Hawai‘i Studies on Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press; Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i 2013. ix, 265 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$54.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3739-6.
A recurring, though mostly unspoken current in many analyses of North Korea builds on a perception of North Korean immutability. This notion of North Korean stasis in turn leads to a high predictability of responses to developments in North Korea. This predictability is fed by a very narrow interest span. Simply put, North Korea gains international attention when it stirs political waters and reminds the world that the Korean conflict is ongoing, the war unfinished. Policy towards North Korea is then unsurprisingly reduced to and driven by security concerns. Non-Traditional Security Issues in North Korea seeks to address this question from two different angles. For one, it questions the prevailing realist approach to North Korea as sterile and largely out of touch with the development of both IR theory (Copenhagen School) and practice (UN initiatives regarding Responsibility to Protect and human security). Second, this volume engages this new theory and agenda and asks what non-traditional security issues North Korea faces and how these inform the traditional security agenda. Brendan Howes’s concluding chapter neatly summarizes these theoretical developments and how they confront the international community with a North Korean “insecurity dilemma” (239): how to deal with an internally weakened state that adopts an outwardly strong posture, in a changed international normative environment driven by “comprehensive security” concerns. A very concrete example of this dilemma is raised in Tsuneo Akaha’s chapter on Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in the face of North Korea’s failure to protect its citizens. In a meticulously crafted chapter introducing the development of the UN debate on R2P, Tsuneo Akaha not only shows the normative shifts taking place within the international community, but also highlights the tension between a formally rather narrowly defined R2P and the broader concept of human security (as favoured by the UNDP). Despite the fact that the UN General Assembly in September 2005 agreed that the principle of R2P meant the international community had “a responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means … to help States build capacity to protect their populations” (159), Akaha narrowly interprets international intervention as military intervention only. Intervention as meant by the above cited paragraph 139 reads rather (and primarily) as a call for engagement.
How engagement leading to the easing of some of North Korea’s non-traditional security issues affects traditional security concerns is broached in the contribution by David von Hippel and Peter Hayes, from the Nautilus Institute, on North Korea’s energy security and in W. Randall Ireson’s chapter on food security. Written by experts with plentiful experience on the ground, these chapters stand out for their detailed, nuanced and informed assessment of the complexity and interrelatedness of these security challenges, and of the role the international community can/has to play in alleviating them. (In turn, Mark Manyin’s statistically rich chapter on North Korea’s external sources of food security is an antidote for daydreamers who ignore Pyongyang’s strategic playing off of foreign partners.) Both chapters on energy and food security are also refreshingly nonpolitical in their reading of the problems and their solutions, something that returns in Scott Snyder’s nuanced discussion of the specific contribution NGOs can make to North Korea’s non-traditional security. Snyder reminds us for example that both North Korean authorities and NGOs went through a learning curve after North Korea opened up to international aid. He makes a particularly strong case for a specific NGO role in alleviating non-traditional security needs, whether in terms of energy, food or health-related development projects. He stresses in this respect the importance of NGOs’ political independence from both the home and local government. The same is true when it comes to securing the rights of North Korean refugees, a subject raised by Shin-Wha Lee in a chapter on the international legal ramifications of the North Korean refugee situation, particularly in China. The legal complexity of the refugee crisis is readily apparent in the confusion regarding the naming of this group: refugees, asylum seekers, defectors or illegal migrants. Clearly, politically independent NGOs have an important role to play in raising public awareness and keeping pressure on the UNHCR and relevant governments.
Looking at security beyond the state, Kyung-Ae Park reminds us that there is a gender-specific aspect to North Korea’s economic crisis. The economic meltdown of the late 1990s and the rise of a market economy led to a certain economic empowerment of women. However, this empowerment is qualified by the largely unregulated nature of the markets and the actual legal void within which women traders operate. Another gender-specific aspect is the overrepresentation of women among refugees, many of whom end up in various kinds of exploitative relations.
In a bold contribution, David Kang returns to the 2005 Banco Delta Asia episode, demystifies North Korea as the “Soprano State,” and questions the politics of the criminalization of North Korea. Not only does he do what any serious scholar and/or journalist ought to do: the sobering exercise of checking the facts; he also brings in a much needed comparative perspective when discussing North Korea’s alleged counterfeit super dollars (78), or its drug trafficking (81–2). While not discounting North Korea’s illegal activities, Kang does ask a pertinent political question: “Is the United States willing to co-exist in a long-term relationship with North Korea?” (86).
Although the individual contributions are somewhat uneven, and the various case studies are too narrowly North America focused (ignoring EU programs), this is a stimulating collection of papers that may help scholars, analysts and policy makers think differently about North Korean security issues. A greater effort could have been made to integrate the different contributions into a well-structured edited volume.
Koen De Ceuster
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
pp. 870-872