North Korean Review最新文献

{"title":"The Anatomy of North Korea's Foreign Policy Formulation","authors":"K. Koga","doi":"10.3172/NKR.5.2.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.5.2.21","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionNorth Korea itself is a puzzle. At the end of the Cold War, it was widely believed that North Korea would collapse, considering the loss of its economic patron and ideological backbone in the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, this logic seems to be fading out. Despite its economic setbacks, North Korea has successfully developed its missile and nuclear capability and thus increased the survivability of its regime without suffering military attacks. On the contrary, even though the United States has invented two negotiating frameworks, the Four-Party Talks in the 1990s (China, the two Koreas, and the United States) and the Six-Party Talks (Russia, China, the two Koreas, Japan, and the United States) in the 2000s, the U.S. diplomatic efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and to include North Korea into the international community have been unsuccessful.A certain question arises: Why are negotiations with North Korea, currently the Six-Party Talks, often ineffective? Indeed, neither the bilateral agreement, the 1994 Agreed Framework formed by the United States and North Korea, nor the multilateral declaration, the Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks in September 2005, have been able to deter North Korea from developing and possessing its nuclear capability. In order to understand these phenomena, it is imperative to understand the nature of North Korean foreign policy.In this paper, I argue that North Korean foreign policy can be explained by neoclassical realism, which regards distribution of power in the international system as an independent variable, domestic perception of the system and domestic incentives as intervening variables, and foreign policy decision-making as a dependent variable.1 From the neoclassical realism perspective, foreign policy decision-makers can be constrained by both international and domestic politics, and their perceptions with regard to international anarchy, including whether they have assured its security, are influenced by such domestic factors as states' political structures and ideologies.2 In the case of North Korea, the international distribution of power is interpreted by its domestic political system, based on the national ideology (Juche) and the supreme leader (Suryong) political institution, and I argue that this perception has predominantly determined its foreign policy objectives and decision-making.The Distribution of Power in the International System and Northeast AsiaThe current distribution of power in the international system does not favor North Korea. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, North Korea has faced grave security threats from inside and outside the state. Domestically, as the surge of democratization in Eastern Europe from the early 1990s illustrates, North Korea faced a potential social uprising from inside at the end of the Cold War. It has also been facing the possibility of economic collapse due to decreasing economic assistance from ","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Origins of the Great North Korean Famine: Its Dynamics and Normative Implications","authors":"William J. Moon","doi":"10.3172/NKR.5.1.105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.5.1.105","url":null,"abstract":"No one knows for sure how many North Koreans died as a result of the food shortages and related diseases in the 1990s, but estimates of premature deaths range from 220,000 to 3,500,000. The purpose of this paper is to study the political economy of North Korea with two goals in mind: the first is to explicate how and why the regime survived such a devastating famine; the second is to observe the normative implications that can be derived from understanding the regime, from an economic and ethical standpoint. Emphasis is not placed on building a generic model that attempts to identify the main causes of famine, but rather on drawing important insights from one of the greatest humanitarian tragedies of our time.","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Telecommunications in North Korea: Has Orascom Made the Connection?","authors":"M. Noland","doi":"10.3172/NKR.5.1.62","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.5.1.62","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionTelecommunications are one of the basic building blocks of a modern economy. In a world of globalized competition, economic development can be hamstrung by inferior telecommunications. But the formation of telecommunications policy poses a challenge for authoritarian regimes: while improvements in telecommunications can contribute to material prosperity, and by extension, political legitimacy, they may also contribute to a loss of control over information flows and enhance the ability of challengers to organize against the incumbent regime.These opposing tendencies are manifest in contemporary North Korea. The country's dilapidated telecommunications capability lags well behind world standards. The country's physical infrastructure is lacking and decrepit, with a considerable share of the general infrastructure dating back to the Japanese colonial period. Most of the modern infrastructure installed by Soviets or based on Soviet or Chinese designs is from the 1950s and 1960s. For security purposes, much of the power and telecom transmission network is buried, hampering successful maintenance. If ever there was a country that could benefit from a telecommunications upgrade, it is the DPRK.The country faces both external and self-imposed internal constraints on telecommunications modernization, however. Externally, North Korea is one of the few remaining socialist states and the most militarized country in the world. It is embroiled in a diplomatic conflict over its nuclear ambitions. The upshot is that it is subject to COCOM (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) restrictions