This chapter first lays out some context about the significance of this aspect of transition. Second, it historicises the discussion, in this case around histories of energy production, particularly from the industrial revolution onwards. Third, it explores the political economies of energy production, looking at the shifting role of the state in the energy sector, the rise of power sector reform and the privatisation of the electricity sector in many countries of the world. Fourth, it looks at the ecologies of energy production, both as metaphor for interconnected global production networks that characterise the production of key energy technologies and in relation to assessing the life cycle of energy production and the patterns of ecologically uneven exchange of which they are often part.

In chapter seven, we examine the more direct material impact of the rise of China on the North Korean economy. This is examined through the lens of the broader debate regarding the impact of China’s rise on developing countries. We argue that while North Korea’s trade relations with China do resemble the resource dependency found in many Global South countries, North Korea has in recent years become increasingly integrated into cross-border regional production networks, with textile manufacturing being outsourced to North Korean producers as well as the growing dispatch of North Korean labour to China as a result of ongoing economic shifts within China itself. Although this relationship can be conceptualised as a form of economic dependency, North Korea’s economic collapse in the 1990s preceded its growing economic relations with China. In this sense, China has played an important facilitative role in North Korea’s economic recovery following the 1990s. However, concerns with the North Korean leadership regarding import dependency on China have in recent years led to a policy emphasis on domestic import substitution, a strategy that has had some success, albeit at relatively low levels of production.

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) pandemic has posed fresh challenges pertaining to the prevention, control and management of infectious diseases in the medical innovation landscape all over the world. Although the emergence and resurgence of communicable diseases have been serious health concerns, especially for poor regions and populations across the globe, these diseases did not receive adequate attention in medical innovations due to various political economy reasons and their confinement to limited (poor) regions. For instance, we have seen outbreaks of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in African countries, cholera in African and Asian countries, dengue haemorrhagic fever in India and other South Asian countries, Japanese encephalitis in India and Nepal, and influenza and malaria in African and South Asian countries in the recent past that perhaps did not receive sufficient attention of the vaccine, drug or medical equipment industry. Similarly, the worldwide severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002 and the Zika virus epidemic in 2016 also did not significantly change the priorities of medical innovations, which are mostly concerned with non-communicable diseases. However, the COVID 19 pandemic has exposed the lack of preparedness to emerging communicable disease problems across the world and compelled us to revisit the threat of communicable diseases in a globalised world since the infection changed the prevailing risk perceptions by crossing the binaries of rich and poor and exposing the entire humanity to infection. The COVID 19 pandemic thus poses certain questions on the epistemological base of the present organisation of medical innovation, which is built around the principles of techno-scientific capitalism and setting of priorities in medical innovation. This book attempts to discuss the mismatch between public health priorities and medical innovations which can have implications for the health of the global population in the future.

The last four decades have witnessed several path-breaking innovations in healthcare, particularly in drugs, vaccines and medical technologies. Advancements made in the research in health and life sciences across the world have played a conspicuous role in medical innovations. The proliferation of biotechnology and its associated streams of biomedicine, bioinformatics, genomics and advancements made in the field of synthetic biology have widened the scope of medical innovations to the next level.

In chapter two, we examine North Korea’s post-war recovery and its extraordinarily rapid transition towards a modern industrial economy in the 1950s. Here we draw attention to the massive financial support that North Korea received from elsewhere in the socialist bloc in that decade. The existence of the more advanced ally of the Soviet Union and its generous developmental assistance underpinned Kim Il Sung’s ultimately erroneous belief that North Korea would not have to sacrifice living standards in order to pursue a strategy of heavy industrialisation. Developmental strategies were, however, mediated through ongoing domestic political struggles. The factional disputes of the 1950s were in part related to questions of developmental strategy and were a reflection of the exiled nature of Korea’s communist movement during the colonial era and the nature of the various factions’ international linkages. In this chapter, we also draw attention to the substantive nature of North Korea’s developmental policies in the 1950s, including that of the socialisation of production. We also examine the decline of international aid to North Korea towards the latter part of the decade, and how that led to increased emphasis on mass mobilisation campaigns. This chapter consists of original, unpublished material.

The concluding chapter brings together key insights from each of the preceding chapters, reflecting on the analytical added value that a global political economy perspective has provided with regard to an understanding of energy transitions. The last part of the chapter speculates on possible pathways to change in light of the preceding analysis, concluding with the need to bring about shifts in power (given the title of the book) – not just transitions in technology, finance and production – and institutional reforms, however these might be shaped.

