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Can Economic Theory Demystify North Korea?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Rüdiger Frank
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The starting point of this paper is the assumption that North Korea is de facto a well-defined nation-state, home to a national economy and inhabited by individuals that bear the same basic economic and social characteristics as individuals elsewhere. Despite the obvious specifics of the economic system and institutional structure of the country, standard economic theory should be applicable to the question of North Korean economic development. The article seeks to prove this as broadly as possible, showing that economic theory as diverse as classical and neoclassical, Marxist, Keynesian, institutional, developmentalist, neo-liberal or structuralist, dependency analysis-based and many others, including regionally centered approaches, can be utilized to explain the North Korean case with useful results, although the latter will inevitably vary depending on the chosen framework. Without arguing against or in favor of any of the available theoretical methods, this article advocates further research on North Korea as another case of development in East Asia, rather than as a mystical exception to the rule. This is particularly important in light of the tendency to describe North Korea as unpredictable, bizarre, and incomprehensible. This is clearly not the case.

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 2007 , e28
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2007

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