under the Wassenaar Agreement, impeding its ability to import stateof-the-art technology.More fundamentally, government policies reveal an ambivalent attitude, driven by conflicting goals of modernization and control. In an attempt to make a great leap forward, the government has seized upon the promotion of information technology as a strategic priority, with P'yongyang at the top of a vertical technology hierarchy. Yet the regime repeatedly reverses field when its insecurity and instinct for control trumps development, as illustrated by the country's multiple false starts in establishing its cellular phone network, the single most frequently identified problem in doing business in North Korea in a recent survey of Chinese businesses operating there. What emerges is the primacy of political over economic concerns. Policy implicitly regards telecommunications development as a means of earning hard currency rents rather than as a tool to enhance economic efficiency and competitiveness.This paper reviews the state of North Korea's telecommunications infrastructure, though the data invoked should be considered highly provisional. Most of the information is regarded as state secrets, and some data maintained from putatively authoritative sources (e.g., statistics reported through the United Nations system) are probably estimates or have been fabricat","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Perspective on Institutional Change in North Korea","authors":"T. Cargill","doi":"10.3172/NKR.5.1.90","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.5.1.90","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionNorth Korea remains one of the last economies in the world modeled after the Stalinist economic planning model. Despite its small size North Korea is a major concern in both Asia and the world because of its nuclear ambitions and achievements, its provocative rhetoric, its relationship with Iran and Syria, and its isolation from much of the world. The socialist experiments of the last half of the twentieth century, ranging from the Stalinist central planning model to the milder forms of socialism in the United Kingdom and the United States, began to collapse in the 1970s, and by the end of the 1980s an economic liberalization process dominated much of the world. North Korea is the notable exception.Cargill and Parker (2005) provide a brief review of North Korean economic growth based on various sources and note that the socialist economic institutions appeared to serve North Korea in the 1950s and 1960s, but the North Korean economy began to stagnate by the 1980s. North Korea then experienced a decade of intense economic distress during the 1990s combined with famine in 1995 and 1996. This occurred because of inherent inefficiency of North Korea's economic institutions, especially agriculture and the distribution system; the \"military first\" policy of the North Korean government; and bad weather and shortages of energy (Kim, 2003). In response, North Korea began to reform its economic institutions toward more decentralized decision making in general and relaxation of constraints on the agricultural sector. There was some evidence that the economy began to recover in the first few years of the new century: external trade expanded (Haggard and Noland, 2008a) and economic interactions with China and South Korea increased.Four events, however, reduced hope that North Korea was ready to become part of a world trading system. First, North Korea continued to play the nuclear trump card, detonating a nuclear reaction in July 2006, testing long-range missiles, providing nuclear technology to Syria and in general, rhetorically threatening the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Second, North Korea reversed some of the policy reforms of 2002 and moved to restrict market activity, especially in the agricultural sector. Third, according to a detailed review of North Korea's food balance by Haggard and Noland (2008b) and Haggard, Noland and Weeks (2008), North Korea again appears at the brink of famine, though not yet as serious as in the mid-1990s. According to the Bank of Korea, GDP growth declined in 2006 and 2007 after being positive since 1999. Fourth, the election in December 2007 of Lee Myung-bak as President of South Korea has hardened relations between the North and South. Lee's government has been critical of the previous decade of \"sunshine\" policy in which unconditional aid and money were given to the North, and has indicated that future aid will require North Korea to cease its nuclear ambitions and improve its human rights record. ","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Regime Change in North Korea?: Economic Reform and Political Opportunity Structures","authors":"K. Park","doi":"10.3172/NKR.5.1.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.5.1.23","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionThe issue of regime change in North Korea began to draw international attention after the fall of the communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Many analysts predicted that North Korea would have followed Poland and Czechoslovakia in their abandoning of communism. However, North Korea has successfully kept its political system intact. Throughout the 1990s, North Korea intensified its ideological campaign to prevent \"unhealthy bourgeois culture and ideology\" from infiltrating the society and \"contaminating\" the youth and intellectuals.However, since the U.S. military action in Iraq in 2003, policy discussions on preemptive strikes and regime change in North Korea have been abounding in Washington. