Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2016
This survey of books in English on North Korea, 1997–2007, identifies nearly 240 titles—mostly by US authors but also by authors in Australia, Europe, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Russia. The books fall into eleven categories: history and culture; the Korean War revisited; the DPRK regime and its leaders; human rights and humanitarian issues; the economy: Juche, Songun, collapse, or reform; DPRK military assets and programs; relations with the United States; arms control negotiations and outcomes; regional and world security; prospects for North-South unification; and North Korea's future. A final section includes useful websites. This survey points to a wide interest in North Korea and underscores the serious and ongoing efforts of many scholars and policy analysts to understand developments there.
The author wishes to thank Boston University students Sandra Lee and Yurim Yi for assistance with this project.Google Scholar
1. Jin, Ha, War Trash (New York: Pantheon, 2004).Google Scholar
2. In listings of Senate and House of Representatives materials, long titles are omitted and noted by an ellipsis. The US Government Printing Office is shown as GPO.Google Scholar
3. Covell, Jon Carter, Korea's Cultural Roots (Salt Lake City: Moth House; Seoul: Hollym, 1981), p. 27.Google Scholar
4. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 245–251; 295–297. For more on personalist regimes, see Geddes, Barbara, Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).Google Scholar
5. Lecture at Harvard University, October 31, 2007.Google Scholar
6. For the views of former DPRK official Hwang Jang-Yop (sometimes written Yep or Yeop), see www.donga.com/e-county/sssboard/board.php?no=221182&s_work=view&tcode=01001county/sssboard/board.php?no=221182&s_work=view&tcode=01001. See also Seo, Ok-sik, Bukhaneui songunchungchiron [Songun Politics in North Korea] Seoul, 2006.Google Scholar
7. See Harrison, Lawrence E. and Huntington, Samuel P., eds., Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000).Google Scholar
8. For a comparison of Washington's approaches to Moscow and Beijing with US policies to the DPRK, see Clemens, Walter C. Jr., “Peace in Korea? Lessons from Cold War Détentes,” in Confrontation and Innovation on the Korean Peninsula (Washington, DC: Korea Economic Institute, 2003), pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
9. Many analysts have compared and contrasted US approaches to North Korea under the forty-second and forty-third US presidents. See, for example, Clemens, Walter C. Jr., “Negotiating to Control Weapons of Mass Destruction in North Korea,” International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice 10, no. 3 (2005): 453–486; and Clemens, , “Almost Back to Square One (on North Korea),” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 60, no. 5 (September–October 2004): 22–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. See Clemens, Walter C. Jr., “North Korea's Future: What Pyongyang, Seoul, and Washington Could Learn from East Europe, the Former USSR, and China,” Journal of East Asian Affairs 21, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2007): 1–48.Google Scholar
11. See, for example, the Special Roundtable “Economic Implications of a Fundamental Shift in North Korean Security Policy,” Asia Policy 2 (July 2006).Google Scholar
12. See, for example, Gross, Donald G. and Oh, Hannah, “U.S.-Korea Relations: Agreement with the North, Progress in the South,” Comparative Connections: A Quarterly E-Journal on East Asian Bilateral Relations (October 2007).Google Scholar