Ruediger, Rudiger Frank

The North Korean media have on October 30th, 2015, announced that the 7th Congress of the Worker's Party will be convened in May 2016. Given the fact that the last one took place in 1980, and that so far no further details were provided, this short article attempts a rigorous speculation about the reasons for holding the Congress now, and its potential Content. In short, there are two Options: return to a regular, structured rule by or through the Party, or the anouncement of a Major Change. The latter could even include a Reform following the examples of China (1982) or Vietnam (1986).

IntroductionMore than 20 years have passed since the signing of the Geneva Agreed Framework between the U.S. and the DPRK. Since the October 1994 agreement, the U.S.- DPRK relationship has at times seemed to improve and at other times rapidly deteriorated. The international community is no closer today to resolving the nuclear issue than it was during the early 1990s, and many observers believe North Korea will never completely abandon its nuclear ambitions.1Yet two decades ago, in the face of overwhelming odds, an incongruous marriage was formed between the U.S. and the DPRK. The Agreed Framework itself is remarkable, given the long-standing mutual enmity and distrust between the U.S. and the DPRK. The Korean nuclear crisis situation in the early 1990s could have developed into a military conflict on the Korean peninsula.2 However, the Agreed Framework provided a diplomatic solution, which temporarily diffused the tension between the U.S. and the DPRK and averted further escalation of the North Korean nuclear crisis. The U.S. elected to implement positive economic sanctions-a package of goods- in exchange for a promise by the DPRK to end its nuclear program. This controversial U.S. decision contradicted the prevailing U.S. foreign policy preference, which favored negative economic sanctions and/or military action when dealing with the nuclear weapons ambitions of rogue nations.Since the Agreed Framework, many scholars have tried to explain the North Korean nuclear issue.3 While many articles describe the agreement's technical aspects and procedures, most of them have not provided a theoretical basis that explains why and how the agreement was reached.4 While a few studies even define North Korea as an irrational state and its nuclear program as terror and coercive diplomacies, North Korea's pursuit of its nuclear program was a rational choice given its domestic and international conditions.5 To understand why and how the U.S. and the DPRK first reached the agreement and then failed to maintain it, research should focus on the DPRK's rational decisions given its domestic and environmental conditions.This paper attempts to provide a theoretical basis for not only the initial success, but also the ultimate failure of the Agreed Framework. The U.S. and the DPRK were bargaining during a conflict situation in the early 1990s. In a bilateral bargaining situation, the ability of one participant to achieve its goals depends, in large part, on the decisions of the other participant.6 Negotiators also had limited choices given their expectations of the other's reaction. While the U.S. could enforce economic sanctions or militarily attack North Korea, these choices could be less beneficial given the United States' expectation of North Korea's reaction. While the DPRK could ignore U.S. demands and continue its nuclear development, the choice could be less favorable given the DPRK's expectation of the United States' reaction. While the Agreed Framework was less than perfect, the agreement was beneficial to both nations as long as neither defected from the agreement.Given the long adversarial relationship between the U.S. and DPRK, it was uncertain whether both countries would continuously and credibly commit to the agreement. To make the commitment "credible," in terms of transaction cost economics, both nations imposed direct and indirect "self-enforcing" restrictions to the agreement-a set of rules and conditions-that could devise "mutual reliance relations" and thus protect the agreement from potential expropriation by the other party.7 By making these credible commitments, the U.S. and the DPRK reached the mutually beneficial Geneva Agreed Framework in 1994.Still, the Agreed Framework failed to achieve its ultimate goal of mutual dependence because of major delays in implementation and lack of negative enforcement mechanisms (against defection from the agreement). Despite its ultimate failure, the Geneva Agreed Framework was the first agreement between the U. …

Frank, Ruediger (2006): Classical Socialism in North Korea and its Transformation: The Role and the Future of Agriculture, in: Harvard Asia Quarterly, Vol. X, No. 2, online at http://www.asiaquarterly .com/content/view/172/43/ ... Classical Socialism in North Korea and its Transformation:

The Eighth Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP, or simply the party) was held in the DPRK from January 5 to January 12, 2021. Such events are rare occasions during which the work of the past is officially analyzed, and strategic goals are set for the immediate and mid-term future. The last such Congress occurred in 2016, after a hiatus of 36 years since the Sixth Party Congress of 1980. The first of a two-part article summarizes the main takeaways concerning economic affairs.