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration in its 2002 National Security Strategy unveiled that one of its main security schemes would include a preemptive strike strategy. Washington's aim was to destroy any threats from terrorists and rogue states before they could ever reach U.S. borders, with or without the support from the international community.Although the act of war can be clearly viewed as one of the pathways to regime change as witnessed in Iraq, in the case of North Korea, such an option seems to remain only a remote possibility. Rather than through war, many argue that North Korea's regime change could be brought about through an implosion. Recent North Korean efforts to liberalize its economy through experiments with bold economic reforms have led some analysts to assert that its civil society may eventually experience ascendance, or even exercise a similar kind of power against its state as witnessed in Eastern Europe.The purpose of this article is to analyze the prospects for regime change through civil society mobilization in North Korea. It offers an analysis of North Korean exceptionalism in regard to its economic crisis and economic development theories of regime change. It argues that several components of political opportunity structures salient to North Korea work as constraints on regime change, which could be triggered by either economic crisis or economic development. The article first examines existing theoretical frameworks for regime change, probing the theses that both economic crisis and economic reform give rise to political pluralism, activate civil society, and thus lead to regime change. This section is followed by an analysis of the changes in North Korea's economic policies. The article then explores the relevance of political opportunity structures in accounting for regime change in North Korea. Finally, it offers an assessment of prospects for activation of North Korea's civil society and regime change.Theoretical Frameworks for Regime ChangeRegime denotes more permanent forms of political structures than government and refers to \"a government or sequence of governments in which power remains essentially in the hands of the same social group.\"1 The gove","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Paradox of North Korea's Ideological Radicalism: Shaky Social Basis of Strengthening Ideological Campaigns","authors":"Aierie Lee, Hyun-Chool Lee, Ji-Yong Lee, Il-gi Kim","doi":"10.3172/NKR.5.1.46","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.5.1.46","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionNorth Korea, the most isolated state in the world, regards itself as a \"socialist dynasty\" and embraces a unique ruling ideology. The North defines itself as a Kim Il-Sung nation: the leader is worshipped as a deity and political power has been passed from the regime's founding leader (Kim Il-Sung) to his son (Kim Jong-Il). The political leader has absolute power over the entire society.Events that occur in the country often make no sense to outsiders. Indeed, North Korea's policies often seem hopelessly backward. Nevertheless, the regime has persisted, even under the devastating economic crisis of the 1990s.What, then, is actually happening in North Korea? Can the regime continue to survive in the future? Although it is difficult to evaluate the country's internal dynamics, due mainly to a lack of accurate information, this paper will show that signs of potential change have emerged within the Pyongyang regime. In particular, we will examine a seemingly paradoxical link between ideological change, stepped-up propaganda campaigns, and the shaky social foundation of state-society relations.Contemporary North Korea may be characterized ideologically as a social institutionalization of Juche ideology, which then shifted to the far-right Songun Jungchi (Military-first politics) and Kangsong Daekook (Strong and Prosperous State). Politically, it relies on a single stratum of leadership and rigid social management and control. The Juche ideology launched by Kim Il-Sung has long penetrated into every aspect of North Korean life, primarily via the bombardment of propaganda campaigns. The ideology has further radicalized into militarism during Kim Jong-Il's era, driving the country into a retrogressed garrison state.North Korea is a totalitarian state that intervenes and exerts control down to the family unit. There is no room for freedom or openness in the society. Despite the North's recent attempt to revamp its economy, a series of economic development plans have failed to achieve their goals.When comparing the Kim Jong-Il regime with that of his father, the main differences involve the ruling ideology and state-society relations. This paper focuses on the relationship between the ideological radicalization of the regime under Kim Jong-Il and the weakening of the regime's legitimacy. To put it differently, we are inter- ested in examining a puzzle: Specifically, why has this ideological radicalization, designed to bolster popular support for the leader and his policies, ironically weakened Kim's political legitimacy?North Korea had built a unique nation-state, separate from the former Soviet bloc and founded on its own ruling ideology. The North distanced itself from other socialist regimes during the collapse of the Soviet Union by focusing on the strength of that ideology. However, signs of a crumbling regime are emerging, with the weakening of ideology towards the garrison state and the far-right nationalism, on one hand, and the failure","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"North Korea and the Northern Limit Line","authors":"Terence Roehrig","doi":"10.3172/NKR.5.1.