This unique book, now fully updated, provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of life in North Korea today. Drawing on decades of experience, noted experts Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh explore ...a secretive, oppressed, and hungry world few outsiders can imagine.
North Korea has remained a thorn in the side of the United States ever since its creation in the aftermath of the Korean conflict of 1950-1953. Crafting a foreign policy that effectively deals with ...North Korea, while still ensuring stability and security on the Korean Peninsula-and in Northeast Asia as a whole-has proved very challenging for successive American administrations. In the wake of ruler Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, analysts and policymakers continue to speculate about the effect his last years as leader will have on the future of North Korea.Bruce Bechtol, Jr. contends that Kim Jong-il's regime (1994-2011) exacerbated the threats that North Korea posed, and still poses, to the world. Bechtol explains how North Korea presents important challenges on five key fronts: its evolving conventional military threat, its strategy in the Northern Limit Line (NLL) area, its nuclear capabilities, its support for terrorism, and its handling of the succession process.Bechtol's analysis clears up the persistent mystery of how Kim Jong-il's dysfunctional government in its final years was able to persist in power while both presenting a grave danger to its neighbors and setting the stage for the current government. This work addresses issues important for policymakers and academics who must deal with those in power in North Korea.
How combustible is the Korean crisis? Very, is the only sensible answer. In 1994, the united states came close to launching a pre-emptive strike against North Korea. Since then perhaps three million ...have died of starvation in the North, a disaster worse than Pol Pot’s Cambodia. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-II is closer than ever to developing an inter-continental ballistic missile and an armoury of nuclear weapons. A perpetual merry go-round of international diplomacy has not brought peace within sight, despite the high expectations raised by the south’s ‘Sunshine Policy’. South Korea, arguably the greatest economic and political success story in Asia, confronts its evil twin in an extraordinary and little-understood drama. Managing this crisis has become the top priority for the United States and its greatest challenge. Jasper Becker reveals the historical roots of the current conflict and offers straightforward explanations of the motives and strategy of the major players. He sheds light on North Korea’s continuing survival and lays out the rationale behind the often seemingly strange and bizarre policies pursued by North and South - and their larger neighbours. Providing crucial context for a little-understood region, this highly accessible and compact volume will be a valuable guide for all readers.
Much hyperbole surrounds the political regime in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). Many analysts argue that North Korea is a unique political system. What kind of ...regime is the DPRK, and what kind of leader does it have? A variety of labels are given to the North Korean regime. These include likening the regime to an organized crime family and to a corporatist organism. There are certainly merits to each of these approaches, but each has its limitations. Pyongyang does share some of the attributes of organized crime and certainly engages in criminal activity in a systematic and calculating manner. This pattern of illicit behavior includes the production and distribution of narcotics as well as the counterfeiting of foreign currencies, cigarettes, and pharmaceuticals. But the DPRK is more than a crime family - it possesses a massive conventional military force as well as significant strategic forces. Moreover, the regime continues to brainwash, imprison, or starve North Koreans, inflicting untold misery and death on its people. Corporatism, meanwhile, may provide insights into certain aspects of the system, but its utility is limited by the confusion that surrounds understanding of this concept. An absolute dictator still rules the regime. Summary reprinted by permission of Nova Science Publishers
North Korea has long been a country of mystique, both provoking two nuclear crises and receiving aid from the international community and South Korea in more recent times. North Korea under Kim Jong ...Il examines how internal changes in North Korea since the early 1970s have structured that nation's apparently provocative nuclear diplomacy and recent economic reform measures. To understand these changes, author Sung Chull Kim uncovers relatively unknown internal aspects of the country under Kim Jong Il's leadership. His account, based on a thorough examination of primary sources, traces the origins, consolidation, and dissonance of North Korea's systemic identity. He reveals how official and unofficial developments in the domains of North Korea's politics, ideology, economics, and intellectual-cultural affairs have brought about system-wide duality, particularly between socialist principles embedded in the official ideology and economic institutions.
