Despite the notorious fact of it being one of the most veiled countries in modern history, North Korea recently has started to get engaged with the rest of the world, and now we can easily witness various socio-economic changes of the nation which was seen in the 1990s in other post-socialist countries. And as the capital of the nation, Pyongyang has already entered into fast transformation stage with numbers of developments both in public and private sectors since the new regime of Kim Jung Un. However, we sometimes overlook the fact that the city was built based on the goal to be an ideal socialist city. After the three years of Korean War in the 1950s, Pyongyang was completely demolished and had a unique chance to build a new city based on the socialist ideology. Although the current morphology may not be exactly same as the original master plan, many urban spaces and infrastructures remain as evidences of socialist urban planning. And interestingly enough, these are urban elements that have major conflict with the idea of market-oriented economy, and at the moment, the morphology of the city is already changing. Then, the question is, will Pyongyang become one of post-socialist cities, having them as precedents to the city, or will it have its own development path that is unprecedented?

This volume employs an urban lens to provide a critical analysis of the North Korean style of sustainable urban development in the face of severe sanctions and a scarcity of vital resources. With a focus on five major areas—population, economics, architecture, urban planning, and culture—the authors examine the preconditions that led to the emergence of ideas related to urban sustainability, assess and reassess the trends in sustainable development brought about by market forces, and recommend paths for their further intensification. Since this work covers a variety of topics, ranging from geomancy and social control to economic issues and green architecture (both locally and in comparison with European post-socialist cities and South Korea), it will point to lessons that other countries could learn from. This book will be a valuable reference for scholars, researchers, students, and the general public who have a regional interest in North Korea, Korean unification, and East Asia as a whole; and/or a topical interest in urban studies, urban sustainability, and post-socialist urban transformation.

Part history book, part travel guide of the North Korean capital, this volume combines color photographs with 140 entries detailing the history and uses of various sites of the city (including a number that proclaim "exact location unknown"), from museums, art galleries, and government buildings to ancient tombs and geological features. The entries are preceded by a brief history of North Korea and Pyongyang. Distributed by Saranda Books. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

‘The young dictator comes under close scrutiny in this intelligent account’ Sunday Times When Kim Jong Un became the leader of North Korea in 2011, many expected his rule to be short. Years later, he remains the unchallenged dictator of a nuclear rogue state with weaponry capable of threatening the West. In this behind-the-scenes look, former CIA analyst and North Korea expert Jung H. Pak reveals the explosive story of Kim Jong II’s third son: the spoilt and impetuous child, the mediocre student, the ruthless murderer, the shrewd grand strategist.

In Kim Jong-un’s Strategy for Survival, David W. Shin contends that Kim Jong-un's consolidation of power at home and the leveraging of Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, and Washington, and others abroad show that he is not a madman and, like the two earlier Kims, has consistently been underestimated. Shin presents an alternative framework for Kim Jong-un’s behavior through his analysis of Kim's background and his development as the successor to his father, Kim Jong-il; the evolution of the totalitarian system Kim inherited from his grandfather, Kim Il-sung; and the security environment after Kim Jong-il’s death in 2011. This book is recommended for scholars and students of political science, Asian studies, international relations, and history.

Viewed from afar, North Korea may appear bizarre, or positively irrational. But as Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrates in this meticulously researched volume, there is a grim coherence to North Korea's political economy, and a ruthless logic undergirding it--one that unreservedly subordinates economic welfare to augmentation of political power. Thus, paradoxically, even as official policies and practices consign the DPRK economy to a perilous realm between crisis and catastrophe, the country's leadership maintains unchallenged domestic control and has actually managed to increase its international influence.Through painstaking collection of hard-to-uncover data and careful analysis, Eberstadt provides a quantitative tableau of North Korea's terrible failure in its economic race against South Korea; its stubborn adherence to policies all but guaranteed to stifle growth and undermine economic performance; and the longstanding official effort to ignore, or mitigate, pressures for economic reform.Eberstadt is skeptical of optimistic accounts from South Korea and elsewhere suggesting that the North Korean leadership is interested in resolving the current nuclear impasse, and getting on with the business of reform and development. So long as Pyongyang's rulers entertain the ambition of reunifying the Korean peninsula on its own terms, Eberstadt argues, economic reforms worthy of the name will be subversive of state authority--and vigilantly resisted by Pyongyang's rulers. This authoritative volume has received widespread attention from Asian specialists, well as those concerned with nuclear proliferation and world peace, and international relations professionals in general.

