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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Labor Standards And South Korean Employment Practices In North Korea, Marcus Noland
Labor Standards And South Korean Employment Practices In North Korea, Marcus Noland
Marcus Noland
By 2012, South Korean firms employed more than 50,000 workers in North Korea. This paper examines whether their employment practices are likely to encourage North Korea’s transition. Survey data indicate that the North Korean government has successfully circumscribed exposure of North Korean citizens both to South Koreans, and to more market-oriented economic practices. South Korean investment in North Korea may well be beneficial for both the firms and workers involved, but evidence of the sort of broader spillovers that proponents of engagement sometimes assert is not evident. The possibility of using voluntary labor codes to promote transformation is then examined.
Reform From Below: Behavioral And Institutional Change In North Korea, Marcus Noland, Stephan Haggard
Reform From Below: Behavioral And Institutional Change In North Korea, Marcus Noland, Stephan Haggard
Marcus Noland
The state is often conceptualized as playing an enabling role in a country’s economic development—providing public goods, such as the legal protection of property rights, while the political economy of reform is conceived in terms of bargaining over policy among elites or special interest groups. We document a case that turns this perspective on its head: efficiency-enhancing institutional and behavioral changes arising not out of a conscious, top-down program of reform, but rather as unintended (and in some respects, unwanted) by-products of state failure. Responses from a survey of North Korean refugees demonstrate that the North Korean economy marketized in …