ABSTRACT
Early in September 2000, a front page story in the Washington Post nicely captured the newly prevailing view among international “North Korea watchers” concerning the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) economy’s current condition and immediate outlook. The article, titled “North Korea Back from the Brink,” reported that “[visitors and other analysts] say the North Korean economy is growing for the first time in nine years, the mass starvation is over. . . .” It remarked upon “nascent signs of recovery-more traffic on the roads, more livestock in the fields, peasants who look healthy.” The story further noted that the Republic of Korea’s Bank of Korea (BOK) recently “concluded, with some surprise, that the North’s economy grew last year by a sustainable 6.2 percent, the first growth since 1990” and quoted the Republic of Korea’s (ROK, or South Korea) central bank as stating that “it’s reasonable to predict that the worst is over for the North Korean economy.”1
