Crisis in North Korea

Note on Romanization

xv Note on Romanization the romanization of Korean names used in this work follows the McCune-Reischauer system except where other spellings have become commonly accepted, as in the case of Kim Il Song. For consistency’s sake, the spelling follows the modern South Korean pattern in cases when it differs from the current North Korean spelling (e.g., Nodong sinmun, not Rodong sinmun; Yi, not Ri or Li). Consonants are shown vocalized when between vowels, but not at the beginning of words (a surname and a given name are treated as two different words). Chinese names are romanized according to the pinyin system, and Russian names according to the Library of Congress system, with similar exceptions for commonly accepted spellings (e.g., Khrushchev, Mikoyan). Whenever possible, the translation of the names of of¤cial North Korean institutions and government agencies follows Suh Dae-sook’s book Korean Communism, 1945–1980: A Reference Guide to the Political System, currently the most comprehensive Western publication on the DPRK bureaucracy. ...