Economic and Financial Reform 5

He has written extensively on financial and monetary issues in Japan and the United States and has been a visiting scholar at a number of policy-making institutions. He has also written on Korean issues, has been a visiting scholar at the Bank of Korea and is a member of the advisory council for the Korea Economic Institute in Wash-ington, D.C. Elliott Parker is an associate professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a co-editor of the China Economic Review. He studied socialist economic systems under Judith Thornton and the Chinese economy under Nicholas Lardy, both at the University of Washington. He has also taught economics in China for the Johns Hopkins University, the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade, and the Uni-versity Study Abroad Consortium. The authors express appreciation to Peter Beck of the Northeast Asia Project in Seoul for comments on an earlier version of the paper. The usual caveat applies. We consider recent reforms in North Korea as a signal that its authorities now recognize that its long-term survival may depend on returning to sustained economic growth. The paper sidesteps the political implications of a commitment to reform and accepts that meaningful economic reform can take place in the absence of polit-ical reforms for the present. We consider the recent history of financial liberalization in Asian market economies (South Korea and Japan) and the various paths of reform followed by socialist economies of China and Europe to identify the best model for North Korea. The paper ends with some suggestions for North Korean reforms