Author Description

This project formally began in spring 2005 as a collaborative research endeavor among six institutions in five countries: the RAND Corporation in the United States; the POSCO Research Institute (POSRI) and the Research Institute for National Security Affairs (RINSA) in Seoul; the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies (CCKS) at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow; the China Reform Forum (CRF) in Beijing; and the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS) in Tokyo. Participation of these institutions was funded from their own resources. The collaboration's first meeting was held in the United States at RAND in June 2005; after that, workshops were held successively at 5- or 6-month intervals in Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul. North Korea was invited to send one or more participants to most of the five workshops, but North Korea did not participate in any of the meetings. The project consisted of several tasks and phases: (1) Identify and describe the economic, political, and security characteristics of the North Korean system that impede its modernization, progress, productivity, and fruitful integration into the global system; (2) Formulate and elaborate multiple themes, or instruments, whose peaceful implementation by and within North Korea can contribute to modernizing the North Korean system, thereby improving living conditions for the North Korean people, reducing the threat that North Korea poses to its neighbors, and enhancing North Korea's ability to participate more productively and effectively in the global system; (3) Divide these multiple instruments among political, economic, security, and sociocultural "baskets"; and (4) Select from the baskets varying combinations of the instruments to illustrate alternative operational plans for initiating the modernization process, along with specified conditions associated with each plan's potential implementation.