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Troubled Transition: North Korea’s Politics, Economy and External Relations

From the publisher’s website:

Kim Jong-il once declared he would transform North Korea into a “great and powerful country” by 2012, apparently believing that nuclear weapons would compel the international community to engage on his terms. With no such prospect in sight, North Korea faces a multitude of intractable problems. Will North Koreans accept his son as their leader, and will he embrace new thinking to solve the country’s problems? Why do North Korean leaders resist reform of an economic system that impoverishes the people? Can a country so dependent on outside help continue to defy the international community?

In Troubled Transition, leading international experts examine these dilemmas, offering new insights into how a troubled North Korea may evolve in light of the ways other command economies and totalitarian states–from the Soviet Union and East Germany to Vietnam and China–have transitioned.

Contents

  • Introduction / Gi-Wook Shin and Don Keyser
  • The hereditary succession from Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Un : its background, present situation and prospect / Hakjoon Kim
  • North Korea’s leadership succession : the logic and the process of succession to Kim Jong-Un / Yu-Hwan Koh
  • North Korean domestic politics / Sandra Fahy
  • Continuity and change : assessing North Korea’s economic performance and prospects / William Newcomb
  • North Korea’s chronic food problem / Andrew S. Natsios
  • An inconsolable divide : the roots of the Korean conundrum / Choe Sang-Hun
  • North Korea’s distorted view of the United States and Japan / David Straub and Daniel Sneider
  • China’s growing presence in the DPRK : origins, objectives, and implications / Thomas Fingar
  • North Korea’s relations with Europe / John Everard
  • The political economy of unification : North Korea and implications of the German experience / Ruediger Frank
  • North Korea and the fall of the Soviet Union and Soviet satellite states / Andrei Lankov
  • Risky business : Chinese-style reform and the North Korean regime / Andrew Walder
  • State under stress : prospects for transformation in North Korea / Daniel Sneider.

 

Entry on Goodreads.com here.

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