Inside the red box McEachern, Patrick
2010., 20101221, 2010, 2010-12-22, 20100101
eBook
North Korea's institutional politics defy traditional political models, making the country's actions seem surprising or confusing when, in fact, they often conform to the regime's own logic. Drawing ...on recent materials, such as North Korean speeches, commentaries, and articles, Patrick McEachern, a specialist on North Korean affairs, reveals how the state's political institutions debate policy and inform and execute strategic-level decisions.
Many scholars dismiss Kim Jong-Il's regime as a "one-man dictatorship," calling him the "last totalitarian leader," but McEachern identifies three major institutions that help maintain regime continuity: the cabinet, the military, and the party. These groups hold different institutional policy platforms and debate high-level policy options both before and after Kim and his senior leadership make their final call.
This method of rule may challenge expectations, but North Korea does not follow a classically totalitarian, personalistic, or corporatist model. Rather than being monolithic, McEachern argues, the regime, emerging from the crises of the 1990s, rules differently today than it did under Kim's father, Kim Il Sung. The son is less powerful and pits institutions against one another in a strategy of divide and rule. His leadership is fundamentally different: it is "post-totalitarian." Authority may be centralized, but power remains diffuse. McEachern maps this process in great detail, supplying vital perspective on North Korea's reactive policy choices, which continue to bewilder the West.
An expert on North Korea sheds new light on the enigmatic tyrantFrom his goose-stepping military parades to his clownish macho swagger, North Korea's Kim Jong-il is an odd amalgam of political ...cartoon and global menace. In charge of a nuclear arsenal he's threatened to use against the U.S. and Japan, the man, his motives, and the mechanisms of his absolute control over a country of twenty-three million people remains shrouded in mystery.In this second edition of his bestselling Kim Jong-il, Michael Breen, a leading expert on North Korea, dispels common myths and fallacies about the so-called 'Dear Leader,' while turning a spotlight on the man to reveal his true nature and the nature of his hold over a country ravaged by poverty and famine.Looks at Kim from a broad perspective, unlike most other books that cater exclusively to those interested in policymaking and international relationsFeatures new information about succession plans, as well as the latest scoop on the mounting pressure among world leaders to thwart North Korea's nuclear ambitionsIllustrated with rare photographs of Kim and his regimeHighly accessible and suitable for anyone interested in learning more about North Korea, it's government, and its leader, Kim Jong-ilunravels the mysteries, the myths, and the fallacies about the man in charge in ways that will entice even the harshest critics.
An expert on North Korea sheds new light on the enigmatic tyrant From his goose-stepping military parades to his clownish macho swagger, North Korea's Kim Jong-il is an odd amalgam of political ...cartoon and global menace. In charge of a nuclear arsenal he's threatened to use against the U.S. and Japan, the man, his motives, and the mechanisms of his absolute control over a country of twenty-three million people remains shrouded in mystery. In this second edition of his bestselling Kim Jong-il, Michael Breen, a leading expert on North Korea, dispels common myths and fallacies about the so-called "Dear Leader," while turning a spotlight on the man to reveal his true nature and the nature of his hold over a country ravaged by poverty and famine. Looks at Kim from a broad perspective, unlike most other books that cater exclusively to those interested in policymaking and international relations Features new information about succession plans, as well as the latest scoop on the mounting pressure among world leaders to thwart North Korea's nuclear ambitions Illustrated with rare photographs of Kim and his regime Highly accessible and suitable for anyone interested in learning more about North Korea, it's government, and its leader, Kim Jong-il unravels the mysteries, the myths, and the fallacies about the man in charge in ways that will entice even the harshest critics.
Today's North Korean regime embodies elements of both communism and Confucian dynasty, is sovereign with respect to only part of the divided Korean nation, is vulnerable to pressure from external ...powers, and confronts incipient internal demands for change, yielding an unusually broad set of possible transition paths and successor regimes. Such paths range from maintenance of the status quo to evolution, probably toward a more conventional form of military authoritarianism, to revolutionary upheaval, the latter in all likelihood implying the North's collapse and its absorption into the rival Southern state. This policy analysis quantitatively analyzes the probability of regime change and examines the character of possible successor regimes and the implications of these profoundly different trajectories for South Korea.
