The Tumen River Area Development Programme is an ongoing process of building a free trade zone in North East Asia, and is extensively funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The value of this ambitious project as well as its motives and consequences has been questioned and interpreted in both positive and negative ways. Proponents of the TRADP consider it as a success of a free trade market. The opponents criticize the project as an unprecedented waste of capital. Such divergent views reflect the analysers' vision of the world or rather their assumptions. The following is an attempt to give an in depth analysis of these assumptions, based on the theories of realism, liberalism, Marxism and feminism.--Page iii.
