In the mid-1990s, as many as one million North Koreans died in one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. The socialist food distribution system collapsed primarily because of a misguided push for self-reliance, but was compounded by the regime’s failure to formulate a quick response-including the blocking of desperately needed humanitarian relief.
As households, enterprises, local party organs, and military units tried to cope with the economic collapse, a grassroots process of marketization took root. However, rather than embracing these changes, the North Korean regime opted for tentative economic reforms with ambiguous benefits and a self-destructive foreign policy. As a result, a chronic food shortage continues to plague North Korea today.
In their carefully researched book, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland present the most comprehensive and penetrating account of the famine to date, examining not only the origins and aftermath of the crisis but also the regime’s response to outside aid and the effect of its current policies on the country’s economic future. Their study begins by considering the root causes of the famine, weighing the effects of the decline in the availability of food against its poor distribution. Then it takes a close look at the aid effort, addressing the difficulty of monitoring assistance within the country, and concludes with an analysis of current economic reforms and strategies of engagement.
North Korea’s famine exemplified the depredations that can arise from tyrannical rule and the dilemmas such regimes pose for the humanitarian community, as well as the obstacles inherent in achieving economic and political reform. To reveal the state’s culpability in this tragic event is a vital project of historical recovery, one that is especially critical in light of our current engagement with the ‘North Korean question.’
Table of Content
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Foreword, by Amartya Sen
Preface
1. Introduction: Famine, Aid, and Markets in North Korea
Part I. Perspectives on the famine
2. The Origins of the Great Famine
3. The Distribution of Misery: Famine and the Breakdown of the Public Distribution System
Part II. The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Assistance
4. The Aid Regime: The Problem of Monitoring
5. Diversion
6. The Political Economy of Aid
Part III: Dealing with a Changing North Korea
7. Coping, Marketization, and Reform: New Sources of Vulnerability
8. Conclusion: North Korea in Comparative and International Perspective
Appendix 1: Illicit Activities
Appendix 2: The Scope of the Humanitarian Aid Effort
Appendix 3: The Marketization Balance Sheet
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of
Pathways from the Periphery; The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (with Robert Kaufman); and
The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis.Marcus Noland is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a senior fellow at the East-West Center. He has served as an occasional consultant to such organizations as the World Bank and the National Intelligence Council.
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