North Korea has embarrassed scholars and policymakers around the world by seizing the U.S. intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo; exchanging bitter reproaches with its blood-tie ally China and its former patron the Soviet Union; conducting a series of underground nuclear tests; and taking provocative actions against South Korea, such as the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan (Ch'ŏnan) and the shelling of Yeonpyeong (Yŏnp'yŏng). Can we explain what has made North Korea behave this way? What kind of lens should we have in order to understand what North Korea has done and what North Korea is? Is North Korea an exceptional state? The authors of this edited volume collectively answer these fundamental questions by using an analytical lens of historical institutionalism.
North Korea has been predominantly portrayed as a problem, for example, as “a puppet of the global communist movement,” “a totalitarian regime,” “a failed economic system,” and...
