North Korea Under Kim Jong Il
Subtitle: From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: June 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9780791469286
Subjects: Asian / Middle Eastern history: postwar, from c 1945 -; History; History - General History; History: World; Pakistan; Asia - Korea
Description: "North Korea has long been a country of mystique, both provoking two nuclear crises and receiving aid from the international community and South Korea in more recent times. North Korea under Kim Jong Il examines how internal changes in North Korea since the early 1970s have structured that nation's apparently provocative nuclear diplomacy and recent economic reform measures. To understand these changes, author Sung Chull Kim uncovers relatively unknown internal aspects of the country under Kim Jong Il's leadership. His account, based on a thorough examination of primary sources, traces the origins, consolidation, and dissonance of North Korea's systemic identity.

He reveals how official and unofficial developments in the domains of North Korea's politics, ideology, economics, and intellectual-cultural affairs have brought about systemwide duality, particularly between socialist principles embedded in the official ideology and economic institutions."--Jacket.