In chapter six, we examine the degree to which the Kim Jong Un regime has proactively sought to reform its political economy in line with China’s economic reforms. While political considerations amongst North Korean policymakers have led to an explicit rejection of Chinese-style reform, the North Korean authorities have in fact carried out a number of reforms that are broadly similar in substance to those in China. In this respect, we pay particular attention to the reform measures carried out under the slogan of “Our-Style Economic Management Method.” The structural differences between the Chinese and North Korean political economies have, however, meant that the reforms have had divergent impacts. This relates to the fact that it could be argued that while China (and Vietnam) were in the 1980s pursuing a more classic model of rural-based industrialisation, North Korea faced a somewhat different challenge of structural adjustment as seen in the former Soviet bloc (and China’s northeast). The greater degree of industrialisation and urbanisation in North Korea have led to correspondingly greater bureaucratic resistance to reforms.

In chapter five, we argue that the economic collapse and famine of the 1990s profoundly transformed North Korea’s political economy. North Korea’s population increasingly turned towards market activities for their survival. North Koreans have continued to rely on markets for food and everyday goods, though marketisation has since expanded to the services, transport and housing sectors. While much of the existing literature has presented state and market as situated in a zero-sum relationship, we challenge the ontological separation between state and market to argue that the rise of the market in North Korea has been closely intertwined with the state. State officials have increasingly become involved in market activities, and the growing entrepreneurial class have entered into partnerships with officials as a means of negotiating the lack of clear property rights. The state has also taken a leading role in furthering the process of marketisation through the creation of new economic sectors, such as the mobile communications sector, for example.

This chapter lays down the theoretical foundations of the book. It reviews broader literatures on energy in general across the social sciences, before focusing in on debates about sociotechnical transitions. It draws out key insights from that body of work and provides a critique of some of its limitations. It then lays out the basis of a global political economy account that emphasises the global politics of transition, its historical dimensions and key political economy dimensions around shifting power relations and is attentive to the ecologies of transition.

In this chapter, I explore the destabilising role of social mobilisation and cultural shifts, in creating ruptures and generating demands for alternative energy systems and in actually doing the work of transition and wider transformative change by building alternative pathways. I briefly trace early struggles over energy systems from the London smogs and creation of the UK Factories Act during the industrial revolution, through the long histories of indigenous forms of activism against extractivism, to contemporary battles for energy and climate justice, and resistance to new infrastructures, projects and policies that further embed rather than disrupt the fossil fuel economy. I point to how mobilisations have sought to challenge existing political economies and distributions of power, as well as to construct alternative ones. I explore the interrelationships between strategies then describe the rich ecology of resistance, including lobbying, litigation and direct action, pressuring all parts of systems of production, finance and governance, as well as seeding alternatives for incumbent actors to crush or ignore, co-opt or replicate and learn from, or even support and scale up.

The conclusion of the book recaps the main arguments, but also examines the recent emphasis of the Kim Jong Un regime on the “improvement of people’s livelihood” and on the development of science and technology. We also draw on the implications of the analysis for thinking about development and catch-up industrialisation more broadly. The conclusion also makes some projections concerning North Korea’s future development.

In chapter three, we examine the impact of the growing geopolitical tensions of the 1960s on the North Korean developmental model. The emerging Sino-Soviet split raised important questions regarding the reliability of North Korea’s socialist allies and further strengthened the impetus towards autonomous heavy industrialisation and the building of a strong independent military industrial sector. Furthermore, these geopolitical challenges were exacerbated by the establishment of a strong military regime in South Korea and the latter’s own national project of catch-up industrialisation. As a result, the negative economic consequences of militarisation became increasingly visible in the 1960s. This chapter also examines the emergence of Juche as the ruling state ideology in North Korea. Here, we engage with the existing literature on the topic by reinterpreting Juche as a particularly intense form of developmental nationalism aimed at legitimising the human mobilisation required to facilitate catch-up industrialisation. From the late 1960s, Juche thought was further transformed as an ideological justification to strengthen Kim Il Sung’s monolithic system, and as such, the previous emphasis on post-colonial catch-up development was diluted. Here, we draw parallels to the voluntarism of Stalinist and Maoist ideologies while highlighting the distinctiveness of this North Korean form of developmental nationalism.