A permanent peace regime on the Korean peninsula has yet to be achieved even though the Korean War came to a halt more than half a century ago. Without a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War, the two Korean states are technically still at war. The current situation on the Korean peninsula is extremely tense and precarious, and tensions and distrust between the two Koreas and between the U.S. and North Korea escalated in the wake of North Korea's second underground nuclear weapons testing in 2009. The editors of this volume conceptually present a two-track (inter-Korean and international) approach to Korean peninsula peace-regime building. They argue that an inter-Korean and international approach should be pursued simultaneously for the construction of a permanent peace regime on the Korean peninsula. The contributing authors are established specialists and experts on Korean foreign relations and Northeast Asian international relations. As natives of the U.S., Korea, China, and Japan, they provide objective, scholarly and diverse perspectives on the Korean peace regime building.

How has North Korea sought to normalize diplomatic relations with the US? Explaining the continuities between the Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-il governments, as well as the discontinuities, especially the decisive move towards brinkmanship under Kim Jong-un culminating in 2017 and subsequent turn towards diplomacy, this book shows how North Korea has constantly learnt from its own experience and the experience of others to evolve and adapt its policy towards the US. This fully revised and expanded second edition draws on interviews and conversations with American, North and South Korean, Chinese and other countries’ policy-makers and experts and North Korean official media stories. It has been updated to include discussion of the post-2012 period when Kim Jong-un replaced his father to become the leader of North Korea, and provides detailed analysis of both presidencies, concluding with a study of the two bilateral summits held with President Donald Trump. Showing how weaker powers can try to achieve their main foreign policy goals with respect to great powers, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of the international relations of East Asia, US Foreign Policy, Korean Studies and Foreign Policy Analysis. It should also prove relevant to those studying international bargaining and negotiation.

In September 2017, North Korea shocked the world by exploding the most powerful nuclear device tested anywhere in 25 years. Months earlier, it had conducted the first test flight of a missile capable of ranging much of the United States. By the end of that year, Kim Jong Un, the reclusive state's ruler, declared that his nuclear deterrent was complete. Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile and ballistic missile arsenal continues to grow, presenting one of the most serious challenges to international security to date. Internal regime propaganda has called North Korea's nuclear forces the country's "treasured sword," underscoring the cherished place of these weapons in national strategy. Fiercely committed to self-reliance, Kim remains determined to avoid unilateral disarmament. Kim Jong Un and the Bomb tells the story of how North Korea-once derided in the 1970s as a "fourth-rate pipsqueak" of a country by President Richard Nixon-came to credibly threaten the American homeland by November 2017. Ankit Panda explores the contours of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the developmental history of its weapons programs, and the prospects for disarming or constraining Kim's arsenal. With no signs that North Korea's total disarmament is imminent over the next years or even decade, Panda explores the consequences of a nuclear-armed North Korea for the United States, South Korea, and the world.

President George W. Bush had pinned North Korea to an "axis of evil" but then neglected Pyongyang until it tested a nuclear device. Would the new administration make similar mistakes? When the Clinton White House prepared to bomb North Korea's nuclear facilities, private citizen Jimmy Carter mediated to avert war and set the stage for a deal freezing North Korea's plutonium production. The 1994 Agreed Framework collapsed after eight years, but when Pyongyang went critical, the negotiations got serious. Each time the parties advanced one or two steps, however, their advance seemed to spawn one or two steps backward. Clemens distils lessons from U.S. negotiations with North Korea, Russia, China, and Libya and analyses how they do-and do not-apply to six-party and bilateral talks with North Korea in a new political era.