In the mid-1990s, North Korea experienced a famine that killed up to a million people. In this talk, Professor Haggard will examine the origins of the famine, the subsequent humanitarian aid effort, including the problems of diversion of aid, and the market reforms that followed in the famine's wake. These political economy questions have played an important backdrop to the current negotiations over a resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue.

Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is the author of Pathways from the Periphery: the Political Economy of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries (1990), The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (1995, with Robert Kaufman) and The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000). In addition to Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid and Reform (forthcoming 2006) he has completed a report on North Korean refugees for the US Committee on Human Rights in North Korea and is initiating a project with TaiMing Cheung and Barry Naughton on Chinese-North Korean economic relations.