ABSTRACT
This book has posed the question as to whether there are any alternative narratives on North Korea that we can navigate. In conclusion, the four main findings of the research can be summarised. First, marketisation in North Korea has not resulted in changes to the capitalist free market system, but has established another layer in the societal structure composed of economic elites between street-level bureaucrats and middle-income class members, represented by donju who have benefitted from the marketisation process. Second, North Korean society is cloaked not only by the regime's repression and the songbun system, but also by the alliance between political elites and the newly created economic elites. Third, the state is dysfunctional, and thus fragile in terms of its capacity to enable sustainable development for its people, in contradiction to its stereotyped image as a ‘strong’ regime owing to its nuclear programme. Fourth, development aid could thus become an agent for social change and civil society development in North Korea by focusing on both state and local community capacity building and development. Therefore, this book argues that providing development aid using a tailored approach could be a practical alternative to the case of North Korea, a country left behind with cloaked society.
