This serves as a battering-ram for international extortion, as Mr Eberstadt puts it.

埃伯施塔特将这种做法看成是朝鲜对国际社会进行勒索的一种强硬手段。

Mr Eberstadt found that North Korea's per-capita exports last year were no higher than at their peak in the late 1970s, while per-capita imports were two-fifths lower.

埃伯施塔特发现，朝鲜去年的人均出口没有上世纪70年代达到贸易顶峰的时候高，人均进口则下降了五分之二。

In a recent paper for South Korea's Asan Institute, Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC tries to estimate the scale of North Korea's economic catastrophe.

来自华盛顿特区美国企业研究所的尼古拉斯·埃伯施塔特在其最近为韩国峨山研究院撰写的一篇报告中试图估计出北朝鲜的经济灾难的规模。