The end of North Korea / Nicholas Eberstadt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eberstadt, Nick, 1955-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Korea (North)--Economic conditions.

Korea (North).

Economic conditions.

Korean reunification question (1945- ).

Physical Description:

x, 191 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : AEI Press, 1999.

Summary:

With the establishment in 1948 of a Soviet-sponsored Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the northern half of the Korean peninsula and a U.S.-supported Republic of Korea (ROK) in the South, a thousand years of political and administrative unity came to an official end for the Korean nation. At the same time, the political quest for Korean reunification may be said to have commenced. For the DPRK government, the reunification of Korea -- on the DPRK's own terms -- has been an overriding policy objective since its very inception.

Korean reunification on the DPRK's terms was not only feasible but promising at one time. As Nicholas Eberstadt shows in The End of North Korea, the cherished goal of Korean unification is drawing closer -- but it is not a reunification on DPRK terms.

Eberstadt has an extraordinary ability to find meaning observable signals of impending systemic dysfunction, although data are sorely lacking from a regime resolutely dosed to the outside world. He astutely pieces together a picture of North Korea trapped in a self-perpetuating spiral of economic degeneration. The regimes commitment to hypermilitarization (it has been near total wax mobilization since at least the early 1970s) and its insistence on an especially idiosyncratic variant of central economic planning have taken their toll. The most vivid manifestation of systemic woes was the widespread food shortages in North Korea of 1995 and 1996 -- and one incontestable indication of economic collapse is a hunger crisis precipitated by a breakdown in the national food system. Eberstadt observes that the therapies that might restore the regime to health also threaten to destroy its power.

As theeconomic base beneath the North Korean state falters and the prospect of state failure draws closer, the lethal power in the hands of the regime and the leadership's incentives to exploit it to secure foreign support increase. According to Eberstadt, North Korea's endgame exposes all of Northeast Asia, and possibly even countries outside the region, to immediate and mounting peril The author looks at what steps can be taken -- and by whom -- to maximize the likelihood of a benign outcome.

Contents:

With the Century 1

Ending Phases 4

Dead Ends 10

North Korea's Endgame 18

Thinking about the End of North Korea 21

2 North Korea's Unification Policy

A Long, Failed Gamble 25

The Imperative of Reunification 25

Pyongyang's "Unification Policy": Parameters and Evidence 26

North Korea's Evolving Unification Policy 29

"Unification Policy" in the Jaws of Disaster 36

The Long Goodbye 43

3 The DPRK under Multiple Severe Economic Stresses: What Can We Learn from Historical Experience? 45

Modern War Economies and the Phenomenon of "Economic Collapse" 47

Trade Shocks, Trade Sanctions, and Economic Blockades 50

Food Shortages and Hunger Problems under Command Planning 61

Concluding Observations 68

4 Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation: Rapprochement through Trade? 70

Arguments for Rapprochement through Trade 71

Mutually Beneficial Economic Contacts: Complicating Factors 75

Trade and Rapprochement under Other Communist Regimes 78

North Korea's Approach to Economic Cooperation 82

5 Prospects for U.S.-DPRK Economic Relations 86

Assessing the U.S.-DPRK Trade Outlook 89

Reconstructing North Korean Trade Patterns, 1970-1997 93

DPRK International Economic Performance, 1970-1997 95

Concluding Observations 110

6 Beyond the DPRK: Can Korean Unification Promote Stability in Northeast Asia? 115

North Korea's Grim Endgame 118

Will Delayed Reunification Be "Stabilizing"? 125

Preparing for Reunification 134

Postscript: Has the South Korean Financial Crisis of 1997 Changed Everything? 140.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 147-183) and index.

ISBN:

084474087X

0844740888

OCLC:

40668263