Lessons and Implications of Vietnam’s Reforms in 1976-89 for North Korea

초록

This study looks back over the initial stages of Vietnamese reforms in 1976-89 and claims that the initial stages of Vietnam’s reform measures focused only on “complementing the system” and evolved into “making changes in the system.”The Vietnamese reform started from bottom-up and from the region, not from topdown and from the center. After going through quite a few trials and errors, the central government at last acknowledged the policy and took the path toward reform. In responding to the involuntary spread of market economic forces resulting from the painful Arduous March over famine in mid to late 1990s, North Korean authorities, in a struggle to survive, adopted the “July 1 measures” in 2002 to support and “complement” its socialist economic system. North Korean authorities turned the clock back to the past in mid 2005 through recently just as the Vietnamese government had tried to do during 1983-84. Nonetheless, North Korean people are learning to live without rations from the state. They become to know how “markets” are working and how “markets” are feeding themselves. Indeed, the Vietnamese experiences in early years of reforms in 1976-89 cast important implications for North Korea: Although the North Korean authorities have tried to revert to the past, they will not succeed and the unintended results of the previous measures of “complementing the system” will sooner or later bring significant changes to the system

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