North Korea's non-governmental foreign contacts

This paper assesses the nature and the level of North Korean foreign contac ts with academic, training, and dialogue operations by examining sixty-six cases of such contacts. Several characteristics appear noteworthy regarding the pattern and the nature of North Korea's recent engagement. First, Nort h Korean foreign contact increased dramatically in 1998. Second, North Kore an sponsoring organizations now include both governmental and non-governmen tal groups. Third, North Korean participants have come to include many tech nocrats and experts, unlike the past pattern of repeat visits by a relative ly small number of individuals. Fourth, hosting organizations funded most o f the North Korean visits. Fifth, North Korea has been pursuing recent enga gement mainly in substantive and pragmatic fields rather than in the areas where symbolic representation has a value. Sixth, contacts for training pro grams and study tours are not limited to socialist or former socialist coun tries but encompass many capitalist systems. The US hosted the largest numb er of delegations, followed by China, Thailand, Switzerland, and Hungary. S eventh, Japan and South Korea are noticeably excluded from the diversified hosting groups. Eighth, North Korea tends to prefer training in social scie nces such as finance and business management in politically friendly countr ies while technical training in such areas as energy, medicine and agricult ure is not restricted to these countries. North Korea carefully selects con tacts to focus only on the areas that are expected to contribute to enhanci ng regime legitimacy and the stabilization of the ruling system.