Review

Witness to Transformation is an enormously important book in that it marks the first methodical study of public opinion among North Koreans. This of course is practically impossible given the level of repression in North Korea, but Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland have nevertheless mined gold from surveys of refugees who've fled to China and South Korea. The leading scholars of the North Korea famine of the 1990s, Haggard and Noland find a decade later a populace focused on trying to feed themselves through their own market activity, ignoring the regime's attempts to restore the socialist system. Although the North Koreans surveyed were reluctant to criticize Kim Jong Il, or even to make jokes, the majority listened to foreign media and resisted in their own quiet way -- by living their own lives with as little interference as possible from the regime. --Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Witness to Transformation breaks new ground in presenting the first comprehensive portrait of North Korea based on the experiences and views of the growing number of defectors who have fled the country. They describe an inhuman system that is steadily eroding, and a population that is beginning to awaken from a long night of totalitarianism. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the suffering of the people of North Korea and the prospect for peace on the divided Korean peninsula. --Carl Gershman, President, National Endowment for Democracy

Product Description

Despite its nuclear capability, in certain respects North Korea resembles a failed state sitting uneasily atop a shifting internal foundation. This instability is due in part to the devastating famine of the 1990s, and the state's inability to fulfill the economic obligations that it had assumed--which forced institutions, enterprises, and households to cope with the ensuing challenges of maintaining stability with limited cooperation between the Korean government and the international community. The ineffective response to the humanitarian crisis triggered by the famine resulted in the outflow of perhaps tens of thousands of refugees, whose narratives are largely overlooked in evaluating the efficacy of the humanitarian aid program. Exploiting Refugee Insights into North Korea; uses extensive surveys with refugees, who now reside in China or South Korea, to provide extraordinary insight into the changing pathways to power, wealth, and status within North Korea. These refugee testimonies provide an invaluable interpretation of the regime's motivations and they assess the situation on the ground with the rise of inequality, corruption, and disaffection in the decade since the famine. Through the lens of these surveys, preeminent North Korean experts Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard carefully document the country's transition from a centrally planned economy to a highly distorted market economy, characterized by endemic corruption and widening inequality. Noland and Haggard chart refugees' reactions to the current conditions and consider the disparity between the perceived and real benefits of the international humanitarian aid program experienced by this displaced population. Finally, the book examines these refugees' future prospects for integration into a new society.

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