| Chapter : | Introduction |
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chapter 1 advances the theme that in order to understand a government’s policy behavior, it is necessary to understand the way the people in the society see themselves and their role in the world. To illuminate the North Korean case, Han S. Park explains the development, content, and implications of juche ideology for North Korean society, government, and foreign relations. The author argues that songun (“military-first” politics), rather than an independent ideology or a mere policy stance, is an extension of juche and as such supplements it by performing similar functions. The chapter concludes with a set of concrete policy recommendations for other states derived directly from this understanding of the sociocultural context in which the government of the DPRK operates. The chapter demystifies North Korea by illuminating its ideological foundations and by demonstrating ways these affect daily life in a place few have witnessed firsthand.
Chapters 2 and 3 argue that the economy of the DPRK is not extraordinary in itself; rather, its current shape is the result of the usual forces’ operating in an unusual environment. Therefore, it can be understood using the principles of new institutional economics. In making his case, Rudiger Frank first evaluates North Korea’s natural resources and climate, various sectors of its economy, and foreign trade as economic endowments, then turns his attention to economic and fiscal policy and the doctrine of self-reliance. Frank describes the possibility of economic reform and evaluates contemporary evidence of it, ending with a series of policy recommendations aimed at countries other than North Korea that are designed to support reform within it. Frank’s second chapter advances an in-depth analysis of the economy by stripping away layers of complexity to expose the basic economic principles that underlie even such an apparently abnormal society.
Chapter 4 illuminates an intriguing development in which the socialist economy has gradually, and in small steps, incorporated incentive-based market practice. Hazel Smith observes that a process of “marketization without liberalization” has been taking place in the DPRK since the