Author Archive
Local and Limited: The Sociopolitical Implications of Segmented Marketization in North Korea
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
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
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.
Before the Collapse: The Micro-foundations of Marketization in North Korea
Much Korean-language research about North Korea goes unread in the English-speaking world. In an effort to bridge the divide and make us all whole, Peter Ward embarks on a series of review essays dealing with key Korean research into marketization. The first piece looks at the surprising role of markets in the Kim Il-sung period.
Sino-NK 2013 Rewind: The Byungjin Line and North Korea in an Era of Songun Politics
Extensively analyzed on Sino-NK in 2013, for the second of a pair of Sino-NK 2013 Rewind pieces, Peter Ward returns to Byungjin’s source with an investigation of its ur-text, April’s “Nuke and Peace.”
A Primer on North Korea’s Economy: An Interview with Andrei Lankov
In the modern era of North Korean marketization, the scope and substance of the North Korean economy are hard to establish. Nevertheless, in this new interview with Peter Ward, Professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University does his best to describe the current state of affairs.
Reining in Rent-Seeking: How North Korea Can Survive
Peter Ward proposes that the North Korean regime can reconcile the seemingly contradictory concepts of “state rule” and “market economy” by reining in rent-seeking from low- and mid-level bureaucrats and harnessing the power of the markets.
All the World’s a Stage. Looking Again at North Korea: Beyond Charismatic Politics
In a contrarian take on one of SinoNK’s favorite texts on North Korean ideology, Peter Ward, a young scholar in Seoul, delves into “Charismatic Politics” in the DPRK.
