Journal article
Everyday Bribery in North Korea as Moral Economy
J Song, B Yoon, S Kim, A Zulawnik
Communist and Post-Communist Studies | University of California Press | Published : 2024
Abstract
This study investigates how bribery is defined, negotiated, and practiced in the everyday lives of ordinary North Koreans. Reflecting on interviews spanning over two decades with North Korean migrants in South Korea and China, a team of North Korea experts has identified the patterns of micro-level bribery in everyday life in North Korea that differ, to some extent, from those of other post-communist states in Eastern Europe and Asia. By carefully examining the accounts of ten former North Korean residents, the researchers find that the traditional socialist economy, once prevalent in workplaces, schools, and hospitals, has now been supplanted by individual-to-individual private market inter..
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Awarded by National Research Foundation of Korea
Funding Acknowledgements
The study is funded by the Seed Program of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS- 2019-INC- 2230009) and the Collective Research Grant of the University of Melbourne. The interviews reused for this article were part of various research projects at several research institutes and universities, including the Institute of North Korean Studies of Dongguk University (Seoul, South Korea) and Singapore Management University (Singapore) , funded by the Ministry of Unification and the National Research Foundation of Korea under the Ministry of Education in South Korea (NRF- 2018S1A5B8070196) and the Singapore Ministry of Education.