The North Korean model: Gaps and questions
Abstract North Korea has articulated a comprehensive strategy for economic, political, military, ideological and cultural independence, with sustained high growth ( juche ). Self-reliance, not self-sufficiency, is the stated goal and has been achieved to a high degree, especially in food, machines-tools and energy, in spite of the country having no oil. The political system is highly authoritarian and male-dominated, with special emphasis on the cult of Kim II Sung. The regime is highly secretive and information is unsystematic. There are exceptional methodological problems in evaluating the evidence. Korea is probably the most successful economy in any post-revolutionary society, but the relationship between authoritarian politics (in extreme isolation) and social and economic achievement is obscure. Important lessons can e learnt from the Korean ‘model’ but the problem is how to learn them.
North Korea and the Geopolitics of Development
Kevin Gray and Jong-Woon Lee focus on three geopolitical 'moments' that have been crucial to the shaping of the North Korean system: colonialism, the Cold War, and the rise of China, to demonstrate how broader processes of geopolitical contestation have fundamentally shaped the emergence and subsequent development of the North Korean political economy. They argue that placing the nexus between geopolitics and development at the centre of the analysis helps explain the country's rapid catch-up industrialisation, its subsequent secular decline followed by collapse in the 1990s, and why the reform process has been markedly more conservative compared to other state socialist societies. As such, they draw attention to the specificities of North Korea's experience of late development, but also place it in a broader comparative context by understanding the country not solely through the analytical lens of state socialism but also as an instance of post-colonial national development.
NEW DECAPODS FROM THE NAVIDAD FORMATION (MIOCENE) OF CHILE
Abstract A new Miocene decapod fauna is described from the Navidad Formation of coastal Chile. The fauna includes five callianassoid taxa, none of which is preserved sufficiently to identify to species level. New species include Calappilia? chilensis, Hepatus spinimarginatus, Proterocarcinus navidad, Pilumnus cucaoensis, and Pinnixa navidadensis. A possible rhizopine member of the Pilumnidae Samouelle, 1819, is described. Trichopeltarion levis Casadío et al., 2004, previously known from the late Oligocene of western Argentina, was also recovered from these rocks. Calappa circularis Beurlen, from the lower Miocene Pirabas Formation in Brazil, is herein referred to Calappilia. This report greatly increases the known number of fossil decapods from Chile and sets the stage for paleobiogeographic comparison of the decapod faunas of Chile and Argentina.