A Note on Economic Development in North Korea: Call for a Comprehensive Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-259
Author(s):  
Yong-Shik Lee

Abstract North Korea is currently one of the most impoverished countries with a history of famine, but the country has a significant potential for economic development that could lift its population from poverty. Neighbored by some of the largest and most advanced economies in the world (South Korea, Japan, and China) and endowed with abundant mineral resources, industrial experience, and a history of successful economic development in the past, North Korea can embark on the path to rapid economic development, as its southern counterpart (South Korea) did so successfully since the 1960s. Yet, the successful economic development of North Korea requires a comprehensive approach, including obtaining a fund for development; normalizing relations with the West and the neighboring countries; improving its human rights conditions; prioritizing key industrial development; and reforming its political-economic system. This note discusses the comprehensive approach necessary for the successful economic development of North Korea.

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192
Author(s):  
Kurtuluş Gemici

Abstract Despite the voluminous literature on South Korea’s rapid economic development and social transformation in the 1960s and 1970s, the literature in English on Park Chung Hee — the political figure who indelibly marked this era — is still lacking. Furthermore, the existing studies approach the subject of Korea’s fateful decades from general theoretical perspectives, such as the developmental state. This approach inevitably flattens out historical particularity in the process. A recent edited volume, The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea, fills these gaps by bringing political history back into the study of Korean modernization. The goal of this review essay is a critical evaluation of this volume’s contribution to scholarship on South Korea. It is posited that The Park Chung Hee Era throws light on topics such as Park’s leadership that have been hitherto neglected in the analysis of arguably the most consequential decades in the history of South Korea. However, while the edited volume mounts an effective criticism of existing perspectives on Korea’s developmental decades under Park Chung Hee’s rule, it is less successful in offering a consistent framework to analyze different causal factors shaping the Korean trajectory of economic development.


Author(s):  
Sanghoon Kim ◽  
Hah-Zoong Song

The development of South Korea, due to relevant and effective industrial policies, is unique in the modern history of industrialization. Within one generation, the country transformed itself from a poor agrarian society into a modern industrial power, all the more remarkably in that its rapid economic development was broad-based and supported by all stakeholders. From 1962, the South Korean government aggressively pursued an economic development strategy that centred on manufacturing-sector growth, driven largely by industrial complexes. Lately, more than 900 industrial clusters account for 62 per cent of the country’s manufacturing production and 80 per cent of total exports. South Korea’s policies designate physical sites and facilitate growth platforms that reinforce cooperation and coordination between industries, academia, and research. This chapter reviews the path of industrial development that South Korea took, with attention to the industrial complexes and clusters scattered across the country, and the measures and policies that enabled them.


2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei N. Lankov

This article, based on newly declassified material from the Russian archives, deals with the fate of non-Communist parties in North Korea in the 1950s. Like the “people's democracies” in Eastern Europe, North Korea had (and still technically has) a few non-Communist parties. The ruling Communist party included these parties within the framework of a “united front,” designed to project the facade of a multiparty state, to control domestic dissent, and to establish links with parties in South Korea. The article traces the history of these parties under Soviet and local Communist control from the mid-1940s to their gradual evisceration in the 1950s.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Marcin Tymiński ◽  
Marcin Szuflicki ◽  
Agnieszka Malon ◽  
Krzysztof Szamałek

Abstract The article presents the history of collecting data on mineral raw materials export and import in Poland and balancing mineral raw materials resources. The methodology of gathering data was analyzed on the basis of the publication “The Balance of Mineral Resources Deposits in Poland”. This is the current title of the yearbook, the back issues of which are collected in the Polish Geological Institute-National Research Institute headquarters. During the last decades the institutions responsible for collecting and delivering data have changed and they were cited in the article along with the names of general editors of the publication and the authors of the chapter devoted to the exports and imports. As a result, data on mineral raw materials international trade have been presented every year. Moreover, the scope of data and the manner of their presentation were covered in the article. The information on Polish export and import of mineral raw materials has been compiled since the 1960s. Significant changes took place for more than 50 years not only within Polish but also in the world economy, and these economic conditions – the growing number of trade partners, changes in accounting for commodities or currency changes – were the main factors influencing the successive conversions of data presentations. The range of data grew significantly, the source of data altered several times and the methodology of data presentation changed a lot. Over time, there were data presented in longer hindsight and not only on exports and imports but also on the turnover balance. The balance is treated as a reflection of the domestic mineral raw materials sector and of a situation in world mineral economy. Thus, tendencies in the trade turnover have been presented for the last 30 years, for export, import and balance. Graphs were also included in the article showing such changes in relation to the value and magnitude of the trade turnover for all mineral resources and for particular groups – energy, metallic, chemical and rock raw materials. The most important raw materials – in terms of affecting the total balance in Poland – were also specified in the article.


