Why read A Most Enterprising Country?

Book cover of A Most Enterprising Country: North Korea in the Global Economy

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North Korea has survived the end of the Cold War, massive famine, numerous regional crises, punishing sanctions, and international stigma. In A Most Enterprising Country, Justin V. Hastings explores the puzzle of how the most politically isolated state in the world nonetheless sustains itself in large part by international trade…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Most Enterprising Country as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland

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The title of this book is doubly surprising. Is North Korea enterprising? And North Korea “in the world economy”? Isn’t it the hermit kingdom? Hastings picks up a theme that was central to our work on the famine: that the socialist sector in North Korea has undergone a secular decline while households and entrepreneurs have constructed a complex market economy that is partially above ground, partly below it. But Hastings goes further, showing how that market economy is integrally tied to China. And the book has the added attraction of focusing attention on lucrative black markets that range from amphetamine…

From Stephan and Marcus' list on The best books on the North Korean economy.