Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book is the comprehensive analysis of North and South Korean political systems and processes in a systematic and comparative perspective. It examines the evolution and development of the systems from 1945 to the present. Unlike the situation in other countries, dichotomies between the two Koreas arise not from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds but from their diametrically opposed political and economic systems offering an unmatched real-world case for comparative study.
In this comprehensive volume, the author utilizes systematic and comparative perspectives to analyze North and South Korean political and economic institutions and processes and to examine their evolution since 1945.


The book opens with a description of the political heritage that led to the emergence of the two separate regimes. The author considers the development of opposing totalitarian and democratizing political orders. He then surveys the differences between the economic systems, strategies, and policies of North and South Korea, evaluating their performance for the last five decades.


The author also considers such long-standing problems as leadership succession, democratization, and liberalization; nuclear weapons and the continuing arms race; and contending approaches to education and reunification.



Contents:
It consists of six parts. In Part One and Two both the Korean political heritage and the contemporary political background for the emergence of the two separate regimes on the Korean Peninsula are explicated in detail as a way of preliminary introduction. In Parts Three and Four the North Korean political system as a totalitarian political order and the South Korean political system as democratizing political order are scrutinized in a greater detail, respectively. In Part Five, the differences in both Korea's economic systems, economic strategies and policies and their actual economic performance for the last five decades are studied on the basis of available economic data. Finally, Part Six focuses on four critical and chronic issues which two Korean have confronted over the years and require resolution. In this revised edition the author includes two additional chapters under the Part Seven. One is on the domestic political and economic tasks ahead and the other on the Comprehensive Engagement Policy, the two pillars of the present Kim Dae-jung government's mandate.