North Korean Review 

About: North Korean Review is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): China & Nuclear weapon. It has an ISSN identifier of 1551-2789. Over the lifetime, 194 publications have been published receiving 708 citations.

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves-And Why It Matters

Abstract: The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves-and Why It Matters B.R. Myers, Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010. 200 pp. ISBN: 978-1-933633-91-6.B.R. Myers's The Cleanest Race is an unreliable work. Beginning with the preface, one finds misrepresentation. Singling out North Korean Review, Myers makes the incredible claim that those associated with the journal "do not understand Korean well enough to read [North Korean] official texts" (12). What is the basis of this allegation when the NKR founder is originally from South Korea and a significant number of the journal editors and those who have published in it are native speakers of Korean? Reading requires discernment, but Myers makes rather odd translation choices, for example, "Homeland Liberation War" for choguk haebang chonjaeng and "jackals" for sungnyangi (39, 40). Choguk literally means "ancestor country," which has a male bias. North Korean texts use "fatherland." Moguk or omoni choguk is motherland. As for sungyangi, it is a dhole, a species of wild dog found in Korea, unlike the jackal, chaek'ol or chyak'al in Korean. North Korean sources render sungnyangi in English as "wolf."The real problem, however, is Myers's alleged discovery that North Korean ideology is rooted in Japanese fascism. Replacing the official Juche ideology with his own idea of "paranoid, race-based nationalism," he says, "[North Korea has] an implacably xenophobic, racebased worldview derived largely from fascist Japanese myth," and, "They [the Hirohito cult and Kim Il Sung cult] are fundamentally alike, because they derive from a fundamentally similar view of the world" (109; emphasis in original). One does not have to be a professional historian or professional logician to see that there is something wrong here. Basically, what Myers perceives as fascist-a term he uses regularly though simultaneously claims is "too vague to be much use"-are the conceptions of racial purity, blood-based nationalism, and unity of nation and territory. None of this, however, is exclusive to fascism, as European thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries shows. But comparison to Japan must be addressed.Japanese fascism was ultranationalist and racist, but its xenophobia differs from that of North Korea. Japan presided aggressively over a multiethnic East Asian empire, and the State Shinto doctrine of Kokutai, which Myers never explores, ordained Japanese imperialism as a divine cosmopolitan mission to assimilate and sublimate world culture into Japanese culture. Moreover, Kokutai made Hirohito a direct descendant of the Shinto gods. North Korean ideology and the Kim Il Sung personality cult bear no likeness to this whatsoever. Unlike Japanese fascist ideology, North Korean ideology is built upon exaggerated secular heroic legend, not myth. Myth involves dragons, fairies, ghosts, goblins, gods, spirits, sprites, incantations, spells, and so forth. Myth is the world of supernatural beings and phenomena. This is not generically applicable to the North Korean state legends that Myers lists as "Mother Korea and her children," the "parent leader" (Kim Il Sung), the "dear leader" (Kim Jong Il), "foreigners," and the "Yankee colony" (South Korea).Confusion with language, comparative ideology, and myth and legend are not the only problems in this book. There is also a real failure to understand Korean cultural and political history. Myers, for instance, casts as "bizarre and comical" anecdotes about Kim Il Sung acquiring his "best ideas" in his sleep (36). …

