vacant lots in the city centre. Second, the North Korean government began to establish farmer’s markets (Nongmin Sijang) in the suburbs of Pyongyang in the 1960s. Songshin Market was the representative farmer’s market. The North Korean government transformed a Songshin Market into a public market in the early 1990s, as a demonstrative case of a public market programme. During the same decade, in the midst of North Korean famine, Songshin Market was expanded and applied to the central area of Pyongyang. Notably, the designs and facilities of the public markets in the central areas have been more modernized and enlarged than in suburban areas because they were built relatively later than those in the suburbs. Third, the central area in Pyongyang was marked as a residential district for high-ranking officers and the rich. Accordingly, the public markets stationed here appeared to be more modernized with a wide variety of products including an abundance of high-end products, due to concentrated buyers with high economic standards. This means that a layering process by economic standards had been proceeding in North Korea. Fourth, government authorities have implemented the policy to expand the city outwards into the suburbs for the expansion of Pyongyang. As a critical means to expand the city, it has also established the public markets near newly constructed apartment complexes in the suburbs of the city. Namely, the construction of the public markets has catalysed the proceeding reconstruction of the city. Regarding the development of these markets, it can be summarized that the North Korean government has conducted gradual economic policies to increase the reform by utilizing the succession of markets in a way with stepwise expansion from dot, line to face in the process of repetitive control and relaxation polices rather than the repetitive or short execution of repression or control.

Analyzing the Structure of the North Korean Leader Myth and Creating the Kim Jong Un Myth

Unlike the political mythologies of other nations, which mainly use symbolic means, the myths of North Korean leaders were completed through stories. Taking note of the fact, the research for this paper focused on the North Korean leaders’ myths in story-telling formats. The myth of the leader in North Korea first came into existence in 1967 as a history book. Analyzing the myth according to the structural myth theory, one can discern five steps to the North Korean myth. Comparing the structure of the North Korean leader myth to those of other Korean myths and of Joseph Campbell’s conception of myths, one sees that they have commonalities as myth and differences as a political mythology. The mythical structures of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il myths are matched except that the Kim Jong Il myth lacks dramatic effects as the figures who helped the leader to overcome hardships are unclear in phase four. The Kim Jong Il myth particularly omits the winning part in the final stage. For this reason, the citizens shifted the blame of the Arduous March only to Kim Jong Il, though it was the joint responsibility of both Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. As the founding myth, the Kim Il Sung myth has supported the rule of Kim Jong Un by performing such instrumental functions as to make North Koreans accept the hereditary succession through justification of the hereditary power transfer system, explain the North’s economic difficulties, and provide directions to overcome them, but it also has negative effects. Therefore, in order for Kim Jong Un to succeed in maintaining his regime, he must be able to bring about a myth of his own. There are several difficulties to matching a potential Kim Jong Un myth to the mythical structure of Kim Il Sung’s. In particular, if the Kim Jong Un myth should be completed, the new leader would have to actualize economic growth through reform and opening up. But achieving the goal is not going to be easy.

A Glimpse into North Korea's Psychiatric Care System

Few –if any-countries in the world are poorer, more totalitarian and, foremost, isolated than North Korea. The impact of this situation on the country's psychiatric care system is expected to be huge. Literature review on Pub-Med, Scopus and Google. Up to date, there are no studies on this topic from North Korea. Information comes only from North Korean defectors in South Korea, therefore caution is required. Anxiety disorders and depression seem to receive no specialized psychiatric treatment in North Korea. These disorders are ascribed to a malfunctioning autonomous nervous system and are commonly treated by neurologists. In 2012, according to WHO, 9,790 suicides have taken place in North Korea, a country of 22.5 million. Suicide appears to be viewed as an act of ‘treason’ against the state rather than a symptom of severe psychopathology. Patients with psychotic disorders are usually hospitalized in remote mental institutions called ‘number 49 prevention posts’ –after North Korea's cabinet decision No.49 on mental health-, under appalling conditions. The patients themselves are called ‘number 49 subjects’. Insulin-coma therapy seems to be still implemented in such places. Counseling and psychotherapy are apparently non-existent. Methamphetamine –used during the ‘Arduous March’ of the mid-90's for suppressing appetite-is the main substance of abuse. The low status of the specialty, the remote location and the terrible state of the mental institutions discourage the best medical students from becoming psychiatrists. Based on the available data, North Korea's psychiatric care system seems to suffer from very serious structural deficiencies.

