Despite a decade and a half of charitable assistance, North Korea remains on the verge of another eruption of mass hunger. So is effective international humanitarian aid to the DPRK conceivable?

With China's backing, North Korea is vigorously campaigning to draw the United States into another round of "six-party talks," the multilateral deliberations on North Korean "denuclearization" first convened in 2003.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (also known as the DPRK, and North Korea) is a special case in the annals of modern economic development, and not a good one: for it is an economy that once achieved a relatively advanced level of modernization, but then proceeded into prolonged, even catastrophic decline.

North Korean leadership is confident it can manipulate the "6-Party" process to generate further, perhaps unprecedented, benefits for its otherwise impoverished and discredited regime.

Press release/summary for The North Korean Economy, by Nicholas Eberstadt.

Reports that American and North Korean negotiators have emerged from six days of missile talks in Berlin with a "breakthrough" accord are being greeted today with relief and elation.

Can North Korea survive--as a distinct regime, an autonomous state, a specific political-economic system, and a sovereign country?

There can be neither a settlement onWMDs nor demobilization of theNorth Koreanmilitary until and unlessNorth Koreanormalizes relations with South Korea.