The End of North Korea [Hardcover]

Nicholas Eberstadt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

Prolonging North Korea's life may actually increase the costs and the dangers of its inevitable demise.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Eberstadt argues persuasively that prolonging North Korea's life may actually increase the costs and the dangers of its inevitable demise. -- The New York Times Book Review, Aaron L. Friedberg

Product Details

• Hardcover: 201 pages
• Publisher: Aei Press (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 084474087X
• ISBN-13: 978-0844740874
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,002,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars North Korean Irrationality Made Rational, December 5, 1999

By 

Coyner Thomas Lee "Tom Coyner" (Jungro-Gu, Seoul Korea, Republic of) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The End of North Korea (Paperback)

North Korea is regularly portrayed in the Western media as a lunatic colony running amuck on the world stage. While its strategies and tactics can be (sometimes purposely) baffling, the country is being run by extremely intelligent and very rationale people. However, it is the framework within which the North Korean leadership finds itself constrained in facing the rest of the world that leads to actions and decisions that appear from the outside as being irrational.

Making a great deal of sense of all of this is Nicholas Eberstadt's recently released book, The End of North Korea. Eberstandt is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Research and a visiting fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Last month (October 1999) the paperback version of this book appeared in its 175-page format. The original manuscript and charts were completed not quite a year ago so that the perspective is still quite timely. Why this is an important read is because the author skillfully lays out the historical and political context the North Korean leadership is calling the shots. The North Koreans' hidden agendas suddenly become much more visible by Eberstadt's well researched analysis. Actually the North Koreans have been remarkably blunt. The West has done a poor job of listening - more often than not we have just been reacting without recalling prior messages. What Pyongyang is demanding may not be what we wish to hear but they have been clear and consistent.

Upon reading this book, the zigzag patterns of Pyongyang now make a great deal more sense to me. I think any other reader, in government or in business, who is concerned about the current and near-future environment of the Korean peninsula would do well to invest a few hours in reading this well written text.

16 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An extremely myopic view of North Korea, April 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The End of North Korea (Hardcover)

I had high hopes for this book that were quickly dashed by a number of glaring problems. Nick Eberstadt is a demographer/economist and he analyzes North Korea solely in these terms. If he were to write a book about North Korean economics, he would probably be capable of writing a masterpiece. As it is, he steps out of his well-troden field and attempts to predict the future of an entire country from a demographic/economic perspective. The hubris of Eberstadt's work is that he ventures to write about things he knows little to nothing about. ...In this book, Eberstadt simplifies North Korea into a one-sided demon bristing with weaponry and a declared enemy of the free world. While this may be true, it is difficult to take him seriously since he analyzes North Korea wholly from the outside. Curiously missing from his book is a history of the internal developments that allowed North Korea to survive even when the Communist Bloc states fell like dominoes in the 1980s.

39 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars review of the end of north korea, April 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The End of North Korea (Paperback)

korean peninsula was politically partitioned in 1950's korean war. korean war is often seen as democracy vs. communism, yet it is more correct to say christianity vs. non-christianity. us millitary was sent to korean peninsula to convert korean peninsula to christianity peninsula. all other wars that us millitary was involved in were from amreicans' desire to realize christianity world.

as long as christianity and related religions exist tragedies never end.