North Korea and the Kim Dynasty: The Greatest Threat to World Peace?

There is hardly a country in the world with a reputation as bad as that of North Korea; at the same time there is hardly a country in the world about which so little is known. In the media, North Korea is paradigmatic as one of the few remaining "Stalinist" and "communist" regimes, a de facto large prison in which its population lives in poverty and frequently starves. At the same time, the country is often described as the greatest threat to peace in East Asia and even to the world. For a country with a population of just 25 million and military expenditures a tiny fraction of that of the United States, China and Japan, North Korea is possessor of a truly impressive number of titles of dubious honour. This lecture draws both on research and on personal experience working as a diplomat in North and South Korea to attempt to shed light on this dark landscape.

Dr. Werner Kamppeter studied at Heidelberg University and the London School of Economics. He has been a researcher and professor in Germany, Mexico, Chile, Japan and South Korea, and worked for many years at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, serving as the director of its Korea Cooperation Office from 2006-2010. He has also worked as a journalist and in the German diplomatic service as Counsellor for Labour and Social Affairs at the German Embassy in Tokyo, Japan. He is currently Director of the Economics and Development Research Unit, Institute of Korean Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.

Suggested readings

Ruediger Frank in 38 North on consumerism in North Korea

Philip Gordon in Foreign Affairs on President Trump's foreign policy

Andrei Lankov in Foreign Affairs on Kim Jong-Un

Eric J. Ballbach in Korean Humanities, " The History of the Present: Foundational Narratives in Contermporary North Korean Meta-discourse." (This article available on ILIAS.)