An annual ritual of North Korea is the release of a lengthy propaganda statement that serves as guidance and provides a sense of priorities for the coming year.  Under Kim Jong-il, the statement came in the form of a joint New Year’s Day editorial by three leading news organs, but Kim Il-sung gave the speech himself.  Kim Jong-un does not appear to have the same fear of public speaking that his father apparently had, so he gave the speech, which was broadcast on North Korean television, available through YouTube here.  Even though Kim is not afraid to read a speech in front of a camera, the echoing of the room, despite North Korean cutaways to a building accompanied by an applause track, suggests that Kim did not present the speech to a live audience.  Curious. Read more »

Kim Jong-il died a year ago today, but the breathless rush of anticipated changes, instability, and chaos that many expected have not materialized. That the North Korean state has survived two decades of predictions that it would collapse illustrates just how poorly external observers understand what makes North Korea tick. There is a wide variation among the views of the most experienced of American North Korea specialists, from those who see the system as durable, even if embattled, to those who see the system as bankrupt and ripe for instability and collapse. The full range of views is represented in a new volume I edited with Park Kyung-Ae, entitled North Korea in Transition: Politics, Economy, and Society. These assessments were completed last spring as the transition to the rule of Kim Jong-un began to unfold along lines that had already been put into place by Kim Jong-il prior to his death. Read more »

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea successfully launched a multi-stage Unha-3 rocket from its Tongchang-ri launch facility on December 12 at 9:51 a.m. KST. About ninety minutes after the launch, the Korean Central News Agency reported that “the launching of the satellite ‘Gwangmyongsong-3’ using the “Unha-3” rocket was a success and that the satellite has entered into its planned orbit.” North American Aerospace Defense Command reported that “initial indications are that the missile deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit.” Read more »

North Korea’s announcement of plans to pursue another satellite launch between December 10 and 22 may have been unwelcome, but it should not have been entirely unanticipated. North Korea defiantly stated that it would continue to test long-range multi-stage rockets on its April 17 response to a UN Security Council Presidential statement condemning North Korea’s failed April 12 launch. Another launch will likely have a disproportionate political impact since it comes prior to national elections scheduled in Japan on December 16 and in South Korea on December 19. Here’s a rundown of the challenges a North Korean satellite launch poses during this political transition period: Read more »

In a previous post from last month, I asserted that South Korea’s efforts to launch its own satellite would likely enrage North Korea, which is banned from conducting similar launches under UN Security Council Resolutions 1695, 1718, and 1874. That post highlighted an essay by Clay Moltz of the Naval Postgraduate School that we posted last month. Read more »

President Obama’s visit to Myanmar only a year after the country has begun to embark on a dramatic but “tenuous” reform path has naturally fed speculation about lessons the leadership in Pyongyang might take from the visit. President Obama highlighted that question for North Korean leaders in his speech at the University of Yangon, issuing a direct challenge to North Korean leaders to “let go of your nuclear weapons and choose the path of peace and progress . . . you will find an extended hand from the United States of America.” Read more »

Scott Bruce is a project manager for the Partnership for Nuclear Security at CRDF Global.

Counterproliferation efforts are an important test of South Korea’s “Global Korea” policy. When it comes to combating proliferation, one way of assessing how “global” the Global Korea policy is to look at the efforts that are centered on North Korea versus those that go beyond the Korean peninsula.  As explained in CFR’s new ebook Global Korea, South Korea’s counter and nonproliferation efforts were traditionally driven by the U.S.-ROK security alliance and threat of North Korea. Read more »

Georgetown University hosted four current and former assistant secretaries of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs—Richard H. Solomon (1989-1992), Winston Lord (1993-1996), Christopher Hill (2005-2009), and Kurt Campbell (2009-present)—on November 1 for a wide-ranging discussion of their views, experiences, and challenges as the senior officials responsible for managing U.S. policy toward Asia during their respective administrations.  The discussion provided a tour d’horizon of the recent history of U.S. engagement with Asia, in addition to showcasing the impressive diplomatic, analytical, and communications skills that each man brought to the job.  I drew the following takeaways from the conversation: Read more »

The agenda for the annual U.S.-ROK Security Consultative Meeting to be held this week in Washington between South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, will inevitably focus on how to keep the Korean peninsula stable against potential North Korean provocations. However, with South Korea’s decision to contribute resources to a variety of international peacekeeping and stabilization missions, U.S.-ROK security cooperation has gone global. Read more »

South Korea tries for the third time to successfully launch its own satellite into earth orbit using Russian technology this Friday, October 26, 2012. A new essay by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Clay Moltz analyzes South Korea’s space strategy in a new U.S.-Korea program essay. The essay analyzes South Korea’s program achievements and strategic challenges in the context of rapidly advancing Chinese, Indian, and Japanese programs. Moltz also analyzes opportunities and challenges to enhanced U.S.-ROK cooperation in space as part of my edited volume released earlier this year entitled The US-South Korea Alliance: Meeting New Security Challenges. Read more »