Strategies of Survival

Reviews / Votes

This excellent book makes an important contribution to the growing literature on North Korea's foreign policy. It explains the resilience of the Kim Jong-Un regime, despite international isolation, persistent economic problems, and a continuing security confrontation with the United States. Editors Kwon and Zhang argue that national identity and theJucheideology of self-reliance have been the foundation of regime legitimacy. The introduction provides historical background on North Korea's struggle to achieve political independence, national security, and economic prosperity. The body of the book examines the ineffectiveness of US economic sanctions to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear-weapon state; how the Kim regimes have taken advantage of North Korea's geopolitical importance to China to guarantee the latter's economic and political backing; the obstacles to extracting economic concessions from Japan; North Korea's economic and political partnership with Russia; and its nuclear and missiles cooperation with Iran. A useful addition to Scott Snyder and Kyung-Ae Park'sNorth Korea's Foreign Policy: The Kim Jong-Un Regime in a Hostile World (CH, Jul'23, 60-3332). Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; practitioners. * Choice Reviews * "For anyone who wishes to understand how North Korea has defied expectations simply by surviving in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment, this valuable volume serves an accessible but thorough guide. Through these contributions, the apparently irrational and mercurial foreign policies of the Kim regime become intelligible responses of a small power that perceives itself as threatened by enemies and unreliable allies alike." -- Dwight Wilson, University of North Georgia "The conceptual framework that any political system needs a set of three strategic goals to sustain survival namely security, identity, and prosperity. This framework is utilized for analyses of North Korean relationship with several countries. In this sense, Strategies of Survival: North Korea Foreign Policy under Kim Jong un, is uniquely comparative and analytical rarely found in the literature of comparative politics, let alone North Korean studies. In this way, the survival oriented North Korea's foreign policy is interpreted as being rational and explicable." -- Han S. Park, University of Georgia Strategies of Survival is a unique and altogether necessary survey of the sources of North Korean foreign policy. The volume includes careful, evidence-based explorations of particular aspects of diplomatic and security policy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, connecting these policies with long-term historical developments and with the domestic politics of the regime. North Korea's leadership may be paranoid, but its understanding of the world is rooted in a deep and not unreasonable sense of vulnerability. Strategies of Survival exposes that sense of vulnerability and makes it intelligible for policy and academic audiences. -- Robert Farley, University of Kentucky "Practitioners of foreign policy like to read books that provide fresh insights, a clear structure, and a good story. The volume "Strategies of Survival: North Korea Foreign Policy under Kim Jong un" by Zhang and Kwon checks all these boxes. It should be standard reading for all diplomats serving in Pyongyang or at the East Asia desk of foreign ministries.

Right from the masterful introduction, it puts paid to the inexorable saga of the North Korean leadership being an irrational lot of shamans of stone-age communism. It connects the (purported) ideological basis for the ruling "socialist", yet somewhat Confucian, dynasty to specific events and contexts. The authors outline a red thread that leads the reader through individual chapters and shines a bright light on the complexity of North Korean foreign policy that must use the tools and customs of ordinary statecraft under the inner constraints imposed by a quasi-monarchical system." -- Fredrich Lohr, Northeastern University