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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Jamestown: Backgrounder on NKor. |
| 2017-10-11 |
| Backgrounder: North Korea - PDF We at the Jamestown Foundation are pleased to introduce this backgrounder on North Korea. Drawing on an array of sources including Korean-language media, satellite imagery analysis and NGO databases, we have compiled what we believe are a number of core facts about the country: its political system, military, economy, agricultural system, demographics and geography. Our goal is not to comprehensively cover North Korea, but rather to highlight important facts in a way that allows both experienced analysts and those less familiar with the country to quickly find information essential for decision making or analytic judgments. In particular, we focus on what is described in analytic communities as "normative factors"‐baselines for analysis like geography, times for planting and harvest, politically important dates‐or other characteristics that shape behavior, and regulate how a state behaves. Such factors are frequently overlooked in discussions of state behavior. In the case of North Korea, where there is a tendency to ascribe behavior not to a rational nation-state but to the actions of an unstable dictator, attention to such factors is even more important, as they provide a baseline for judging if actions, be they rocket launches, military parades or harsh rhetoric are in fact noteworthy. Glen E. Howard President of Jamestown Peter Wood Editor-in-Chief, China Brief |
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