The conventional wisdom is that there could be nothing more dangerous to North Korea’s current leadership than the penetration of information into North Korea from the outside world.  A new empirical study released last week by Nat Ketchum and Jane Kim entitled “A Quiet Opening:  North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment”draws on surveys and interviews from North Korean refugees to show that information penetration is changing North Korea, but the result has been an evolutionary change of circumstances in North Korea rather than uprising or revolution. Read more »

The UN Security Council issued a toughly-worded Presidential Statement on April 16, 2012, that deplored North Korea’s April 13 launch, called upon North Korea to “re-establish its preexisting commitments to a moratorium on missile launches” and directed the committee responsible for implementing UN security council resolutions against North Korea to make additional sanctions recommendations. Read more »

North Korea’s satellite test using ballistic missile technology highlights the danger of North Korean proliferation. Each multi-stage rocket test that North Korea conducts, whether they are called satellite launches or missile tests, brings North Korea closer to the day it can launch a nuclear strike. This is why former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sounded the alarm regarding North Korean missile development in January 2011. Read more »

South Korean voters go to the polls on April 11 to choose a new National Assembly. I invited Ma Sang-yoon of the Catholic University of Korea and currently a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center to provide a primer on the elections, which you can read here. Read more »

As over fifty world leaders gather in Seoul to address the task of how to more effectively secure nuclear materials, their landing path at Incheon airport will take them within range of North Korean surface-to-air missiles.  Although North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities are not formally on the agenda for the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, Pyongyang’s leaders have done their best to ensure that North Korea won’t be forgotten in the global confab, first by announcing plans to launch a satellite in conjunction with the 100^th anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung, and then by threatening war if the summit issues a statement on Pyongyang’s nuclear program.  The United States and DPRK in their respective February 29 “Leap Day” statements tentatively seemed ready to hit the “reset” button in U.S.-DPRK relations, but Pyongyang has apparently hit the “replay” button instead by rewinding to the events surrounding North Korea’s long-range rocket launch in 2009. Read more »

The Nuclear Security Summit will bring more national leaders to Seoul than any other international meeting that South Korea has ever hosted.  Just the logistics for such a meeting are daunting, and South Korean hosts have been preparing for months to ensure no surprises (while the timing of North Korea’s  satellite launch announcement last week suggests that Pyongyang has been working for months on “surprises.”) Read more »

The New York Times today reports North Korea’s announcement that it will launch a satellite next month as part of festivities to mark the 100^th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth.  The story includes immediate reaction statements from South Korea, the United States, and Japan criticizing North Korean plans for such a launch. Despite North Korean protestations that they have an inherent right to peaceful use of space, North Korean testing of multi-stage rockets was proscribed by the United Nations in UNSC resolution 1874 that was passed following North Korea’s 2009 satellite launch and missile tests. Read more »

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally had occasion to address an ongoing spat over Chinese repatriation of over thirty North Koreans, many of whom have family members in South Korea, at a joint press conference with ROK foreign minister Kim Sung-hwan last Friday.  In answer to a reporter’s question, she stated that “we believe that refugees should not be repatriated and subjected once again to the dangers that they fled from. . . we urge all countries in the region to cooperate in the protection of North Korean refugees within their territories.” Read more »

As part of CFR’s Campaign 2012 series, I have a new video discussing the policy challenges that the next U.S. administration is likely to face as North Korea faces a “transformative moment” that may require substantial time and resources. The opportunities and costs will be determined by how developments in U.S. presidential leadership track with leadership transitions in South Korea and China, as well as how North Korea’s own leadership transition challenges unfold. Read more »

The United States opens its first round of talks with North Korea under its new leader Kim Jong-un later this week in Beijing, following sessions in July in New York and October in Geneva. It is hard to find analysts these days who think that North Korea’s denuclearization is possible, yet the objective of these talks is to bring North Korea back to the denuclearization path that it had accepted as a signatory to the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement of Six Party Talks. In the ensuing six years, however, North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests, which have been now been lauded as the primary accomplishments of the late Kim Jong-il, whose 70^th birthday was commemorated last week in Pyongyang with the unveiling of a new Kim Jong-il statue and a military parade. Read more »