America's Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States

Abstract: America's Strategic Posture: the Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger, Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009. 158 pp. $14.95. Paperback. ISBN-13: 978-160127-045-0. Paper.President Barack Obama's April 2009 speech just outside the medieval Prague Castle in the Czech Republic that committed the United States to taking "concrete steps toward [creating] a world without nuclear weapons" encouraged an optimism that, should the policy recommendations emphasized in the report America's Strategic Posture be adopted, is empty. While the report's compilers encourage the United States to "continue to pursue an approach to reducing nuclear dangers that balances deterrence, arms control, and non-proliferation," they acknowledge that the United States must "retain nuclear weapons until such time as the international environment may permit their elimination globally" (p. 98). For the foreseeable future, the United States must maintain a strong nuclear weapons force, one superior to those held by rival nuclear states.America's Strategic Posture was compiled by a twelve-member commission assembled by the U.S. Congress to draft a "bipartisan, independent, forward-looking assessment" of the United States' global strategic position (p. vii). Two secretaries of defense headed the commission, Chairman William J. Perry (Clinton administration) and Vice-Chairman James R. Schlesinger (Nixon administration). The final report covered a wide range of security issues that also included general arms control and missile defense. But nuclear strategy clearly occupied a central position in the participants' discussions. The report's general conclusion-that on defense matters the U.S. can be second to none-is strongly emphasized throughout. Regarding nuclear capacity, it argues that the nuclear deterrent maintained by China, along with the Chinese and Russian capacity to employ "nuclear coercion," requires the United States to maintain superiority in this weaponry. The backbone of America's strategic (nuclear) posture is thus, ironically, strengthened by states that developed nuclear weapons to counter those created, tested, and dropped by the United States toward the end of the Second World War.America's Strategic Posture provides two reasons why the United States must retain its nuclear capacity: for its own protection and for that of its allies. Russia may no longer have plans to invade Europe or to seek overall nuclear supremacy, but its capacity to coerce U.S. allies "is a problem for which U.S. nuclear strategy and capabilities remain relevant" (p. 12). The United States must also retain a sizeable stockpile of nuclear weapons for "dissuasion" purposes, that is, to "discourage unwelcome competition" from other nuclear powers. Russia must realize the "impossibility of gaining a position of nuclear supremacy over the United States" (pp. 21-22). Secondly, the United States nuclear force is necessary to discourage its allies-Japan and South Korea come to mind, though they are not mentioned-from going nuclear by providing them with nuclear umbrellas. The commission declined to estimate a "correct size" that the U.S. nuclear force should assume, a decision better left to the U.S. president. It did advise that this figure be calculated with the size of the Russian force in mind (p. 29).The commission concluded that while the elimination of nuclear weapons may not be possible, the United States should continue to negotiate their reduction. Indeed, deep cuts have already been realized since the end of the Cold War. By 2012 the United States and Russia are required, by the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, to reduce the number of "operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads" to between 2,200 and 1,700 (p. 5). Treaty stipulations, however, requiring the U.S. to dismantle, rather than destroy, the weapons leaves open the possibility of their redeployment in the future. …

The July 2002 Reforms in North Korea: Liberman- Style Reforms or Road to Transformation?