The Causes of North Korean Famine: a review of FAD and FED approach

The Causes of North Korean Famine: a review of FAD and FED approach

Discussion: On the Study of Population Structure of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

This excellent paper by Jeon et al. (2015) presents a demographic analysis of data from North Korea. Their key concerns are with population age structure as well as patterns of mortality between the censuses of 1993 and 2008. Their assemblage of clues from the two censuses, as well as other statistics and official estimates, help to improve our understanding of North Korea. The 1993 and 2008 census counts by age and sex provide two “bookend” estimates of population structure. The authors then use the demographic balancing equation - the fundamental accounting system of demographic analysis - which requires that changes between the two bookends be due to births, deaths, and net migration. Of course, annual statistics for these components of demographic change may be unavailable, and the data that is available (including the reported census counts) may not be accurate. Thus, the challenge for demographers is to decide how to fit together (or adjust) the available demographic evidence as required by the balancing equation. When there is a lack of information or uncertainty about data quality, there are multiple ways in which the evidence can be fit together. An important concern that anchors their analysis is the estimation of “excess deaths” caused by the Great Famine in North Korea during the late 1990s. Shortly after the famine, experts speculated that it caused anywhere from one to three million deaths that otherwise would not have occurred. Goodkind and West (2001) then proposed a narrower range of 600 thousand to 1 million excess deaths based on indirect inferences - the lower estimate based on child malnutrition survey data and the upper estimate based on Chinese mortality during a famine following the Great Leap Forward. Following the 2008 census, which allowed for revised estimates based on intercensal analysis, the proposed range was reduced to about 500–600 thousand (Goodkind et al., 2011). Some experts suggested that this revised range was too low and that the original range extending to one million was more accurate (Noland, 2011). Conversely, others claimed the revised range was too high. For instance, an alternate demographic analysis using a different set of assumptions concluded that the range should be 240–420 thousand (Spoorenberg and Schwekendiek, 2012). Yet these challenges to the revised estimates by Goodkind, West, and Johnson are themselves highly questionable. There is no reason to believe that North Korean mortality should have followed

Forgotten era, forgotten people: The North Korean diaspora

Since the middle of the 1990s, more than 25,000 North Koreans have settled in South Korea, and researchers estimate that a further 20,000 North Korean refugees have migrated mainly to China, Southeast Asia, America, and Europe. Many of these refugees cite economic factors as the main motive for their escape, which more or less coincided with the North Korean famine, but before the 1990s there were two other periods that saw relatively large-scale emigration from North Korea, which occurred for other reasons. This paper identifies and compares the three periods, using archival sources from Korea, Hungary, and the former Soviet Union. It also uses the representative case of a North Korean medical student in Hungary to provide a unique perspective on a number of important historical events, including the August Incident in North Korea and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

The Arduous March toward Inclusive Education in Tanzania: Head Teachers' and Teachers' Perspectives

The purpose of this study was to investigate how inclusive education was being practiced in Tanzanian primary schools. The study mainly dealt with the inclusion of students with disabilities. Qualitative research was used to collect information from head teachers and teachers. Head teachers were interviewed, and teachers were involved in focus-group discussions. Participants included fifty-two teachers from ten inclusive primary schools. The results of this study strongly suggested that the inclusive schools were faced with barriers that hindered effective implementation of inclusive education. Those impediments included an inaccessible physical infrastructure, the same curriculum, untrained teachers, and a lack of teaching and learning materials. The majority of teachers did not support inclusive education on the ground that they had not been trained to implement it.

