Overview

This ambitious book is constructed to provide the reader with unusually broad and deep insight into North Korea, illustrating how the Kim Jong-un regime calculates, balances, and addresses the various key policy challenges it faces. This will be accomplished through the extensive experience of the authors—Korean, European, and American—in North Korea and with North Koreans. There is no substitute for such direct experience in order to address the numerous myths and misconceptions that have grown up and persisted over the years about how the North functions, and how it perceives the world. Moreover, the usual focus on a single issue—for example, just nuclear or just economic matters—fails to provide a sense of how important the inter-relationship of these separate parts is in understanding the whole. The experience brought to bear in the book and the breadth of coverage provides badly needed, critical insights about North Korea at time when policy in Seoul and Washington toward the North is at a crucial hinge point.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert Carlin ,  Chung-in Moon ,  Thomas J. Biersteker ,  Robert Carlin
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Lexington Books
ISBN:  

9781666906790

ISBN 10:   1666906794
Pages:   382
Publication Date:   16 April 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Unspecified
Availability:   In Print  
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Robert Carlin and Chung-in Moon Chapter 1: To What Extent and How Do We Know About North Korea? Linking Contextual Intelligence to Sound Policy by Robert Carlin Chapter 2: Can the Kim Jong-un Regime Survive? by Jong Seok Lee Chapter 3: The North Korean Economy in Crisis: Prospects for Reform and Policy Options by Rüdiger Frank Chapter 4: Kim Jong-un's Economic Reform and Opening: Opportunities, Constraints, and Prospects by Dongho Jo Chapter 5: North Korean Society at a Crossroad: Change and Continuity in the Kim Jong-un era by Sung Kyung Kim Chapter 6: North Korea’s Foreign Policy: A Revisionist State, An Alliance with China, or A Third Way? by Jung-Chul Lee Chapter 7: The Status and Role of the North Korean Military During the Kim Jong-un Period by Gee-Dong Lee Chapter 8: Nuclear North Korea: A Path Forward in View of Facts, Myths and Uncertainties by Siegfried S. Hecker Chapter 9: International Sanctions on North Korea: Are They Working? by Thomas J. Biersteker and Zuzana Hudáková

Reviews

Carlin and Moon are among the most perceptive observers of North Korea, in no small measure because they have actual histories with the country’s officials and are appropriately modest about what we can know. This volume gathers together an unusual cluster of leading experts, but does not confine itself to standard foreign policy analysis; it considers cultural change, the economy and ongoing humanitarian challenges, including those around COVID. Nonetheless, a particular bonus is a roundtable discussion among leading negotiators from both the US and South Korea. If you have an interest in North Korea, this book needs to be in your library. -- Stephan Haggard, University of California San Diego

Author Information

Robert Carlin is consultant at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Chung-in Moon is chairman of the Sejong Institute in Seoul, Korea.

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