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.5.1.8","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionWhen negotiators concluded the Korean War armistice in July 1953 to bring an end to the hostilities on the peninsula, one of the important dimensions of the agreeU.S. ment was delineating a border between the two Koreas. On land, this division was the military demarcation line (MDL) that is surrounded on both sides by a 2.5-milewide demilitarized zone (DMZ). Despite efforts to specify sea borders, the armistice was silent on a maritime demarcation line. To address this issue, the United Nations Command (UNC) unilaterally declared a maritime border called the Northern Limit Line (NLL) to separate opposing naval forces. Since that time, the NLL has been a source of contention, erupting into an armed clash in 1999 and again in 2002 when North and South Korean forces fought in the West Sea (Yellow Sea). Despite efforts to solve the dispute, there has been little progress and the disagreement over the NLL remains a serious flashpoint for conflict between North and South Korea.If the issue ever went before an international tribunal for resolution, international law is probably in North Korea's favor; the court would likely move the line south but not as far as the DPRK wishes. However, this will not happen so long as North Korea remains a security threat to the South; Seoul will not allow the matter to be taken before a court. This article argues that the NLL will have a chance of being changed only through a political process that will not happen until the tension level and security concerns in the region decrease. North Korea will need to promote a more stable security environment by moderating its sometimes provocative behavior while also continuing to demonstrate its opposition to the NLL. The remainder of this paper will address the origin of the NLL and the history of dispute, North Korea's interests in altering the line, and, finally, recommendations for how North Korea might proceed to address the dispute.History of the Northern Limit LineThe Northern Limit Line was drawn at the end of the Korean War as a maritime boundary between the two Koreas in the West Sea. During armistice talks, negotiators settled on a land border, the MDL, and granted the UNC the rights to five small islands on the west coast of Korea.1 Despite lying off the North Korean coast, the islands were under UNC control at the time of the armistice. However, negotiators could not agree on a maritime boundary due to disagreements over the extent of North Korea's territorial sea. Moreover, South Korean President Syngman Rhee had made known his displeasure with the armistice and pledged to continue the fight if given the opportunity.2 To ensure naval forces and fishing boats did not spark a renewal of the conflict, on August 30, 1953, the UNC promulgated the NLL. The line was drawn approximately mid-channel between the Ongjin Peninsula and the five islands under UNC/ROK control. For the next 20 years, little was said between the two Koreas regarding the NLL, and North","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"North Korea's Shady Transnational Business Activities and Their Future Prospects","authors":"T. Lim","doi":"10.3172/NKR.4.2.31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.4.2.31","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionGlobalization has made the world much smaller than it was. The use of sophisticated technology and communications networks has made our lives more convenient, but at the same time it has also helped criminal elements become more efficient in their dealings. Transnational criminal networks and their activities remain one of the main concerns of governments today. Yet, what happens if the networks themselves are government-sponsored? Is there a possible solution when criminal elements themselves are supported by state organs, and sheltered under the eyes of the military and secret service?Such state-organized crime partnerships take criminal activities off the traditional street level and place them on the same pedestal as state activities. In other words, diplomatic, immigration/customs, and military resources have to be deployed to counter criminal activities that are equally supported by these resources. When politics, especially international relations, is involved, the situation becomes more fluid and complicated. State sponsorship can take place in two forms. The first is a more direct form, whereby criminal networks are integrated with a country's agencies, such as the military or the secret service. The second form is less direct-mafia and organized crime from other geographical locations seeking shelter from a willing state to protect their activities.The end of the Cold War may have signaled the demise of Stalinist-style state dictatorship (with a few exceptions) and nuclear confrontation, but its remnants continue to be active in several sectors, such as terrorism, the survivalism of pariah states, and their regrouping into a transnational criminal network. This is the subject of this paper, whereby the world's last remaining Stalinist state, North Korea, shelters or actively abets a handful of criminal networks in order to bypass the global power of the United States, the winner of the Cold War. The criminal network is formidable, as it spans the globe and utilizes gang, banking, diasporic, and state resources to overcome difficulties that would have been formidable without state help. It presents an interesting challenge for international law enforcement agencies and customs/immigration departments, as well as diplomatic corps. When criminal activities are combined with global politics, the scope of legal enforcement is vastly expanded.There are several distinguishing features that differentiate state-sponsored criminal activities from normal transnational criminal activities. The older criminal networks tend to have a kind of chivalrous code, to convey a sense of an urban legend, the image of vigilantes robbing the rich to help the poor. Yakuza and Chinese gang networks tend to convey such noble aspirations. Some make donations to public causes to legitimize their image in the eyes of the public. Japanese Yakuza have done this quite effectively. State-sponsored criminal activities do not share these concerns. They tailor t","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond Brinkmanship: Geographical Constraints and North Korea's Evolving Tactics","authors":"R. Baker","doi":"10.3172/NKR.4.2.83","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.4.2.83","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionKorean history has seen the rise and fall of numerous kingdoms and states on the peninsula, competing against each other and battling external threats. In many ways, North Korea today faces similar challenges to the preceding kingdoms in the northern half of the peninsula, challenges shaped in large part by geography and locations. In looking at these deeper structural elements, and the way