Super Market

Super Market Minsoo Kang (bio) I Ro Jintek and his wife Ri Sunja were both children of the Arduous March, the great North Korean famine of the 1990s. The horrors they had witnessed at the time revisited them again and again in their adulthood. There were nights when one of them would wake with a helpless cry, the mind recoiling from visions of ashen landscapes covered with piles of decaying corpses. In the fearful hours that followed, they silently held onto each other tightly until the warmth of their intimacy loosened the necromantic grip of their unwanted memories. Jintek came from the insignificant town of Woldong, in the northernmost province of Hamgyeong, but he was able to attend Kim Ilsung University in Pyongyang as his late great-grandfather had been a hero of the 1950 war and his father was a third-generation party member with a solid position as an official in the provincial People’s Committee. At the end of his third year as a law student, he made the long trip back home to make arrangements to marry his childhood sweetheart Sunja following graduation. Soon after he returned to Pyongyang, however, all of his plans for the future became lost in the unexpected intrusion of history that changed the entire world around him. A series of dramatic movements in international politics unfolded with breathtaking [End Page 123] speed, resulting in the sudden end of all of hostilities between the two Koreas and an agreement for their reunification. II The uncertain and precarious situation in the peninsula that had lasted well over half a century could have easily ended in catastrophe for millions, so the achievement of a peaceful and orderly reunification came as a surprise to everyone, even to those who had been waiting all their lives for the event. The new nation’s government impressed the entire world with the efficiency and sound judgment with which it oversaw a smooth transition into the new era. A quickly negotiated treaty with the United States, China, and Russia affirmed that the country would be free of nuclear weapons and that no American troops would be stationed north of the 38th Parallel, with a schedule for complete withdrawal. The border area of what used to be the Demilitarized Zone (which would be turned into a nature preserve after the removal of landmines) was kept firmly closed for the time being by divisions of the military to stop the flooding of hundreds of thousands of destitute refugees to the South. With the help of the UN and other international organizations, extensive camp sites were built on the north side to shelter and feed the migrants. The chaebol corporations of the South went up and quickly initiated massive construction projects, building roads, power plants, and factories, especially in the more economically stricken rural areas. The government opened occupational training facilities in virtually every city and town, and at the refugee camps, where people were taught skills that they could use in the new economy. A special effort was made to recruit younger people whose work habits had not yet been corrupted by the demoralized laziness engendered by the previous Stalinist system. People in the South, especially recent college graduates, were encouraged to go up to teach or just help out at the camps (with time-served credit for military service), while many Korean-Americans and other [End Page 124] foreign residents were recruited as English teachers. In less than two years, as a steady number of healthy and newly skilled people began to leave the camps to take up many available jobs in the great reconstruction of the North, the foreign press was already speaking of the second Korean miracle, the first having been the South’s economic rise in the 1970s and 80s. For the average citizens of the North, however, this was a time of great anxiety as well as hope. They were relieved, first and foremost, that there would be no war, no invasion by the monstrous Americans on a genocidal campaign that the previous regime had warned them of all their lives. The poorest people gratefully received aid packets full of strange-tasting but filling food from...

Future Development Assistance to North Korea Through the Establishment of Multi-Donor Trust Funds

IntroductionThe economic recovery of North Korea has stagnated over the last two decades, the regime seemingly lacking the capacity to resolve food shortages and economic problems. Moreover, due to the recurrence of the nuclear issue and subsequent imposition of tighter sanctions against Pyongyang, not only has the scale of foreign aid decreased sharply, but the engagement of international donors in humanitarian assistance has also been greatly reduced. According to UN data, foreign aid to the country amounted to only USD twenty-four million in 2010, the lowest level since the international community began providing humanitarian assistance to alleviate the North Korean famine of the mid-1990s. It is widely accepted that the living standards of many ordinary North Koreans have deteriorated, a situation that is clearly reflected in the recent recurrence of food crises and malnutrition among its vulnerable population. Total food deficits for the 2010/11 fiscal year were estimated to amount to some 886,000 tons, and more than six million people were reportedly in urgent need of external food assistance.1 Such a nutritional situation and sluggish economic performance suggests that the rehabilitation of North Korea is unfeasible without international aid and the normalization of foreign relations, both of which may only be possible with the abandonment of its nuclear development program and a major shiftin economic policy direction.For South Korea and its neighboring countries, the North is a source of great regional turbulence, and its development of nuclear weaponry would likely alter the entire security situation of East Asia. Added to this, the food shortage and economic crisis possess a great likelihood of creating socioeconomic instability in the region. In this regard, the softlanding of North Korea's economic transition coupled with denuclearization is a critical goal for South Korea and its neighbors. Accordingly, it appears that a feasible institutional instrument for the amelioration of the regional instability caused by North Korea's economic problems and the nuclear stand-offis the establishment of a multilateral framework involving bilateral donors and international organizations. Indeed, it is necessary that the international community draws up a concrete blueprint for moving beyond its economic and diplomatic stalemate with North Korea.The effective provision and management of foreign aid is an important incentive in holding Pyongyang to its word in any treaty, as well as ensuring close cooperation among stakeholders. The establishment of one or more multi-donor trust funds (MDTFs) could thus be a feasible option for promoting resource mobilization and donor coordination of development assistance to North Korea.2 As almost all pooled trust funds implemented in developing countries encompass governance arrangements involving bilateral donors and multilateral organizations, the creation of trust funds for North Korea could provide a policy forum in which Pyongyang might engage with its international donors. The joint funding mechanism of the special trust fund would also help to ease the political burden currently shouldered by South Korea and neighboring countries directly involved in providing financial assistance to North Korea.At this point, we might consider the establishment of an agency for the coordination of aid to North Korea, provisionally named the North Korea Development Assistance Group (NKDAG), which would function as the principal MDTF governing body following agreement among international donors to set up the first special trust fund. Under a broad consultative framework for consolidating tripartite cooperation between North Korea, South Korea, and international donors, the NKDAG could provide an administrative mechanism for MDTFs.Considering the reconstruction and development benefits of MDTFs for developing countries, the establishment of special trust funds could help stimulate the economic rehabilitation of North Korea, thus creating a favorable environment conducive to the active involvement of foreign donors in the socioeconomic transformation of the country. …

