Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
North Korea under Kim Chong-il
This much-needed study draws on fresh material and firsthand observation to provide an understanding of North Korea as it exists today. North Korea under Kim Chong-il: Power, Politics, and Prospects for Change delves deeply into what we know—and what we think we know—about the current North Korean system. This incisive book probes the dynamics that inform the nation's domestic and foreign policies, examining key leadership institutions and personalities, as well as prospects for the next regime. In outlining the major events behind Kim Chong-il's assumption of power, Ken E. Gause illuminates the environment that shaped Chong-il's worldview and his concept of the regime and his role in it. The book focuses on regime politics since 1994. Among other critical topics, the book examines the evolution of North Korean decision-making with regard to its internal and external affairs and how both are intermingled. The prospects for a third hereditary succession and the prospective stability of the next regime are also considered.
North Korean Civil-military Trends
Civil-military relations is one of the most challenging dimensions to deal with regarding North Korea. Since 1998, Pyongyang's foremost policy has been declared as "military-first." While experts debate the precise meaning and significance of this policy, considerable consensus exists that it gives the leading role to the Korean People's Army (KPA). Hence, military leaders in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are very powerful and influential figures. Who are they? What kind of power and influence do these leaders wield, and how do they exert it? How do KPA leaders interact with dictator Kim Jong Il and their civilian counterparts? Mr. Ken Gause sets out to answer these questions in this monograph.
North Korean Civil-Military Trends
Unlike the study of other authoritarian regimes, first the Soviet Union and more recently China, which have given rise to a cottage industry of analysis on all aspects of things military, the same cannot be said of the Korean People's Army (KPA), the armed forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). In the small world of Pyongyang watchers, articles and books devoted to the KPA are few and in most cases deal with the armed forces themselves (order of battle) rather than the high command that oversees the machinery. This monograph examines the role of the KPA within the power structure of North Korea. The author describes the landscape of military and security institutions tha...
Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment
This report lifts the curtain on North Korea's three main security agencies, the State Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Military Security Command. Established with Soviet assistance in the mid to late 1940s and modeled on the Soviet secret police apparatus, North Korea's internal security agencies rely on constant surveillance, a network of informants in every neighborhood, and the threat of punishment in North Korea's notorious prison camps to ensure the Kim regime's total control. The security agencies play a primary role in restricting the flow of information and ensuring strict ideological conformity through harsh surveillance and coercion. North Koreans must...
North Korean Civil-military Trends
Civil-military relations is one of the most challenging dimensions to deal with regarding North Korea. Since 1998, Pyongyang's foremost policy has been declared as "military-first." While experts debate the precise meaning and significance of this policy, considerable consensus exists that it gives the leading role to the Korean People's Army (KPA). Hence, military leaders in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are very powerful and influential figures. Who are they? What kind of power and influence do these leaders wield, and how do they exert it? How do KPA leaders interact with dictator Kim Jong Il and their civilian counterparts? Mr. Ken Gause sets out to answer these questions in this monograph.
The Collapse of North Korea
This book highlights the increasing risk of North Korea’s collapse and considers the necessary actions that would enable the neighboring powers to prepare for such an event. North Korea's deteriorating economic conditions, its reliance on external assistance, and the degree of information penetration all provide hints of its collapse. Whether the chance is high or low, the collapse of North Korea and subsequent Korean unification would drastically alter the geostrategic landscape and profoundly affect the national interests of the regional powers—South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. The most desirable scenario for a post-unification Korean Peninsula is a successfully...
National Will to Fight
"What drives some governments to persevere in war at any price while others choose to stop fighting? It is often less-tangible political and economic variables, rather than raw military power, that ultimately determine national will to fight. In this analysis, the authors explore how these variables strengthen or weaken a government's determination to conduct sustained military operations, even when the expectation of success decreases or the need for significant political, economic, and military sacrifices increases. This report is part of a broader RAND Arroyo Center effort to help U.S. leaders better understand and influence will to fight at both the national level and the tactical and op...
Crossing Nuclear Thresholds
This book applies the cutting-edge socio-cultural model Cultural Topography Analytic Framework (CTAF) pioneered in the authors’ earlier volume Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Culturally Based Insights into Comparative National Security Policymaking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) with an eye towards isolating those vectors of nuclear decision-making on which the US might exert influence within a foreign state. The case studies included in this volume tackle a number of the nuclear challenges—termed “nuclear thresholds”—likely to be faced by the US and identify the most promising points of leverage available to American policymakers in ameliorating a wide range of o...
