Skip to content
Home/ North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors
North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

by Tudor, Daniel
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780804852265 Tuttle Publishing

What is life in North Korea really like?

This fascinating book by celebrated journalists Daniel Tudor and James Pearson explores that very question. The authors interview experts and tap a broad variety of sources to provide a startling insider's view of the secretive North Korean society, including:

  • Members of Pyongyang's ruling families
  • Defectors from different periods and regions
  • Foreign diplomats and NGOs with years of experience in the country
  • Cross-border traders from neighboring China
  • Textual accounts appearing in English, Korean and Chinese sources

This book reveals that ordinary North Koreans, poor and rich alike, enjoy listening to K-pop music and are addicted to South Korean TV dramas--in direct contravention of government dictates. Pirated foreign movies and shows--American, South Korean and Chinese--are often smuggled into the country and sold. Such snippets of information help the reader understand that North Korea is undergoing dynamic changes, affecting the 24 million people who call it home.

This new edition is updated with an afterword by the authors that touches on Kim Jong-un's recent meetings with Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in. While the new foreword by Andray Abrahamian--a member of the U.S. National Committee on North Korea--offers a detailed analysis of North Korea's political discourse, changes in economic policy, and the rise and fall of optimism within the country since 2018.

About the author

Product details

BrandTuttle Publishing
Pub dateOct 6, 2020
ISBN-10080485226X
ISBN-139780804852265
Paperback232.0 pages
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions8 × 0.8 × 5.1 in
Weight2 lb
Last updated 2026-03-15 10:38
$11.39 $15.99 28% off
You save $4.60 · list price $15.99
Only 9 left in stock — order soon
Delivery by Monday, September 14, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Developing & Emerging Countries
See all
Capital: The Eruption of Delhi
Dasgupta, Rana
$12.78
Brazil: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
Roett, Riordan
$12.05
Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in Post-Khomeini Iran
Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in Post-Khomeini Iran
$43.09
Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
Camp, Roderic Ai
$12.05
Information Infrastructures in India: The Long View
Ninan Thomas, Pradip
$115.52
Pockets of Effectiveness and the Politics of State-Building and Development in Africa
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-BC-ND 4.0 International License. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. <p/>Why do certain parts of the state in Africa work so effectively despite operating in difficult governance contexts? How do 'pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness' emerge and become sustained over time? And what does this tell us about the prospects for state-building and development in Africa? <p/>Repeated economic and social crises have demanded that development thinkers and policy actors have had to engage with the critical role that states play in delivering development. <em>Pockets of Effectiveness and the Politics of State-building and Development in Africa</em> shows that politics is the driving factor that shapes how well state agencies perform their roles. It deploys a new conceptual framework - the power domains approach - to explore the shifting fortunes of key state agencies in five countries - Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia - over the past three decades. Our original research reveals when, how and why political rulers decide to build effective state agencies and enable them to deliver certain forms of economic development - often through forming strategic coalitions with senior bureaucrats and with international support - and also when this support falters and gives way to a politics of survival. Comparative analysis identifies two potential trajectories towards state-building in Africa, each shaped by different configurations of social and political power. The book critiques the role that international development agencies have played in (mis)shaping the state in Africa and suggests a new strategic agenda for building the state capacities required to deliver sustained development at the current juncture. The book closes with critical commentaries from two leading scholars in the field, to help place our work in context and establish the next steps for research and strategy in this increasingly important area of development theory and practice.
$131.97