The single most remarkable feature of the 7th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) was that it took place at all, after a hiatus of no less than 36 years. Ever since Kim Il Sung decided in the 1950s that his country needed its own way of doing things, which is often summarized under the term of chuch’e, it has been hard to categorize the DPRK as a typical socialist country. North Korea has always been different. It neither joined the military alliance of the Warsaw Pact nor was it willing to engage in the Soviet-led economic cooperation of COMECON. Its ideology moved further and further away from core premises of Marxism-Leninism. With its Hegelian emphasis on “mind over matter”, which in North Korea is called “man is master of everything”, Pyongyang’s ideology stood directly opposed to the key paradigm of Marx’s Dialectical Materialism. Even from the perspective of the Eastern European socialist brothers, North Korea was therefore a rather odd and even suspicious member of...

Past and recent efforts at regional security cooperation with North Korea have not been successful. It is argued that these attempts failed due to the predominant strategy of confrontational cooperation. With reference to standard IR theories, the author explores the limits and options for the DPRK to participate successfully in East Asian regional initiatives based on a promising multilateral strategy, called cooperative cooperation. In conjunction with an assessment of activities conducted, a number of conditions are inferred on which East Asian regionalization could serve as an alternative approach to the solution of various issues pertaining to the North Korean problem. Among these are most importantly the country’s nuclear programme, the DPRK’s meagre economic relations with other East Asian economies and reform challenges typical to a socialist system under transformation pressure. According to the author a multilateral, ASEAN-based regional institution with China leading from...

On March 30, 2016, the 9th plenary meeting of the 13th Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) of the DPRK convened at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang. Such meetings are routine events taking place annually in the spring. A senior official, usually the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance, reports on the state budget for the past and current years and announces the cornerstones of economic policy. Thus, while neither the plenum itself this year nor its timing was extraordinary, there were a few noteworthy features that justify taking a closer look at the typically sparse news about this event disseminated by the North’s state media.

German unification is often used as a preview on what is going to happen in Korea. Such a position is rejected in this article. Not only have the costs of German unification been grossly overestimated or misinterpreted, the costs in the Korean case will in many areas be lower than in Germany, and the benefits of unification will be much bigger, which further decreases the net costs. South Korea will, however, experience problems of a structural nature that have not occurred in Germany. The potential role of external partners for shouldering the costs of unification should also not be underestimated in the Korean case, although it will come at a political price. Finally, a highly speculative but not completely unrealistic scenario of unification is briefly presented that would incur almost no unification costs at all.

Prof. Frank and Theo Clement discuss the Kaesong closure in more detail, looking at the balance sheet for South Korea and for North Korea. They conclude: "...it seems fair to conclude that neither side clearly wins from the Kaesŏng closure, indeed, that both sides face losses..."

On Feb. 07, 2016, the joint industrial zone at Kaesong experienced another crisis, if not the beginning of its end. I have been there a couple of times and always left deeply impressed, and wondering. I think the key question is why both sides have kept the zone open for so long. I have difficulties believing the "greed" argument for the NK side, since the amount in question was small and they have previously shown that ideology and politics always trump economic rationality. I also don't buy the "we ran out of patience" point of the South, considering the many occasions they have had before to pull the plug.

The single most remarkable thing about the 7th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) is that it took place. After a 36-year hiatus, it was, without doubt, a noteworthy event, but the truly big news we were waiting for — such as an announcement of a drastically new economic policy or a switch to collective leadership — was missing. There wasn’t even a major purge. Looking back at my November 2015 preview of the Congress, of the two options presented for how the Congress would turn out, Option 1: a “return to a new normal,” came closest to reality.

T he Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been subject to sanctions nearly continuously since its foundation in 1948. First, it was sanctioned as a part of the Soviet bloc, a situation that was amplified by the Korean War. Later, North Korea suffered from de facto sanctions as a result of its refusal to side with either of the two contenders in the Sino-Soviet struggle for leadership in the socialist camp. Since 1993, and in particular since its first nuclear test in 2006, the country has been sanctioned both by the United Nations and by individual countries such as the United States because of its nuclear weapons program. This essay will focus on events in the last decade and address the following questions: What have been the domestic political and economic impacts of the current sanctions on North Korea? What has the Kim regime done to evade or mitigate their impact? Can sanctions be effective and compelling?

The paper evaluates the effects of domestic and external actions on the probability of reform in North Korea. It applies the theory of Janos Kornai on socialist systems, in particular the main line of causation, as well as elements of rational choice theory. The CRE model provides a tool for systematically processing information on North Korea that is typically incomplete. The effects of 23 actions that have taken place since 2012 in the fields of ideology, property rights, coordination, military affairs and external influence are discussed. The combined outcome is mixed and corresponds with reality, where neither a retreat to pre-1990 socialism nor a full-fledged reform could be observed. However, new insights are found on single effects and their interplay. This provides a practical tool for scholars who aim for a systematic understanding of the past, and for politicians who need to conduct an advance impact analysis of future policies.

Starting with the public introduction of Kim Jong-un to the public in autumn of 2010 and ending with observations of consumerism in February 2017, this collection of 16 short research notes that were originally published at 38North discusses some of the most crucial issues, aside from the nuclear problem, that dominated the field of North Korean Studies in the past decade. Left in their original form, these short articles show the consistency of major North Korean policies as much as the development of our understanding of the new leader and his approach. Topics covered include the question of succession, economic statistics, new ideological trends such as pyŏngjin, technological developments including a review of the North Korean tablet computer Samjiyŏn, the Korean unification issue, special economic zones, foreign trade, parliamentary elections and the first ever Party congress since 1980.

From nuclear and missile tests and dangerous rhetoric about mutual annihilation in 2017, events on the Korean Peninsula shifted to summit meetings and declarations of cooperation and denuclearisation in 2018. One explanation for this radical change is that US President Donald Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on North Korea was successful and Kim Jong-un bowed to the overwhelming pressure of economic sanctions. But neither a look at North Korea’s long-term strategy nor an evaluation of evidence on the state of its economy supports this view.

Markets have sprung up the country over in response to the breakdown in the Public Distribution Service, a phenomenon discussed at length by Smith. | Image: Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt More than 40 years ago, scholars Przeworski and Teune wrote that the overarching goal of comparative and other social scientific inquiry was " to substitute names of variables for the name of social systems, such as Ghana, the United States, Africa, or Asia. " In North Korea: Markets and Military Rule, Hazel Smith seems to argue similarly; as it goes for the rest of the world, so should it go for North Korea. Long an object of intellectual and popular interest, North Korea is often treated as an exception, somehow escaping the explanatory power of established analytical frameworks and social scientific theories. Apparently, it requires a deliberate effort from an established Koreanist to get the point across that North Korea — like Ghana, the United States, Africa, or Asia — is, in fact, just another country and thus just as knowable as any other. Drawing upon a plethora of sources and decades of experience writing about and working in North Korea, with North Koreans, Smith delivers a powerful, edgy, and historically informed critique of (North) Korean Studies. To explore the contours and content of Hazel Smith's Markets and Military Rule, Sino-NK assembled a team of qualified scholars of North Korea. Jacques Hersh and Ellen Brun contributed a stand-alone piece that was published on January 5.

Past and recent efforts at regional security cooperation with North Korea have not been successful. It is argued that these attempts failed due to the predominant strategy of confrontational cooperation. With reference to standard IR theories, the author explores the limits and options for the DPRK to participate successfully in East Asian regional initiatives based on a promising multilateral strategy, called cooperative cooperation. In conjunction with an assessment of activities conducted, a number of conditions are inferred on which East Asian regionalization could serve as an alternative approach to the solution of various issues pertaining to the North Korean problem. Among these are most importantly the country’s nuclear programme, the DPRK’s meagre economic relations with other East Asian economies and reform challenges typical to a socialist system under transformation pressure. According to the author a multilateral, ASEAN-based regional institution with China leading from behind could help providing new impetus to managing these problems and could also contribute to East Asian community building.

Die Entfernung zu uns ist nicht nur in Kilometern zu messen. Nordkorea ist ein diktatorisches System, das vor markigen Drohungen an den Rest der Welt und auch vor der Verhaftung von Touristen nicht zurückschreckt. Wenn überhaupt, dann sollte man keineswegs ohne gründliche Vorbereitung dorthin fahren. Doch wenn man sich dafür entscheidet, dann zeigt sich dem Besucher ein verwirrend vielfältiges und oft widersprüchliches Bild. Reisende bekommen trotz der überall vorherrschenden Zensur in Nordkorea viel gezeigt, doch vieles übersehen sie dabei.

Rüdiger Frank ist einer der weltweit besten Kenner Nordkoreas, seit über einem Vierteljahrhundert bereist er das Land regelmäßig. In seinem neuen Buch fasst er seine Reiseerfahrungen zusammen, gibt praktische Tipps und überraschende Einblicke in Alltag und Kultur Nordkoreas.