Foreign Aid in North Korea – Can We Meet?: A survey and analysis of foreign aid development strategies for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea proposed by its government and the international donor community

Sammanfattning: The aim of this comparative qualitative field study is to document and analyse what foreign assistance the government of North Korea wants to receive from the international donor community, and what foreign assistance the international donor community wants and is capable of providing to North Korea. The empirical evidence, collected during a field trip of three weeks to North Korea in 2006, identifies the foreign aid development strategies of the respective parties. With the help of the underlying theoretic development models and by taking the economic and political realities of North Korea into account, the realism of the two parties’ foreign aid development strategies is evaluated. This results in an analysis of when and where there is room for North Korea and the international donor community to agree on foreign assistance to the country. Our results reveal that in the current context, it is possible to meet primarily in the humanitarian-oriented areas of agriculture and basic social services. In a future context, where the nuclear issue is resolved and foreign aid is expected to increase substantially, there should be ample opportunities for enhanced agreement on a wide range of development-oriented aid activities, especially in the areas of physical and human capital accumulation, economic reforms, and international trade and FDI. However, the two sides are unlikely to agree on the North Korean ambition to become self-sufficient in agriculture, as well as to adopt a strategy of leap-frogging in order to develop a high-tech industry.