There have been diverse papers published on the theme of analyzing the socialist system of North Korea. But most of them either dealt with the nature of the system right after Korean took back its independence or focused on the special characteristics after the 1960’s. Wada Haruki, however, argued that the state socialism that was formed in the early 1960’s was transformed into a unique form of the flying column state in the 1970’s. Recently Seo Dong-Man gave empirical and specific discussions about the process of North Korea's state socialist system being formed in five stages.
His work is outstanding, and it's no exaggeration to say that his analysis of North Korea's system is the most perfect one so far. But there are possibilities of controversy in a few aspects regarding state socialism that he suggested as the framework of analysis and the issue of power struggle that he dealt with most importantly in the process of the state socialist system being formed. By not giving additional explanations about the position of state socialism in the world history or the theoretical foundation, he failed to shed clear light to the objective position of North Korea's socialism. In addition, his too thorough analysis of the trends in its internal power made power struggle look like a more critical factor in the formation process of North Korea's system than the line struggle among the different factions. It also further made the 'agreement' or 'spontaneity' observed in the formation process of North Korea's system not be recognized. The issue of North and South Korea and the Korean people, which were excluded in his analysis, should definitely be taken into account. Despite those limitations, his theory of North Korea's state socialist system will remain as the basic research to lead the arguments about North Korea and find new methodology for a while.