Author(s):  
Renata Keller

Relations between the United States and Mexico have rarely been easy. Ever since the United States invaded its southern neighbor and seized half of its national territory in the 19th century, the two countries have struggled to establish a relationship based on mutual trust and respect. Over the two centuries since Mexico’s independence, the governments and citizens of both countries have played central roles in shaping each other’s political, economic, social, and cultural development. Although this process has involved—even required—a great deal of cooperation, relations between the United States and Mexico have more often been characterized by antagonism, exploitation, and unilateralism. This long history of tensions has contributed to the three greatest challenges that these countries face together today: economic development, immigration, and drug-related violence.


Author(s):  
Hyung-Gu Lynn

This chapter provides an overview of key questions, issues, and debates in the scholarship on the political history of Korea from 1905 to 1945. Japan placed Korea in protectorate status in 1905 and colonized the country in 1910. After nearly forty years under colonial rule, the dominant narrative in the scholarship in South Korea from 1945 to the mid-1980s focused on Japanese colonial oppression and the Korean struggle against it to achieve national independence. The focus of this chapter is on subsequent approaches that have supplemented, qualified, challenged, and refined interpretations of this era. These include analysis of the causes behind the emergence of modern nationalism in Korea; the internal political polarization between left and right and the internal conflicts within each camp that formed the domestic foundations for the division of the Korean Peninsula after 1945; the bureaucratization that, according to some scholars, served as the template for the developmental state that emerged in South Korea during the 1960s; and the dissolution of absolute monarchy as a viable system of governance in the post-1945 period.


Author(s):  
Cemile Zehra Köroğlu ◽  
Muhammet Ali Köroğlu

In all societies, there have been some movements that point out social, political, economic, ideological, or moral problems or aim at partial or complete change. This chapter discusses the new meanings attributed to the concept of social movements in the postmodern era. A theoretical framework is proposed to understand the nature of social movements since the 1960s and to demonstrate their differences from classical movements. Turkey provides a particularly rich context with high potential for social movements, both with secular and religious aspirations. Religious social movements have shown quite a tense relationship with the state throughout the history of the republic; yet, they have gained power and prosperity through evolving liberal economic policies since the 1980s. Therefore, resource mobilization and new social movement paradigms are used in this chapter to explain Turkey's religious social movements today.


Author(s):  
B.S. Zhumagulov ◽  

The article analyzes a new view of the history of economic development of Kazakhstan after the civil war. The purpose of the work is to identify problems, analyze the implementation of the social and economic policy of Soviet power. In this article, there are new transformations in the political, economic and social life of Kazakhstan and the difficulties in its implementation. The ongoing work on restoration of peaceful life, destroyed economy and economy in Kazakhstan is indicated. The reasons for the decline in economic life, destruction, poverty and hunger in Kazakhstan are indicated. As a result of hunger, cold and the accompanying diseases, the demographic situation in the nomadic and semi-nomadic regions of the republic deteriorated – the population of the rural population in many provinces decreased to 1/3, more than 700 000 people left Kazakhstan.


Author(s):  
A. Dikarev

This article contains the detailed comparative analysis of Russian and Chinese participation in the economic development of one of the most important African countries. The article highlights the history of credits and loans, foreign direct investments to Angola, dynamics of Russian and Chines trade turnover in the 21-st century. Main projects of Russia-Angola economic co-operation, activities of the biggest Chinese companies in Angola are in the scope of this research. Main economic interest of both powers – China and Russia – is to obtain access to the rich energy and mineral resources of Angola. However, any numerical indices of Russian and Chinese involvement into Angolan economics show that Russia cannot compete with China in this respect. Incomparable scale of trade turnover and economic cooperation make the hypotheses about possible “rivalry” between Russia and China in this region groundless. In spite of the fact that China has reduced loans volumes to Angola recently, the trade between the two countries shows increasing trend. For the time being Russia seems competitive to China in military cooperation with Angola though falls behind in humanitarian sphere.


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