Economist Marcus Noland has been emphasizing this message time and again over the last few years. To tell this story, he plays detective to ferret out information about the North Korean economy and uncovers some fascinating information. He critically analyzes the IMF's approach to stabilizing the South Korean economy after the 1997 financial crisis. He also provides an illuminating chapter on the German situation which compares the economic collapse of East Germany to the Great Depression and the demographic crisis to China's Great Leap Forward. But there's a lot of valuable information and analysis in this book.
Some states seem to be buffeted by forces of globalization beyond their control.
Other states deliberately court globalization to meet their own economic goals. South Korea is an example of the latter. The Kim Dae Jung Foundation has been publishing several important conference proceedings. In February 2000, for instance, the Foundation held a conference entitled South-North Relations and the Dismantling of the Cold War Structure. Selig Harrison and Dae Sook Suh contribute their readings of North Korea.