{"id":20470,"date":"2017-09-01T17:51:27","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T16:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.journals.cambridge.org\/?p=20470"},"modified":"2017-09-19T11:38:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T10:38:07","slug":"nkrjeas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2017\/09\/01\/nkrjeas\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korean Resources at the Journal of East Asian Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With North Korea in the news, we would like to call attention to the range of research the Journal of East Asian Studies<\/em> has published on the country. A central issue is how the regime managed to acquire its current nuclear capability and whether and to what extent those weapons are destabilizing. In Issue 10,1<\/a>, Walter Clemens reviews the raft of new evidence on the evolution of the weapons program that has come out of the Soviet and Eastern European archives. His overview underscores the persistence of the regime in pursuing its nuclear objectives and draws the inference that they are unlikely to give them up.<\/p>\n

Strategic interactions among the parties around the peninsula have been the subject of several quantitative international relations contributions to the journal. In Issue 11, 2<\/a>, Jong-Han Yoon brings some data to bear on whether hard-line or soft-line strategies on the part of the US are more conducive to peace. He believes that softer approaches have positive effect, but also notes a triangular consequence: that differences between the US and its South Korean ally inflame tensions by pushing North Korea toward more hostile behavior toward South Korea. In a clever contribution to 12, 2<\/a> Vito D\u2019Orazio offers a very striking and relevant finding. Despite the emphasis that the regime currently places on the halting the US-ROK exercises, D\u2019Orazio finds that North Korea does not systematically escalate conflictual rhetoric or behavior around the exercises. He speculates that the reason has to do with the relatively constant nature of North Korean rhetoric and the corresponding difficulty of separating out real signals from noise.<\/p>\n

China plays a significant role in the current international politics around the peninsula. In Issue 5, 1<\/a>, Michael Chambers offers a comparative historical consideration of China\u2019s relations with other \u201ctruculent allies,\u201d noting a history of Chinese reneging on security commitments; the lessons are highly germane to current expectations in Pyongyang about how China might ultimately respond to its provocations. In Issue 12, 1<\/a> Peter Gries provides more contemporary survey evidence on Chinese views of the two Koreas, focusing on the immediate aftermath of the inter-Korean tensions in 2010. He finds that Chinese netizens are profoundly disillusioned with a North Korea that refuses to adopt Chinese-style \u201creform and opening.\u201d But high-profile cultural disputes generated dismay and even anger toward South Korea as well, suggesting the ongoing role of history conflicts in the region.<\/p>\n

Finally, there is tremendous interest in what is going on inside North Korea itself. In Issue 8, 2<\/a>, Patrick McEachern made an important early contribution to this debate by asking whether North Korea could be understood\u2014as other Communist systems were during the Cold War\u2014in interest group terms. In Issue 12, 2<\/a>,\u00a0 Andrei Lankov, In-ok Kwak and Choong-Bin Cho look at the so-called \u201corganizational life\u201d in North Korea: the state- and party-organized bodies that facilitate conformity through surveillance.\u00a0 In Issue 17, 2<\/a> Andrei Lankov returns to the journal with Peter Ward, Ho-yeol Yoo and Ji-young Kim with a discussion of the \u201chollowing out\u201d of state-owned enterprises in the North. Drawing on defector interviews, Lankov details how state-owned firms are increasingly surviving in the North by partnering with private entrepreneurs, forging an increasingly hybrid political economy held together with corruption.<\/p>\n

More virtual special issues from the Journal of East Asian Studies can be found here<\/a>. You can access these issues for free through October 15, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With North Korea in the news, we would like to call attention to the range of research the Journal of East Asian Studies has published on the country. A central issue is how the regime managed to acquire its current nuclear capability and whether and to what extent those weapons are destabilizing. In Issue 10,1, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":381,"featured_media":20473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2264,121,11,6,1,17,7],"tags":[15,1933,577,256,3244,3249,1462,3243,3248,3237,327,55,3242,205,3226,3227,1833,308,3236,3239,3247,202,407,3245,3240,3241,3246,3238,2354],"coauthors":[3235],"class_list":["post-20470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-studies","category-economics","category-history","category-humanities","category-news","category-politics","category-social-sciences","tag-area-studies","tag-asian-history","tag-cambridge-university-press","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-cold-war","tag-communism","tag-comparative-history","tag-corruption","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-global-history","tag-history-2","tag-international-politics","tag-international-relations","tag-jea","tag-jeas","tag-journal-of-east-asian-studies","tag-journals","tag-north-korean","tag-nuclear","tag-political-economy","tag-political-science","tag-politics-2","tag-pyongyang","tag-regime","tag-rok","tag-south-korea","tag-soviet-and-eastern-european","tag-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/381"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20470"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=20470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}