This is Democracy – Episode 29: North Korea: How Do We Understand This Society and its Leadership?

Dr. Jeremi Suri calls up his colleague Dr. David Fields, a scholar and expert on North Korea to take an even-handed look at the state of the country and how the rest of the world can understand a society that seems so very different from our lives in America, Europe and elsewhere. How do we understand this society and its leadership? What can Americans do to improve relations with North Korea? What role should ideas of democracy play? But before that, Zachary reads his poem, "North Korean Lullabies."

Dr. David P. Fields is the associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea and editor of The Diary of Syngman Rhee. He has published in the North Korea Review, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, SinoNK.com, and in the Working Papers Series of the Cold War International History Project.