Customer Reviews

Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (Cross-Cultural Negotiation Books)

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A balanced and pragmatic analysis of North Korean negotiating perceptions and behavior, Snyder's book will be one of the most significant and useful studies of North Korea for years. His study ranges at all levels, thus we see analyses of both negotiating tactics as well as the cultural and psychological perceptions that inform those tactics. This book is highly recommended for anyone who wants a glimpse into North Korean decision making and thought, not just how they negotiate. The quasi-self-contained world of North Korea has generated a psychological perspective and mindframe that has its own internal rules of logic and acceptibility. An understanding of that world, and taking advantage of its contradictions and absurdities, is what makes this book all the more valuable.

Policymakers, diplomats, media, scholars, and students will all find this a useful and informative tool. Snyder's well-written presentation of the unique mindset of North Korean actors helps us understand their motivations and behaviors beyond the "irrational and reclusive" mantra of years gone by.

Many commentators fall back on North Korean irrationality, craziness, insanity etc. This book shows that North Korean behavior can be understood in an entirely rational framework. The North Koreans do have their moments, though. The anecdote about the negotiator trying to storm out of his own embassy was pretty funny.

Snyder analysed the actual patterns when both koreas negotiated. According to him, the nature of the competition and level of distrust among north and south Korea is such that toughness and brinkmanship have been the preferred strategy, even in a bargaining situation where benefits may accrue to both sides. The communist tactics were attempts to load the agenda in order to create an environment for one-sided concessions. They dishonored commitments already made and applied a different interpretations to its content or significance. Negotiation was primarily used to as another form of competition. But when it comes to the Basic Agreement, there are bifurcated opinions about the real intention of the north. Anyway, it is clear that North Korea came to negotiation table only when there were any structural changes external to the Korean peninsula. And South Korea usually feel that only power can change the basic attitude of the North Korean style of negotiation. So they didn't like the way that U.S. showed when Americans directly negotiate with north Korea on the nuclear issues.

South Korea, the United States and other countries have embarked on negotiations with North Korea. It is important to understand North Korea. Mr. Snyder's book is excellent at describing North Korean negotiating behavior, and the origins of their attitudes being Confucsian and communist.

This book is one of the most important book in any respectable "Korea specialist" must have in his personal collection. Often times, North Korea is described by the media as "bizarre," "irrational," and "enigmatic." Snyder's book clearly refutes such characterizations of North Korea. Snyder describes in detailed and informative manner how the North Korean regime came to the negotiation table with well established agenda and tactics to put its negotiation counterparts on the defense to better serve its national interests. What seems to casual Western observers as disturbing behaviors of North Korean negotiators were well-crafted propaganda and political warfare tools that have characterized P'yongyang's strategy vis-a-vis the ROK-US alliance since the Korean War. It is only too bad that this book did not come out in the early 1990's when the North Korean regime held the world hostage with its refusal to allow full inspections of its nuclear facilities and program. Neverthless, this is a landmark study of contemporary Korean issues.

The best way to understand North Korea's provocative behavior is to read "Negotiating on the Edge." Every time North Korea threatens to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire," it part of a tried-and-true strategy to keep a precarious regime afloat and to get a voice in the international community. Pyongyang wants its population to be in a perpetual state of fear, mobilized for the next war and distracted from its own deprivation. Examing the history and culture of North Korea with a keen mind and years of experience, Snyder explains how North Korea always creates a crisis in order to solve a crisis. As relevant now as ever.

This is a fascinating book for anyone who has an interest in this very specific topic. I'm sure the audience is a small one, as very few people ever have reason to do business or interact with the North Koreans. But it's a useful book, and there hasn't been much written in recent years that was specific to North Korean culture, which should not be confused in any way with South Koreans or their own unique culture, which is entirely different from their neighbors to the North.

This books offers a balanced and pragmatic introduction into the internatinal negotiating policies of the magical race of people the North Koreans. This comprehensive analysis of this mysitcal populations' aggressive nuclear bargaining tactics is super.