Professor Sungmin Cho’s latest peer-reviewed article entitled “Why North Korea Could Not Implement the Chinese Style Reform and Opening? The Internal Contradiction Between Economic Reform and Political Stability.” was recently published by the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs.

Abstract: Can North Korea implement the Chinese-style reform and opening-up policies? This is an important question, directly relevant to the policy debate on North Korea’s nuclear challenges. Through comparative historical analysis, I argue that Pyongyang has failed to adopt the Chinese-style reform and opening-up for the internal and structural restraints. The Chinese experience shows that the economic reform and opening, to be successful, requires a certain degree of political reform and openness to be executed together. North Korea could not implement the economic reform and opening policies as effectively as China did, not because of external conditions like international sanctions or security threat to the country, but more for the internal contradiction that North Korea’s economic development is likely to endanger its own political stability more rapidly and widely than China has experienced. For this analysis, I rely on North Korea’s published laws and economic policies, previous survey works and scholarly works published in Korean and Chinese languages.

The article is structured as seen below.

1. Introduction
2. Kim Jong-un and Deng Xiaoping
3. The Linkage Between Economic Reform and Political Reform
4. The Linkage Between Economic Opening-up and Political Openness
5. The Kingdom of Myth and the Power of Truth
6. Conclusion

Full Article

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of DKI APCSS, the US Department of Defense or the US government.