How has trade and investment progressed between North and South Korea since the division in 1945?
Is there a path to competitive and sustainable economic cooperation that keeps pace with the global era?
The first comprehensive study on inter-Korean economic cooperation, offering a three-dimensional overview of the 80-year trajectory of inter-Korean economic relations!

“Let’s defeat the Communists, let’s beat up the Reds.” The numerous anti-communist slogans that have dominated our society since the division of the country in 1945 were the product of a hostile perception of North Korea that forbade all contact with it.
Even after the armistice agreement was signed in 1953, the two Koreas persisted in their determination to achieve unification by force, and a period continued in which it was impossible to even imagine the other side as a partner for economic cooperation.
However, starting in the 1970s, movements began to seek cooperation despite physical separation and ideological conflict, and with the July 7 Declaration of 1988, a new framework called the "national community perspective" emerged, leading to the institutionalization of inter-Korean economic cooperation.
Since then, inter-Korean economic cooperation has expanded the horizons of cooperation, encompassing trade, investment, tourism, and special economic zones. However, amidst the waves of political conflict and military tensions, it has repeatedly experienced a vicious cycle of expansion and contraction, resumption and suspension.

This book is the first comprehensive study to comprehensively and meticulously explore the 80-year history of economic relations between the South and the North, which have seen each administration develop different strategies and alternatives since the era of hostility passed and cooperation began. It is also the definitive edition of research on inter-Korean economic cooperation.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the entire economic relationship between the two Koreas, from the emergence of the concept of inter-Korean economic cooperation, the flow of discussions on economic cooperation, the development of various systems and projects, and the current state of stagnation.
In particular, it examines the development of economic cooperation based on specific cases, from the first inter-Korean economic talks to general trade, consignment processing trade, tourism to Mt. Kumgang, and the Kaesong Industrial Complex project, and provides a balanced analysis of each achievement, limitation, and point of contention.
It also provides in-depth commentary on various issues surrounding economic cooperation, including the reciprocity debate, criticism of "giving away," political-economic linkages, the reliability of trade statistics, the wage issue for North Korean workers, and the two-nation theory.

The author, an expert on the North Korean economy, borrows the words of poet Yi Sang, “Despair breeds artifice, and artifice breeds despair,” and diagnoses that “the history of inter-Korean economic cooperation has also followed the path of despair and artifice.”
Whether it is the 'July 7th Declaration', the 'Sunshine Policy', or the 'October 4th Declaration', the criticism is that a North Korea policy that relies solely on the government's will will not be a fundamental solution to the problem of economic cooperation, but will remain a mere 'technique', and will ultimately fail and only lead to a repetition of despair.
In doing so, it presents a clue to moving toward an era of ‘giving well’ with principles and strategies, rather than unconditional ‘giving’ or ‘not giving’ without context.
Policymakers, practitioners, researchers, businesspeople, students, and anyone interested in inter-Korean relations will be able to gauge the trajectory of inter-Korean economic cooperation and its future potential through this book.
We hope that this work of retracing the past 80 years, marked by countless changes, will serve as an important milestone in finding a direction for the future.