Continuing our study of North Korean economic policies under Kim Jong Un, this article is focused on the North’s thinking about economic development zones (EDZs).¹ Note: This paper is the second in the “Understanding Kim Jong Un’s Economic Policymaking,” Part 2 series, which focuses on the external elements of North Korea’s economic policy. The first installment of Part 2 was on Kim Jong Un’s tourism policy. This series uses a modified version of the McCune-Reischauer romanization system for North Korean text. Diacritics are replaced with apostrophes. Some proper nouns follow internationally recognized spellings or North Korean transliterations instead. The country’s premier economic journals, Kyo’ngje Yo’ngu and the Journal of Kim Il Sung University, also known as Hakpo, continued to guide our research on how the concept of EDZs was viewed and discussed by various stakeholders in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) economic policymaking circles and possibly by the leadership itself, rather than how EDZ policies were implemented.

These journals provide a window into the regime’s thinking and a sense of the scope of allowable internal discussion. No single article or topic can be interpreted in isolation from the others. Rather, the breadth of articles should be read longitudinally, across the spectrum of policy developments, since that is undoubtedly how the authors themselves saw the world. How EDZs were covered followed a well-established pattern in all of the key economic reform themes that Pyongyang rolled out under Kim Jong Un, from commercial banking and economic management methods to tourism. The journals would typically start by publishing articles that simply introduced concepts or foreign practices. Later articles would then step things up a notch by exploring the various aspects of a theme in-depth and examining how certain concepts or foreign practices could (or should) be applied in North Korea.

A review of how EDZs were treated within these two journals suggests that the North clearly welcomed an influx of external ideas and actively solicited discussions about establishing and operating these zones, although some articles also warned against the potential side effects of these zones. The positions and emphasis between 2013-2018 tended to be forward-leaning, and many were in line with the trends in reformist policies being considered more broadly at the time. The warning signs were more subtle during these years, but became more pronounced in 2019. In 2022, some discussion of EDZs has resurfaced, although not in the journals as much as in other outlets such as the website Naenara. Where it goes from here, post-pandemic, is still unclear.

Read the full analysis on 38 North.