In the winter of 2010-11, South Korea's leading experts on the North Korean economy gathered at Korea Development Institute (KDI) to discuss an important issue of their research field. Economic literatures on the North Korean economy were growing at the time, new researchers were exploring fresh topics, and techniques and data utilised were becoming more sophisticated and elaborated. In spite of the development, however, many experts felt that economic literatures were more frequently providing different facts for the same economic phenomena in North Korea, explaining the country's economic trends in quite different and sometimes opposite directions. It seemed confused even whether economics literature was discussing the 'same' North Korean economy. As the result, a fundamental and long-lasting question for any study of the North Korean economy was being raised again: whether economics literature could successfully establish the objective facts of the North Korean economy.
It was, and it is still of course, not an easy task to establish even a single fact about the North Korean economy for which few reliable statistics are available and most observations could be biased for numerous factors. Nevertheless, economics literature providing different facts and trends was certainly an important issue for all students of the North Korean economy. To tackle the issue, therefore, the experts made two suggestions. First, on the basis of most agreeable facts, a regular monitoring report should be made for every economic sector in North Korea, respectively.
It should be preferably written by a senior researcher who could represent those experts and research institutes following up the facts and trends of each economic sector in North Korea for a long time. Second, another comprehensive report might be necessary in order to discuss North Korea's general macroeconomic trends by aggregating all the monitoring reports of various economic sectors. It might be also necessary for harmonising the different facts and trends in different economic sectors and providing appropriate hypotheses to explain the differences if any.
In addition, many experts advised that KDI could be one of the most proper institutes to practise the suggestions. It was primarily because KDI was, and still is, publishing KDI Review of the North Korean Economy, the only monthly journal dedicated to the analysis and discussions of the North Korean economy. That is, the journal could serve as the best platform to plan, assign and publish not only the monitoring reports of various economic spheres in North Korea bur also the comprehensive reports to discuss the country's macroeconomic trends in general.
Owing to the advice KDI has regularly made and published the special editions of KDI Review of the North Korean Economy that have been dedicated to the analysis of the North Korean economic trends since the July of 2011. They have usually categorised the North Korean economy into five or six sectors from industry and trade to agriculture and military economy, assigning a monitoring report for each sector to one of South Korea's prominent academics in the universities or leading experts in the government research institutes respectively. Indeed the government research institutes have included Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET), Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), Korea Institute for Defense Analysis (KIDA). The special editions also have had the comprehensive reports by KDI economists who have aggregated the monitoring reports of various economic sectors, discussing the overall macroeconomic trends of North Korea.
To my knowledge, the special editions of KDI Review of the North Korean Economy have been the only works that have regularly analysed and discussed the North Korean economic trends. Until recently, however, they were published only in Korean. Thus they could be hardly accessed by international readers, even while they were widely read and quoted among the South Korean academic and policy circles. Making them available in English, therefore, might be a small step to share the knowledge and views on the North Korean economy berween South Korea and international society and improve their policy cooperation toward North Korea.
This book is a first attempt for the purpose. It is a full translation of all seven articles about the North Korean economic trends in the year of 2016 that constitute the special edition of KDI Review of the North Korean Economy January 2017. Also it includes a statistical appendix introducing a variety of time series data that are most widely used for South Korea's experts to analyse the North Korean economic trends.
I have been honoured to be in charge of making the special editions of KDI Review of the North Korean Economy from the beginning. I am also honoured to serve as the editor of this book. I would like to thank all the contributors and KDI staffs who worked so hard to make the special editions and this book possible.
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