by Ralph Hassig
Chapter 9: The End Comes Slowly
1. Ronald Winetrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship (London: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 22.
2. “UN: Six Million N. Koreans Chronically Short of Food,” AFP, February 24, 2008, in English.
3. “Full Dialogue between DPRK Leader, ROK Media Delegation,” Yonhap, August 13, 2000, in Korean.
4. Interview with a North Korean official stationed overseas, June 2006.
5. Chon U-taek, Saram-ui Tongil, Ttang-ui Tongil [Reunification of the People, Reunification of the Land], August 2007, in Korean.
6. Interview with a foreign diplomat formerly stationed in Pyongyang, who heard this story from a North Korean associate, Washington, D.C., May 2005.
7. Chon, Saram-ui Tongil.
8. According to an internal DPRK document published under the title “Internal Document Obtained—Kim Jong-il Regime Is Making Squeaking Noises,” Tokyo Shimbun, August 15, 2003, 4, morning edition, in Japanese.
9. KongdanOhand RalphHassig, “NorthKorea betweenCollapseand Reform,” Asian Survey 34, no. 2 (March/April 1999): 287–309.
10. Cited by Pan Suk Kim, Prospects for Change of the North Korean Regime (paper presented at the International Conference on “The Search for Peace and Security in Northeast Asia toward the 21st Century,” Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University, and Council on Korea-U.S. Security Studies, Seoul, October 24–25, 1996).
11. Tae Hwan Ok and Soo Am Kim, The Initial Phase of Unified Korea (Seoul: Korea Institute for National Unification, 1998), abstract 97-2, in English.
12. See chapter 6, note 32.
13. Hyun-Joon Chon et al., An Assessment of the North Korean System’s Durability (Seoul: Korea Institute for National Unification, 2007), 106, in English.
Further Reading
Leadership
The most authoritative biography of Kim Il-sung is Dae-Sook Suh’s Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
No comparable biography is yet available for Kim’s son, but Michael Breen, formerly a journalist in Asia, has written a very readable account in Kim Jong-il: North Korea’s Dear Leader (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons [Asia], 2004).
The Economy
Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, has been analyzing the North Korean economy for some years now. See the institute’s website for books and reports, including Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
Everyday Economic Life, Information, and Beliefs
Andrei Lankov, at one time a Russian exchange student at Kim Il-sung University and currently an instructor at a South Korean university, frequently publishes insightful articles and reports on the life of the North Korean people. See, for example, his collection of articles in North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2007).
The Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), which is the think tank of the ROK government’s Ministry of Unification, publishes the excellent annual White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea, which also covers general living conditions. Several months after each edition of White Paper is published, it may be downloaded from the English-language pages of KINU’s website at www.kinu.or.kr. It is available in a paperback version as well. KINU also publishes excellent surveys of North Korean defectors.
The English-language pages of the website NKnet at http://nknet.org publish highly informative reports on life in North Korea based on the most recent testimony of defectors and other sources. Also invaluable, the Daily NK is available on this website.
The international nonprofit organization Good Friends maintains an English-language page on its website at http://goodfriends.or.kr/eng with North Korea Today, an informative weekly newsletter that is also available by e-mail.
Human Rights and Defectors
KINU reports, especially the annual White Paper, are excellent sources on this topic.
Also, the U.S.-based nonprofit organization Committee for Human Rights in North Korea maintains a website at www.hrnk.org, where human rights reports can be found, such as David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps (Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2003), and Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea (Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2005).
Two first-hand accounts by defectors who escaped from prison camps are Chol-hwan Kang and Pierre Rigoulot, The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, trans. Yair Reiner (New York: Basic Books, 2001), and Soon Ok Lee, Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman, trans. Rev. Bahn-Suk Lee and Jin Young Choi (Bartlesville, OK: Living Sacrifice Book Co., 1999).
About the Authors
Ralph Hassig is an independent consultant specializing in North Korean affairs and an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Maryland University College, where he teaches courses in social psychology, organizational behavior, and consumer psychology. He was educated at Albion College (BA in psychology), the University of California, Los Angeles (MA and PhD in social psychology), and the University of San Francisco (MBA in marketing). He is the author, coauthor, and coeditor (with his wife, Kong-dan Oh) of several books and numerous articles on North and South Korea.
Kongdan Oh is a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She received her BA from Korea’s Sogang University (in Korean literature and Oriental history), an MA from Seoul National University (in Korean literature), and another MA and a PhD in Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She engages in policy research on Asia and is a widely cited expert on North and South Korean affairs.
Table of Contents
Preface
About Korean Names and Pronunciation
CHAPTER ONE The Illusion of Unity
CHAPTER TWO The Life of the Leader
CHAPTER THREE The Economic System
CHAPTER FOUR The Economy of Everyday Life
CHAPTER FIVE The Information Environment
CHAPTER SIX Hidden Thoughts
CHAPTER SEVEN The Law, Political Class, and Human Rights
CHAPTER EIGHT Defectors
CHAPTER NINE The End Comes Slowly
Notes
Further Reading
About the Authors
