North Korean Studies as a Developing Field

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The main goal of this paper is to facilitate the expansion of scholarly discussions by addressing the importance of developing North Korean Studies as an academic field. Our decision to write this paper was influenced by the following three factors—the increasing number of North Korea experts with diverse academic credentials, the rapid accumulation of publications about the state, and the establishments of educational institutes of North Korean Studies. In this paper we define North Korean Studies, its boundaries and its status. Here, North Korean Studies is defined as a field where the politics, economics, and socio-cultural phenomena in North Korea are studied, as well as inter-Korean relations. Among the great variety of potentially relevant publications it could encompass, the field only proposes to include scholarly works on North Korea and Korean unification. We maintain that North Korean Studies should be categorized as area studies rather than comparative studies, even though it has a comparative origin. The viability of North Korean Studies becoming a field depends on whether it can establish a stable mechanism for reproducing itself. This paper reviews the four requirements necessary for the studies to develop into an academic field, which are as follows: educational and research institutes, an established methodology, scholarly associations and journals, and stability maintenance. Key words: North Korean studies, unification studies, area studies, comparative studies, methodology