Going Beyond by First Going Within: New Approaches to North Korean Politics and Security

A couple of years ago a review article appeared in International Security by David Kang titled “They Think They’re Normal: Enduring Questions and New Research on North Korea.”¹ Kang was the first to accurately identify a shift in contemporary research on North Korea. We are starting to perceive that the government and the people of the DPRK see themselves as normal. When I read the article, my first thought was to change the title. He should have called it “We Did Not Think They Were Normal.” But this shows differences in our disciplinary training rather than any disagreement in our observations. Kang is a political scientist and international relations scholar; I am an anthropologist. I wanted the title to challenge subjectivity a bit further: we have perceived the country as abnormal, irrational, and freakish; and, in perceiving the country as such, we have a priori faulted the very policies, research, and disengagements designed to help matters. So, it is with satisfaction that I read the three books for this review essay and discovered that these texts do challenge our typical approach to North Korea by examining the government, politics, and foreign relations from the inside out. They go beyond by first going within.

Each book in this review examines matters from atypical points of view, and what is additionally refreshing is that they emerge from Asia, the United States, and Europe, respectively, and demonstrate a confluence of approaches to North Korea. Writing from Yonsei University, Yongho Kim’s North Korean Foreign Policy examines North Korean government rationale in matters of foreign security, arguing that the North’s foreign policy is not irrational (Yongho Kim, pp. 14, 21–22, 24). Produced at Stanford, Byung Kwan Kim, Gi-Wook Shin, and David Straub’s edited volume Beyond North Korea: Future Challenges to South Korea’s Security identifies political, economic, and demographic security challenges in South Korea as shaped by the decisions of the North Korean government. Finally, in North Korea: Beyond Charismatic Politics Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung, at Cambridge and Hanyang Universities, respectively, identify how the North Korean government manufactures meaning through the production of charismatic politics, an idea the authors borrowed and developed from Max Weber.

Each of the authors of these texts manages to examine politics, foreign relations, and security from the position of the North. By going beyond the typical subjective stance, these books achieve an enriching exploration of politics and security from inside the apparatus of the North Korean government that is relevant to those of us beyond it. In each of these books the authors do not so much look in from the outside but rather explore the rationale of the North itself, and in so doing, these volumes manage to shed necessary light on how the United States, South Korea, and other regional powers might better approach things in the future.

North Korean Foreign Policy is a superbly researched, thorough, and valuable book to those interested in why North Korea acts the way it does in the international arena. Further, the book provides an excellent history of North Korea’s foreign policy leading up to the succession in 2011. This book is an excellent reference for North Korean succession politics, security, and foreign affairs. My only regret with this volume is that it was published before the death of Kim Jong Il (Kim Chŏngil) in December of 2011. The book would have benefited from the authors’ reflections on the recent leadership transition. A follow-up edition should carry...