Author Archive

Weak Parties Are No Problem for South Korean Partisans

By and | April 10, 2024

New research demonstrates that partisan and ideological affiliations retain influence in voter preferences in South Korea, despite the country’s weak party system.

Experimental Method Reveals True South Korean Unification Preferences

By , and | March 01, 2024

A new study published in National Strategy uses a choice-based conjoint approach to determine South Koreans’ unification preferences for various unification scenarios.

Local and Limited: The Sociopolitical Implications of Segmented Marketization in North Korea

By | March 21, 2016

In the fifth part of our contemporary marketization series, Philo Kim takes a sociologist’s lens to the North Korean economy to find out why marketization hasn’t led to large-scale change or transformation.

And the Show Goes On: How the State Survived Marketization

By | September 01, 2014

In post-famine North Korea, the spread of markets has created a dilemma for the state. While markets are sources of revenue, they also threaten to state’s survival. How has the state responded? In the third installment in a series of reviews, Peter Ward looks at Yang Mun-su’s work on the state’s response to marketization.

After the Collapse: The Formalization of Market Structures in North Korea, 1994-2010

By | June 09, 2014

With the collapse of the state-run distribution service in North Korea, market trading, selling, and buying became a means of survival. What started then is now an integral and formalized part of economic and social life. Peter Ward’s second review concerns Joung Eun-lee’s article on market development in North Korea from the early 1990s to the present.