The AEI’s Nick Eberstadt has a new book out, the aptly named “The North Korean Economy Between Crisis And Catastrophe.” From the AEI homepage:
Viewed from afar, North Korea may appear bizarre, or positively irrational. But as Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrates in this meticulously researched volume, there is a grim coherence to North Korea’s political economy, and a ruthless logic undergirding it–one that unreservedly subordinates economic welfare to augmentation of political power. Thus, paradoxically, even as official policies and practices consign the DPRK economy to a perilous realm between crisis and catastrophe, the country’s leadership maintains unchallenged domestic control and has actually managed to increase its international influence.
Through painstaking collection of hard-to-uncover data and careful analysis, Eberstadt provides a quantitative tableau of North Korea’s terrible failure in its economic race against South Korea; its stubborn adherence to policies all but guaranteed to stifle growth and undermine economic performance; and the longstanding official effort to ignore, or mitigate, pressures for economic reform.
Eberstadt is skeptical of optimistic accounts from South Korea and elsewhere suggesting that the North Korean leadership is interested in resolving the current nuclear impasse, and getting on with the business of reform and development. So long as Pyongyang’s rulers entertain the ambition of reunifying the Korean peninsula on its own terms, Eberstadt argues, economic reforms worthy of the name will be subversive of state authority–and vigilantly resisted by Pyongyang’s rulers.
This authoritative volume will be important for Asian specialists, as well as those concerned with nuclear proliferation and world peace, and for international relations professionals in general.
Pick up your copy today.
11 Comments
Also interesting to note is today’s article in the Chosun Ilbo about China’s investment North Korea natural resources.:
This sounds like the real “Northeast Project” perhaps.
Kim Jong-il’ regime is not so much different from the Rhee Dynasty. Their first priority is to maintain the regime no matter how many people starve. They have many things in common, corruption, cruelty, incompetence, seclusion from the outside world, etc.
Or the Tokugawa Shogunate. But I guess it really doesn’t matter who we compare it to…
BS. KJI’s regime is far more brutal than Rhee’s regime was. I certainly don’t recall ever hearing of massive concentration camps for political prisoners, there’s just no comparison.
He was referring to the Yi (Lee, Rhee) Dynasty, i.e., the Joseon era, Snow.
I believe tocchin ways talking about what most people refer to as the Chosun dynasty.
Oops, thanks Robert for setting me straight on that. What did the Rhee or Chosun dynasty do that was so bad? I hardly think that they were unique, especially for those times, whereas KJI is nasty for modern times and has the modern means to be nastier than regimes in the past were, at least in terms of numbers killed and concentration camps for political prisoners.
Under Tokugawa Shougnate the population exploded so much thanks to their farmland reclamation and progress in civil engineering. There was no civil war or major uprising during 250 years of the Tokugawa period. The litercy rate was among the world highest. Tokugawa installed one of the wold biggest tap water systems in Edo(what is now Tokyo.). The market economy prospered to such a extent that the world’s first future commodity market appeared in Osaka in the 17th century. The population in Korea remained stagnant and pre-modern urban consumption was nonexsistent before the Japanese colonial rule.
Got it, tocchin.
Is anybody here of the Bruce Cuming’s school of thought that 20 or 30 years from now we’ll still be discussing the “imminent collapse” of North Korea? (Even a stopped clock is …..)
If Bush and future presidents line up to kiss KJI’s butt and SK and China keep propping him up, who knows how long he might last.