Stephen Haggard - "North Korea: Quo Vadis?"

* CEAS Issues in Contemporary East Asia Colloquium, co-sponsored by the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies

Stephen Haggard, Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego

North Korea is now experiencing a leadership transition. But since the great famine of the mid-1990s, North Korea has been undergoing a broader social transformation as well. Drawing on an analysis of the famine and surveys of refugees and firms doing business in North Korea reveals a highly rigid order coupled with a process of "marketization from below" that poses both political and economic challenges for the regime.