April 27, 2024

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Natalia Matveeva

Natalia Matveeva holds a Ph.D. in modern Korean history from the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and is a research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Analysis

Shunning isolation: North Korea’s forgotten attempt to build trade ties with UK

Pyongyang has pursued economic exchanges with West in past, showing its status as ‘hermit kingdom’ is not inevitable

Features

The historical roots of North Korea’s notoriously-unreliable statistics

From grain cultivation to heavy industry, manipulation of data made numbers larger than reality

Natalia MatveevaJune 27, 2019
Features

Dizzy with success: North Korea’s ambitious, and troubled, first five year plan

The DPRK's first experience with long-term economic planning produced mixed results

Natalia MatveevaMay 27, 2019
Evergreen

Why the USSR tried — and failed — to slow North Korean collectivization

Kim Il Sung's 1950s agrarian reforms further deepened the gap between Moscow and Pyongyang

Natalia MatveevaApril 22, 2019