Abstract: IntroductionOne of the features of North Korea's development, mostly unnoticed during the time of nuclear stando∂, is the economic reform program that poses a formerly unknown challenge to the rigid ideological system of North Korea. These reform attempts are not a recent phenomenon, since the constitutional change of 1998 was the first important cornerstone of the changes (Lee, 2002).Essentially, there are two explanations of these changes: For some observers, the changes are reminiscent of the reforms China introduced in i978 and the reforms of Vietnam (the doi moi policy) in the i980s and 1990s. This opinion is often heard from recent visitors to North Korea who are familiar with the China of the late i970s and early i980s and for whom the careful opening process and partial liberalization, for example, of petty trade, exhibit similarities to the Chinese reform experiences. China has always been the closest ally of North Korea, and the dependence on China grew in the 1990s when the Soviet Union stopped subsidized energy delivery to North Korea and began market-based relationships with the country. China was the most important donor of development aid and accepted a large and probably unrecoverable trade deficit with North Korea, amounting in the last ten years to more than $4 billion (U.S.) North Korean o[double dagger]cials, including Kim Jong-Il, frequently visited China and reportedly have been impressed with Chinese development and growth. Also, North Korea's introduction of special economic zones as islands of reform seems to follow the Chinese way (Jung et al., 2003; Seliger, 2003a; Seliger, 2005).A second explanation sees economic reforms related to a profound change from the traditional monoparty, dynastic communism idiosyncratic to North Korea to a form of "developmental dictatorship" as existed formerly in South Korea (Johnson, i982; Adamovich, 200i). Obviously, the party, which has not convened since i980, plays by now a relatively minor role in policy formulation compared to the state security council and the "party center," Kim Jong-Il. The role of the military seems to be growing, as the songun (military first) policy shows. It has been argued that this is less a sign of increasing militarization of the society but rather a sign of a change of the role of military, namely as a facilitator of economic reform as it was in South Korea. North Korean o[double dagger]cials have studied the South Korean development experience in several special missions, and they might have come to the obvious conclusion that the economic superiority of South Korea is related to its economic system and that a politically relatively safe way of economic reform, in terms of retaining the political monopoly of the ruling elite, is to introduce change by a military-style dictatorship. This, it is hoped, is definitely not costless in terms of human rights, yet it is a clear improvement from the sclerotic economic and political communist system existing up until now.Both explanations, however, also have serious shortcomings. In the beginning of reform, China and Vietnam, being overwhelmingly agricultural countries, were characterized by a completely di∂erent sectoral structure than North Korea. Relatively minor changes in agriculture, namely the re-introduction of family-based farming instead of collectivized farming, resulted in spectacular initial growth suc- cesses. This not only led to sustained political support of reform by the people who experienced constant increases in real income, but also was the basis for self-financing of small village and township enterprises as a basic step for later, faster industrialization under reformed institutions.In North Korea, the situation is completely di∂erent. While agriculture plays a relatively important part in the economy in terms of production and employment, this is mainly a statistical illusion due to shrinking economy. North Korea essentially remains an industrialized country, not only due to the geography of the country, which forbids large-scale agriculture, but also due to forced industrialization in the last 50 years. …

White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea

Abstract: White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea By Korea Institute for National Unification, Seoul, Korea: Korea Institute for National Unification, 2006, 324 pp. ISBN 89-8479-352-3 93340.The White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea by the Korea Institute for National Unification not only provides deep insight into the human rights situation of the most isolated country on earth, but also sheds light on life in North Korea from a rather unusual perspective, focusing on the lives of ordinary North Koreans, rather than, like in many other works, on the ruling family or on international politics.The book paints the picture of a state that is firmly built upon a mixture of Soviet-Stalinist political and economic principles and the complete concentration of power in the hands of a ruling family in a regime that is still as repressive and totalitarian as is humanly conceivable. Many of the institutions established in the middle of the last century continue to exist in North Korea, including the songbun caste system with its three main and fifty-one subcastes, the network of concentration camps set up after the Korean War, and a tight system of neighborhood control.During the last decade, the authors argue, there have been some improvements with respect to human rights, some of which might even be interpreted as first cracks in the monolithic structure of the regime or as the beginning of true reforms. The food shortage is by no means over and continues to erode the population's trust and the social control capabilities of the government. The ruling elite has had to accept some new social realities brought about by the economic crisis. As people began to travel around the country in search of food, the regime relaxed travel restrictions to such an extent that traffic checkpoints have become unofficial "bus stops." Sentences for crossing the North Korean-Chinese border have been reduced after the number of border crossers skyrocketed in the late 1990s. The "7.1 measures" of 1 July 2002 have de facto legalized black markets.On the other hand, readers of this book clearly get the impression that the Kim Jong-il clan has found ways to adapt to the economic crisis and has successfully maintained its control over most sectors of society. The regime has tightened social control via the armed forces and the secret police apparatus. Regular prisons called kyohwaso, which had to be closed down during the food crisis, were replaced by more flexible "labor units." Homeless children, who had lost their parents or who had been abandoned, were taken to so-called "9.27 facilities." The regime benefited from a good crop in 2004 and fertilizer aid from South Korea, but it also installed a price and wage system that forced people to take care of buying foodstuffs by themselves. The authors conclude that North Korea might have begun to cautiously introduce Chinese-style reforms, but that it might just as well be attempting to preserve its current political and economic system by all means.A substantial share of the book deals with legal reforms introduced in recent years, mostly due to international pressure, for example, the ratification of the Convention Against Discrimination Against Women and the latest revisions of the penal code and criminal procedure law in 2004. These reforms have brought about a num- ber of improvements, namely, a more precise definition of crimes, a reduction of the number of crimes punishable by death, and the raising of the age limit for the death sentence. These positive developments notwithstanding, the authors provide an abundance of defector testimonies suggesting that severe human rights violations continue to occur, ranging from inhumane prison conditions and beatings to public executions, forced abortions, and the killing of babies born in prisons.Arguably, the greatest flaw in the North Korean judicial system is the distinction between "ordinary" and "political" prisoners. Anti-state crimes are dealt with directly by the State Security Agency, and there are no proper procedures, trials, or opportunities for appeals. …

