This paper uses a survey of 300 North Korean refugees to examine the experience of women in North Korea’s fitful economic transition. Like other socialist states, North Korea has maintained a de jure commitment to women's rights. However, we find that women have been disproportionately shed...

In the 1990s, 600,000-1 million North Koreans, or about 3-5 percent of the pre-crisis population perished in one of the worst famines of the 20th century. North Korea is once again poised on the brink of famine. Although the renewed provision of aid is likely to avert a disaster on the scale of...

In 2008, North-South relations worsened, food shortages re-emerged, and the Six Party process yielded an interim agreement. The U.S. dropped North Korea from the terrorism list but nuclear verification issues remained contentious. Kim Jong-il reportedly suffered a stroke in August, casting...

Despite North Korea's turn away from economic reform and the constraints of the second nuclear crisis, the country has in fact become more economically open. But it has emphasized closer economic relations with China and other trading partners that show little interest in political...

South Korea is arguably the premier development success story of the last half century. For 47 years starting in 1963, the economy averaged 7 percent real growth annually, and experienced only two years of economic contraction: 1980 after the second oil shock and the assassination of President...

The American experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have motivated a re-examination of earlier experiences with post-conflict planning and reconstruction. This paper reviews the U.S. experience in Korea following the Second World War and the Korean War; addresses the political economy of...

The relationship between the US and Asia will be the single biggest determinant in the evolution of the global economic system. In the absence of adequate reform at the global level, the alternative could be further fragmentation into competing regional blocs. Asia holds the key, combining both...

This study finds that North Korea's nuclear test and the imposition of UN Security Council sanctions have had no perceptible effect on trade with its two largest partners, China and South Korea. Before North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test, it was widely believed that such an event...