<h1 style="border-right:inherit;color:rgb(34,34,34);background:inherit;font-size:17.600000381469727px;margin:12px 1px 9px 0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;padding:0px 0px 0px 8px">I would like to add following observation by Victor Cha.</h1>
<div>   Yoo Kwang-On</div><h1 style="border-right:inherit;color:rgb(34,34,34);background:inherit;font-size:17.600000381469727px;margin:12px 1px 9px 0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;padding:0px 0px 0px 8px">
<span style="outline:none;padding-right:10px"><span style="font-size:12.800000190734863px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> p112-113, The Impossible State North Korea, Past and Future, VICTOR CHA, 2012</span></span></h1>
<h1 style="border-right:inherit;color:rgb(34,34,34);background:inherit;font-size:17.600000381469727px;margin:12px 1px 9px 0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;padding:0px 0px 0px 8px">
<span style="outline:none;padding-right:10px">North Korea's Bad Decision, Kim Il-sung focused exclusively on <span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">Heavy</span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">Industrial</span> development after the War;</span></h1>
<div><span style="outline:none;padding-right:10px"><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">"--- the decision came in the aftermath of the Korean War, when <b>Kim Il-sung focused exclusively on<span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industrial</span> development</b>."</div>
<br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
"And from the onset of the Korean War to the end of the decade, China is estimated to have granted the North over $500 million in aid and loan credit. All in all, during the 1950s, the North received in excess of $1.65 billion in aid from its Soviet and Chinese benefactors, Kim Il-sung took advantage of this support and rebuilt the economy with particular emphasis on <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industry</span>. <b>The lack of attention to agriculture and light <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industry</span> would not have been a problem if the regime engaged in more trade. What other countries, however, might have seen as trade-based interdependence, North Korea saw as trade-based vulnerability.</b> In compliance with the <i>juche </i>ideology, the regime emphasized self-sufficiency in food agriculture, and light manufacturing. What emerged therefore from the Korean War was a quintessential mercantilist strategy aimed at promoting the growth of state power through <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> industrialization. On August 5, 1953, only two weeks after the armistice signing, Kim Il-sung gave a speech titled "Everything for the Postwar Rehabilitation and Development for the People," the focus of which was on reconstruction and expansion of <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industries</span>. Iron and steel plants, <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> machinery, mining, chemical fertilizers, and oil refineries were <b>all projects that were seen to constitute the basis of national power that would eventually overthrow the South.</b> In the Three-Year Economic Plan of 1954-1956, 81 percent of resources went into <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industry</span>; by contrast, only 19 percent went into light <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industry</span>. This produced a terribly distorted economy that focused entirely on producers and almost totally ignored consumers. Despite all of the help from the Soviets and from the Chinese, Moscow was uncomfortable with the lopsided nature of development. They saw clearly that the DPRK plan defied rational economics. For a centrally planed economy with<span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> industrialization, the rural work forces needed to be mobilized into an <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industrial</span> workforce. Yet this would then deplete the labor force necessary to sustain agricultural self-sufficiency. Even without strain of <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">heavy</span> <span class="il" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,204)">industry</span>, the North Korean economy was not suited to be self-sufficient in agriculture under the best of circumstances. With only 20 percent arable land, North Korea was a rugged mountainous terrain with a cold northern climate that allowed for only short crop seasons. <b>A normal country would have traded aggressively in order to meet its food needs, but the regime undertook other far-fetched idea to maintain the semblance of self-sufficiency.</b> In the 1980s, for example, as food stocks were depleting, the government tried land reclamation projects on the west coast of the peninsular in order to create more arable land, but this failed. From that point forward, the regime relied increasingly on patron aid prom China to meet its food shortfalls." <br>
<br>                          </div></span></div><div><span style="outline:none;padding-right:10px"><br></span></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 2:02 AM, J.Scott Burgeson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jsburgeson@yahoo.com" target="_blank">jsburgeson@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">

<div><div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><div><span>Once again the <i>London Review of Books</i> offers up top-notch commentary on North Korea:</span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span>   <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/richard-lloydparry/advantage-pyongyang" target="_blank">http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/richard-lloydparry/advantage-pyongyang</a></span></div>

<div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span>Anyone disagree with this statement?:</span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span>   <span><i>And the Six-Party Talks, and every other form of diplomacy which imposes a central role on China, are a waste of time.</i></span></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span>Further along, in a discussion of North Korea's recent propaganda blasts against the US and the
 ROK, Perry writes:</span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span> <i>  The noises from the North are widely misunderstood. They are not unilateral threats of war, but promises of retaliation in the event of US and South Korean attack. (This gets lost in much of the reporting because of the famous verbosity of North Korea’s official communiqués: the threat is quoted, while the balls-aching conditional preamble is cut.)</i></span></div>

<div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span>This was observation was underscored during a recent conversation with several restaurant waitresses from Pyongyang here in Dandong, who asked me in all earnestness: "Do you think Obama really wants to start a war with us?"</span></div>

<div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span>More encouragingly, the same official state restaurant was playing The Carpenters on its sound system, and at a DPRK restaurant in Beijing last week, the floor show broke out into "Rock Around the Clock" at one point.</span></div>

<div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span>Skip the politics for now: I call for a Six-Nation Rock Festival on the Yalu River this summer!</span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span><br></span></div><div style="font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><i>– Scott Bug</i></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">

<span><br></span></div><div style="font-style:normal;font-size:16px;background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span>   </span></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br>