North Korea and Northeast Asia

Book Description
"A country of stark contradictions and puzzles, North Korea's uncanny resilience in the face of external shocks and internal woes raises important questions of theoretical and real-world significance. What has made it possible for North Korea to defy the classical realist axiom, the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept?" What is the nature of the North Korean threat in post-Cold War Northeast Asia? What kind of bargaining leverage does Pyongyang exercise in system-maintaining survival strategies? What are North Korea's prospects for sustaining such survival strategies in the uncertain years ahead? This volume offers a major reappraisal of the changing relationship between North Korea and its neighboring powers in the post-Cold War era in both theoretical and practical terms. The contributors examine the complex interplay of global, regional, and national forces that have influenced and shaped the changing patterns of conflict and cooperation in North Korea's relationships with China, Russia, and Japan and with the United States. Within the context of Northeast Asian geopolitics, the book tracks, explains, and assesses North Korea's survival strategies in both the security and economic domains, as well as the prospects of these strategies in the coming years."


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

North Korea's regime has managed to survive in the face of serious internal and external challenges. Kim (political science, Columbia U., US) and Lee (foreign policy and security studies, Sejong Institute, South Korea) present eight essays that address North Korea's system survival strategies in the context of these challenges from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including assymetrical conflict theory, mercantile neorealism, and prospect theory. The papers are organized into three sections that explore the broad theoretical and practical aspects of North Korean-Northeast Asian relations (Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States are the Northeast Asian powers for the purposes of this discussion); the global, regional, and national forces that have shaped patterns of conflict and cooperation with the Northeast Asian powers, and the effects of the security and economic domains on system survival strategies. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,Portland, OR


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices