Justin Hastings, in his terse and densely documented new book, A Most Enterprising Country, brings a new perspective on North Korea's economic adaptations and ambivalent relationship with international law.
European Journal of Korean Studies
This fresh and most original book casts important light on the way the North Korean system today actually operates; it is an ... Read moreimpressive achievement.
Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute I visit North Korea regularly to train entrepreneurs and often read studies that fail to reflect the realities our participants face. Never has a book come this close to telling the inside story of the world's most hidden business community. Justin V. Hastings's insights inform the business training our nonprofit does in this country.
Geoffrey See, Chairman and Founder of Choson Exchange and Kauffman Fellow A Most Enterprising Country is an engaging study of North Korean trading networks and an important addition to the growing body of work on contemporary North Korean society and economy. Challenging the stereotype of North Korea as a closed and isolated regime cut off from the world economy, Justin V. Hastings convincingly argues that North Korea is in fact deeply involved in a variety of trade networks ranging from large-scale state-sponsored exports to small-scale individual merchants. Amid an environment of hyperbole and sensationalism regarding North Korea in the mass media and much of the scholarly literature, the balanced, measured tone of this book is one of its greatest strengths.
Charles K. Armstrong, Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Social SciencesColumbia University, author of Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992 Policy-makers, scholars, students, and anyone interested in North Korea's future should read this book. It delivers insights and valuable lessons on North Korea's economy and foreign trade.
Pacific Affairs
[I]t is refreshing to have a volume examining the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that does not contain the biased impressions of a journalist, but instead applies the rigorous research and analysis of a scholar. Justin Hastings traces the role of entrepreneurship in the evolution, structure, and operation of North Korean trade networks from the end of the Cold War to the present. Like Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland's valuable analysis of social and economic change in Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (2011), Hastings delves into a hard-to-reach subject with creative methods and considerable sophistication. He embeds his descriptions and insights in a theoretical framework he derives from Global Value Chain analysis, but instead of adding value to the product itself, each node in an often managerially complicated and logistically circuitous trade network takes a cut of the profit.... This is a terrific book that is well written and makes an important contribution to political-economic scholarship on North Korea.
Shepherd Iverson
Journal of American-East Asian Relations
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