Special Economic Zones as Survival Strategy of North Korea

Abstract: IntroductionNorth Korea has recently begun to develop two new projects: the Gaeseong Industrial District project (hereafter Gaeseong SEZ) and the Mt. Kumgang tourism project (hereafter Mt. Kumgang SEZ). In terms of their levels of cooperation, partners and functions, these new projects were distinguished from the two earlier SEZs. The Rajin-Sunbong SEZ is a trade-oriented center that includes China, Russia and Japan. The Sinuiju SEZ has focused on the trade-oriented function in order to cooperate with countries in the Yellow Sea rim area including China. In contrast, Gaeseong is envisaged as a production-centered SEZ to attract small and medium-sized South Korean businesses. The Mt. Kumgang SEZ is also cooperating with the Hyundai Asan Corporation of South Korea in the development of an international tourism course.These two new projects were apparently an advanced step toward economic cooperation when compared with the previous level and form of interaction between the two Koreas. The projects have not only contributed to economic exchange, but also have demonstrated the possibility of advancing the two Koreas' political relations. South-North Korean economic cooperation is important in aiding the recovery of cultural and emotional homogeneity as well as promoting reciprocal economic development, development of industrial infrastructure and building a harmonized industrial structure between the two Koreas. Furthermore, such changes in the economic sector could lead to the political stability of North Korea, which, in turn, would contribute to the political and military stability of the entire Korean peninsula.Table 1 summarizes the economical and political effects of two new North Korean SEZs on both North and South Koreas. The effects of the success or failure of the North Korean SEZs will not be confined to the North Korean government; the result will affect the economic and political atmosphere of the entire Korean peninsula and all Northeast Asian countries.Therefore, this paper will address possible routes to success for the North Korean SEZs. The first section provides an analysis of the complicated features of North Korean SEZs. The second section offers an examination of a short-term and longterm development strategy of North Korean SEZs. The concluding section contains a discussion of the most appropriate way to achieve success for the SEZs through close economic cooperation between the two Koreas, with consideration of the eventual establishment of a future commonwealth.The Concept, Developmental Logic, and Type of a North Korean SEZThe Concept of the SEZ in North KoreaAccording to the Dictionary of Economics of North Korea, the "Special Economic Zone (Open Zone for Foreigners)" is defined as follows (p. 116):China, in 1979, announced some parts of four cities as the special economic zone. The purpose of establishing special economic zones was inducing foreign capital, technology, and management skills as well as increasing foreign trade and foreign currency holdings, accelerating economic development. The Chinese special economic zone is different from the "industrial district" in capitalist countries. While capitalist countries develop capitalist economies by inducing foreign capital in the "industrial district," in the Chinese special economic zone, various economic systems coexist on condition that a socialist economy predominates. Foreign capitalists have the right to possess the means of production, a part of or whole rights of management, the right to employ and discharge workers, and particular privileges and special favors regulated by the Chinese government. However, foreign capitalists have to undertake economic activity in the special economic zone under the supervision and direction of the socialist country.In the same Dictionary of Economics, the so-called "industrial district" in capitalist countries is defined as follows (p. 176):The origin of the "industrial district" was the "Manchester Industrial District" in Britain in the late 19th century and this model has been diffused all around the world after World War I. …