The Deindustrialization of the North-Korean Economy and the Self-Privileged Tendency of the Bureaucracy: The Political Dutch-Disease of the North-Korean Economy after the Arduous March

The Deindustrialization of the North-Korean Economy and the Self-Privileged Tendency of the Bureaucracy: The Political Dutch-Disease of the North-Korean Economy after the Arduous March

Economic Crime and Punishment in North Korea

Political Science QuarterlyVolume 127, Issue 4 p. 659-683 Economic Crime and Punishment in North Korea STEPHAN HAGGARD, STEPHAN HAGGARD STEPHAN HAGGARD: is the Krause Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, the University of California San Diego. His work on North Korea includes, with Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid and Reform (2007) and Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (2011).Search for more papers by this authorMARCUS NOLAND, MARCUS NOLAND MARCUS NOLAND: is Deputy Director and Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a senior fellow at the East-West Center. His book, Avoiding the Apocalypse (2000), won the prestigious Ohira Memorial Prize. Noland and Haggard run the Witness to Transformation blog at http:www.piie.comblogsnk.Search for more papers by this author STEPHAN HAGGARD, STEPHAN HAGGARD STEPHAN HAGGARD: is the Krause Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, the University of California San Diego. His work on North Korea includes, with Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid and Reform (2007) and Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (2011).Search for more papers by this authorMARCUS NOLAND, MARCUS NOLAND MARCUS NOLAND: is Deputy Director and Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a senior fellow at the East-West Center. His book, Avoiding the Apocalypse (2000), won the prestigious Ohira Memorial Prize. Noland and Haggard run the Witness to Transformation blog at http:www.piie.comblogsnk.Search for more papers by this author First published: 27 February 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2012.tb01131.xCitations: 5 AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume127, Issue4Winter 2012Pages 659-683 RelatedInformation

They Think They're Normal: Enduring Questions and New Research on North Korea—A Review Essay

A wave of recent scholarship, built on rich empirical research, provides new perspectives on enduring questions about North Korea. Three books, in particular—Patrick McEachern's Inside the Red Box, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland's Famine in North Korea, and Suk-Young Kim's Illusive Utopia—present a comprehensive and panoramic vision of North Korea today. This essay reviews these books and makes two overarching arguments. First, North Korea is more “normal” than is often thought, and its domestic politics, economy, and society function in ways familiar to other countries around the world. When viewed from the inside out, North Korea's institutions, economic life, and its people act in ways that are not only similar to those of others around the world, but that differ only in their level of intensity. Second, North Korea's continuing nuclear and military challenge is only one aspect of its overall relations with the world, and policies designed to minimize its threatening military behavior may work at cross-purposes with policies designed to improve its economy and the lives of its people. The complexities that arise in dealing with North Korea create a number of contradictory policy choices, and making progress on one issue has often meant overlooking another, or even allowing it to become worse.