North Korean Review Vol 11 No 2 Fall 2015

North Korean Review is the first academic journal in North America or Europe to focus exclusively on North Korea. The purpose of NKR is to provide readers with an improved understanding of the country’s complexities and the threat it presents to global stability. International and interdisciplinary, NKR is a refereed journal published twice a year. Topics include culture, history, economics, business, religion, politics and international relations, among others.

North Korean Review is the first academic journal in North America or Europe to focus exclusively on North Korea. The purpose of NKR is to provide readers with an improved understanding of the country’s complexities and the threat it presents to global stability. International and interdisciplinary, NKR is a refereed journal published twice a year. Topics include culture, history, economics, business, religion, politics and international relations, among others.

This book focuses on three main subjects: the DPRK's inability to survive as a nuclear state; the importance of China’s role in encouraging denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; and the possibility of an alternative political organization for the DPRK including a transition to a market-economy in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons. The book approaches North Korean issues from the perspective that the regime cannot survive without nuclear weapons which, rather than being a genuine danger to other states, are bargaining chips for security and survival. The book includes views from prominent academics and practitioners, including a former British ambassador to North Korea, putting forward an ambitious set of recommendations and analyses based on hands-on experience in the region.

In the years since the death of Kim Jong-il and the formal acknowledgement of Kim Jong-un as head of state, the North Korean regime has made a series of moves to further augment and consolidate the ideological foundations of Kimism and cement the young leader’s legitimacy. Historical narratives have played a critical, if often unnoticed, role in this process. This book seeks to chronicle these historical changes and continuities. Continuity and Change in North Korean Politics explores the stable and shifting political, cultural and economic landscapes of North Korea in the era of Kim Jong-un. The contributors deploy a variety of methodologies of analysis focused on the content, narratives and discourses of politics under Kim Jong-un, tracing its historical roots and contemporary practical and conceptual manifestations. Moving beyond most analyses of North Korea’s political and institutional ideologies, the book explores uncharted spaces of social and cultural relations, including children’s literature, fisheries, grassland reclamation, commemorative culture, and gender. By examining critical moments of change and continuity in the country’s past, it builds a holistic analysis of national politics as it is currently deployed and experienced. Demonstrating how historical, political and cultural narratives continue to be adapted to suit new and challenging circumstances, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Korean Politics and Asian Studies.

How and why are the Kims rational? There is no consensus about either the Kims’ rationality or how best to determine if they are rational actors. Rationality in the North Korean Regime offers a concise and finite method to assess rationality by examining over ten cases of provocations from the Korean War to the August 2015 land mine incident. The book asserts that Kim Il-sung was predominantly a rational actor, though the regime behaved irrationally at times under his rule, and that both Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un have clearly been rational actors. As a rational actor, Kim Jong-un is unlikely to give up his nuclear weapons, but this work argues he can be deterred from using them if the United States demonstrates it is willing to co-exist with his regime and pursues long-term engagement to reduce Kim’s concern that North Korea’s sovereignty needs defending from U.S. hostile policy. This could allow gradual social change within the country that could eventually lead to positive systemic change as well as soften Kim’s rule. In this regard, time may be on the side of the U.S.-South Korean alliance, but the two allies must embrace the long view and learn to be more patient or risk another conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

This book addresses growing tensions in Northeast Asia, notably between North Korea and China. Focusing on China’s economic participation in North Korea’s minerals and fishery industries, the author explores the role of China’s sub-state and non-state actors in implementing China’s foreign economic policy towards North Korea. The book discusses these actors’ impact on the regional order in Northeast Asia, particularly in the Korean Peninsula. The project also provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of China’s cultural and economic activities in North Korea as implemented by both the historically traditional actors in Jilin and Liaoning provinces in Northeast China, and new actors from coastal areas (Shandong and Zhejiang provinces) and inland provinces (Chongqing and Henan) to Zhejiang province. It argues that in the era of economic decentralisation, Chinese sub-state and non-state actors can independently deal with most of their economic affairs without the need for permission from the central government in Beijing. A key read for scholars and students interested in Asian history, politics and economics, and specifically the East Asian situation, this text offers an in-depth analysis of recent activity concerning the Sino-DPRK economic relationship.

Should we humanize the world's most inhumane leaders? Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung. Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators wrote their names on the pages of history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves were once young people searching for their place in the world, dealing with challenges many of us face—parental authority, education, romance, loss—and doing so in ways that might be uncomfortably familiar. Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work—epic yet intimate, well-researched but immensely readable, clear-eyed and empathetic—looking at the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on their youths. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed at the hands of the Tsar’s police—an event that helped radicalize this overachieving high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling with the death of his young, beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother mourning the loss of three young children—and determined that her first son to survive infancy would find his place in the world. The purpose isn’t to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked. We may prefer to hold such lives at arm’s length so as to demonize them at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also human beings—and perhaps more relatable than we’d like.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary North Korea presents a comprehensive picture of contemporary North Korea, placed in historical context and set against the overlapping fields of politics, economy, culture, society and foreign relations. Spanning a period of significant transition for North Korea, this volume provides accurate analysis and applications of both historical and institutional perspectives. The volume’s chapters are representative of the growth in North Korean studies that has occurred since the 1990s, in parallel with the growing maturity of the field in South Korea, as well as with far greater levels of access to North Korean sources. The volume is divided into five Parts, each reflecting an emergent area of debate and research: The political perspective The North Korean economy Foreign relations Society Culture This is the first anthology of North Korean studies to demonstrate a clear understanding of North Korea as North Korea, as opposed to a dimly perceived and threatening rogue state. It features both Korean and non-Korean contributors, many working from primary source material. As such, this handbook will prove a valuable resource to students and scholars of Northeast Asian studies, modern Korean history and politics, and comparative politics more broadly.