CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTH KOREA

CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTH KOREA

Lee, Hy-Sang. North Korea: A Strange Socialist Fortress. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001.249pp.

Flake, L. Gordon and Scott Snyder (eds.). Paved With Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 168 pp.

Cha, Victor D. and David C. Kang. Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.249 pp.

Since October 2002, when it was revealed that North Korea had been secretly working on a nuclear weapons program after having undertaken in 1994 not to do so, that country has recaptured the attention of alarmed neighbors and of the world. The isolated regime, it is once again realized, really little understood. Despite its disastrous economic record in recent years, it is still capable of mounting a serious threat, even if only to secure adequate attention...and compensation!

Thus it is that the three books here under review have become available at a particularly timely juncture, just as international interest is peaking over North Korea. Each volume provides useful information and insights about that elusive regime. One even offers thought-provoking argumentation on how best to go about resolving the serious crisis brought about by North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Lee Hy-Sang's volume was published before the current nuclear crisis got underway. But, inasmuch as the author states that his aim is to explain "why North Korea is so poor yet so menacing" his book is fittingly relevant to the present crisis. It is well-written, presented in good chronological order, and readily understandable. It beings with a helpful first chapter summary history, followed by chapters devoted successively to each of the decades since 1945. The final chapter discusses the policy implications of the dominant and persistent features that have come to characterize North Korea over this more than half-century period of time.

Lee's essentially historical analysis is interdisciplinary and covers economic, military, ideological, and political dimensions of North Korea's experience. Hence the author explains how the regime arrived at and finally survived the famine of the 1990s and what it has tried to do since with such a bankrupt collectivist economy. North Korea is seen as a vast military camp since the 1960s, an understanding of the elements of which are necessary in order "to comprehend the intentions of this fortress country." As for the regime's uniquejuche ideology that so extols self-reliant socialism: "Virtually nothing that happens today can be correctly interpreted without understanding the ideological code that stands for the event." Finally, the author explains that the science of politics, including diplomacy, permeates and integrates his entire historical analysis.

The author disagrees with the recent, widely accepted, contention that North Korea's objective has changed to that of regime survival. He believes that the history of the north shows "three dominant and persistent determinants of outlook and behavior." First is Juche ideology, which has conditioned people to endure a sequestered life of self-reliant sacrifice so that the state can focus on military buildup for Communist reunification. second, the deification of the father and son Kims and their hereditary transmission of power facilitates the pursuit of the mission of socialist unification under their leadership indefinitely and under any circumstances. The third is the strategic doctrine of bringing about reunification after American military forces have been removed from South Korea. Winning hegemonic unification is inherent in each of these dominant determinants or shapers of the North Korean character. "To think...that the unity goal has been jettisoned to ensure mere regime survival would be to dismiss the motive power that has forged the history so consistently, tortuously, and ever more strangely since 1945."

It is this relentless goal of socialist unification that explains the refusal to reform, according to the author. "It does not behoove the selfanointed liberator," he says, "to be seen as aping the market institutions flourishing in the liberation target, South Korea." It is only by sticking to the socialist system proudly-socialism of its own style-that Pyongyang can "hope to project the kind of legitimacy and power it must be seen to possess in order to claim the right to annex the prosperous South."

The soberingly thoughtful volume ends with an astute epilogue on the historic summit meeting between President Kim Dae-jung and Chairman Kim Jong II in Pyongyang in June 2000, which happening did not soften the author's view of North Korea's objectives.

L. Gordon Flake and Scott Synder do a real service in providing important information and conclusions on the experience of the non-governmental organizations or NGOs in North Korea, and international relief phenomenon that began for the most part following the natural disasters in that country in 1995. The request by Pyongyang for such assistance constituted in effect an unprecedented admission that it had failed to meet the needs of its people. This failure was the culmination of the slide that began with the demise of fraternal socialist support from China and Russia earlier that decade and the inadequate systemic response by Pyongyang itself. The embarrassing situation has been a direct threat to the juche myth upon which the state's ideology was built.