Sanctions and Unintended Consequences

This chapter explores the concept of international sanctions and their impact and discusses why and how sanctions have been imposed on North Korea. This discussion is followed by an analysis of the effectiveness of these sanctions by navigating existing arguments on the matter. Under current sanctions, the North Korean regime has focused on its capacity to develop sanctions evasion methods and has also become a de facto nuclear state, but has abandoned its people in an economic system of self-survival due to the lack of state capacity to deal with the survival needs of both the regime and the people. In this, the chapter argues that state capacity in North Korea has been developed in an inappropriate and skewed manner and may have thus made the regime stronger while weakening society.