Exit Polls: Refugee Assessments of North Korea's Transition
Abstract
Results from a survey of more than 1,300 North Korean refugees in China provide insight into changing economic conditions in North Korea. There is modest evidence of slightly more positive assessments among those who exited the country following the initiation of reforms in 2002. Education breeds skepticism; higher levels of education were associated with more negative perceptions of economic conditions and reform efforts. Other demographic markers such as gender or provincial origin are not robustly correlated with attitudes. Instead, personal experiences appear to be central: A significant number of the respondents were unaware of the humanitarian aid program and the ones who knew of it almost universally did not believe that they were beneficiaries. This group's evaluation of the regime, its intentions, and accomplishments is overwhelmingly negative--even more so than those of respondents who report having had experienced incarceration in political detention facilities--and attests to the powerful role that the famine experience continues to play in the political economy of the country.Download Info
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Paper provided by Peterson Institute for International Economics in its series Working Paper Series with number WP08-1.Length:
Date of creation: Jan 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp08-1
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Related research
Keywords: North Korea; transition; reform; refugees; famine; aid;Other versions of this item:
- Chang, Yoonok & Haggard, Stephan & Noland, Marcus, 2009. "Exit polls: Refugee assessments of North Korea's transition," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 144-150, March.
- P2 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Systems and Transition Economies
- P3 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions
- F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2008-01-26 (All new papers)
- NEP-TRA-2008-01-26 (Transition Economics)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Stephan Haggard & Marcus Noland, 2011.
"Gender in Transition: The Case of North Korea,"
Economics Study Area Working Papers
124, East-West Center, Economics Study Area.
- Haggard, Stephan & Noland, Marcus, 2013. "Gender in Transition: The Case of North Korea," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 51-66.
- Stephan Haggard & Marcus Noland, 2009.
"Reform from Below: Behavioral and Institutional Change in North Korea,"
Working Paper Series
WP09-8, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
- Haggard, Stephan & Noland, Marcus, 2010. "Reform from below: Behavioral and institutional change in North Korea," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 133-152, February.
- Noland, Marcus & Haggard, Stephan, 2010. "Political attitudes under repression: evidence from North Korean refugees," MPRA Paper 21713, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Katzeff Silberstein, Benjamin, 2010. "North Korea: Fading Totalitarianism in the "Hermit Kingdom"," Working Paper Series 836, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
- Noland, Marcus & Haggard, Stephan, 2009. "Repression and punishment in North Korea: survey evidence of prison camp experiences," MPRA Paper 17705, University Library of Munich, Germany.
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