TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT AND REGIONAL POLICY OF THE DPRK

Abstract

Russian literature on regional politics usually considers the experience of large and heterogeneous countries, similar to Russia, as well as the European Union. Much less attention is paid to the middle powers. In this article, we consider the specific experience of the DPRK, which is developing under conditions of tough international isolation, an administrative command system and a planned economy. The territorial development of the DPRK attracts very little attention from the scientific community, and the regional policy of the DPRK is completely absent as an object of research, therefore in our article we will analyze the very fact of its existence. The methodological basis of our article is the classical theory of the spatial development of Thünen, Christalller, and Lösch, according to which the national economy is a hierarchical geographical structure. Geographic studies, expert observations and various indirect sources indicate that in the DPRK, despite its small territory, there is a significant unevenness of regional development and a wide range of problem situations. In world practice, such problems should be the subject of close attention of the center, but there is no regional policy in its traditional form in the DPRK, and economic development is planned here by industry, but not by region. However, numerous local projects implemented through the mobilization of national resources make it possible to assert that the DPRK government has a certain idea of the landmarks of territorial development. The North Korean experience is hardly applicable in the Russian practice of regional policy, but the effects that arise in the specific situation of the DPRK are of great scientific and theoretical interest.