various Korean states adapted to the geographical constraints, North Korean behavior appears less erratic and less dogmatic. The recent shift in North Korean behavior at the negotiating table, then, becomes one predicated on how far along Pyongyang is in meeting its strategic imperatives.These imperatives are less choice than necessities for survival, and in the case of North Korea, or any other preceding or succeeding Korean state in the northern half of the peninsula, they can be summed up in just a few short points:1. Maintain strong internal cohesion of the population.2. Reduce or eliminate the threat to the weak southern border, where there are few defensible geographical boundaries.3. Reduce or remove the threat to the weak points of the northern border, particularly near the western border with China.4. Use larger external powers to balance each other in order to deal with the dual security threats from maritime and land-based neighbors.How North Korea or any other Korean state deals with these issues is a matter of choice, though not all choices work equally well. That North Korea must contend with its geographical and spatial vulnerabilities, however, is not a choice if the regime and state has any plan to survive.For North Korea in the modern world, the key to nearly all its core challenges is the United States. If North Korea eventually succeeds in reshaping relations with the United States, it will have significantly reduced, if not removed, the threat from the south. It will also be able to call on the United States to act as a buffer between Korea's more immediate historical threats; Japan and China. Finally, breaking free from the constraints of the current relationship with the United States could give Pyongyang greater access to international economic, development and technology resources, which, if used effectively, could both maintain internal social cohesion and strengthen the state.Geography and Place: Constraints and ChallengesThe Korean Peninsula is a narrow, mountainous appendix on Northeast Asia, stretching out from the Chinese-Russian border into the sea, aimed at Japan. In the North is a high plateau and mountains, with two rivers stretching to the east and west coasts (the Tumen and Yalu respectively) providing definition to the border. Figure 1 shows that in the east, a series of mountain ranges, most notably the Taebaek Range, stretches not far inland along the coast, providing a natural barrier to forces invading by sea. In the south, numerous islands guard the access to the weaker lowlands of the southwest. And along","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69763144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Stalinism, Post-Stalinism, and Neo-Capitalism: To Be or Not to Be?","authors":"A. David-West","doi":"10.3172/NKR.4.2.58","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/NKR.4.2.58","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionAccording to North Korea historian Andrei Lankov, North Korea is no longer a Stalinist state, the old Stalinist society is dead, a \"neo-capitalist\" revolution is under-way, and the country is proceeding to a market-oriented system. This thesis is advanced in Lankov's Asia Times Online articles, such as \"Cracks in North Korean 'Stalinism'\" (2004), \"Welcome to Capitalism, North Korean Comrades\" (2004), and \"North Korea: Market Forces Have Female Faces\" (2005), which were republished as a report in Asia Policy titled \"The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism\" (2006). Lankov's most recent book, North of the DMZ (2007), makes similar arguments, as it is a revised compilation of his newspaper columns for the Asia Times Online and Korea Times. The problems concerning Lankov's theory of post-Stalinism begin with his definition of Stalinism. He employs the following criteria: (1) a brutal and repressive regime, (2) a centrally planned economy, (3) a Leninist party, and (4) a system of political thought control.1 Here the modification or exclusion of a few of these criteria is sufficient to disqualify North Korea as being a Stalinist state. Lankov explains that North Korea was the \"closest possible approximation of an ideal Stalinist state\" and \"in many regards it was far more Stalinist than Josef Stalin's Russia itself\"-until the economic crisis of 1991 to 1995 and the subsequent famine in 1996 to 1999, which resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of economic subsidies.2The changes in the North Korean economy, Lankov says, \"have transformed the country completely and, perhaps, irreversibly.\"3 Therefore, \"one has to stretch the definitions in describing the North Korea of 2004 as 'Stalinist,'\" for even though it continues to be ruled by a repressive and brutal regime, the \"peculiarities of Stalinism are now disappearing.\"4 Specifically, the second, third, and fourth criteria that Lankov identifies are the ones that are apparently withering away. While brutality and repressiveness are essential ingredients in Lankov's conception of North Korean Stalinism, decisive for him are the nationalized-centralized economic structure of the state, the type of party that rules the state, and state monopoly of information. When one studies Lankov's use of the phrase \"Stalinism,\" a number of other terms are found in synonym with it. These are \"communism,\" \"central economy,\" \"socialism,\" and \"state-managed economy.\" Lankov equates Stalinism with socialism, of which there are many different schools. His aforesaid reference to a Leninist party also suggests that he sees the contributions of Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) to classical Marxism -the theory of imperialism and the theory of the revolutionary party-as leading to Stalinism. Similar views can be found in the works of well-known anticommunist scholars such as Robert Conquest, Leszek Kolakowski, Martin Malia, Richard Pipes, and Dimitri Volkogonov. Thus, one should not assume that this ","PeriodicalId":40013,"journal":{"name":"North Korean Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69762888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}