RealClearWorld - North Korea

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North Korea's State-Sanctioned Girl Band - Tim Stanley, Telegraph Blogs

For all his faults, Kim Jong-Un is a man who knows how to have a good time. When not building ski resorts or sexting wife #2 on his smartphone, he’s trying to raise the peopl...

An Encouraging Sign from North Korea - Korea Times

This may be premature, but our hope is that the peninsula will see a virtuous circle of positive development, the resumption of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and Seoul’s aid in...

Time Running Out for Japanese Abductees in Korea - Todd Crowell, RCW

The new conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is making a push to try and resolve the decades-long dispute with North Korea over the fate of a dozen Japanese it clai...

End the Korean War-of-Nerves and Reopen Talks - Korea Times

One point that distinguishes the Park Geun-hye administration from its predecessor is a more flexible policy toward North Korea. But whatever the reason may be, inter-Korean relati...

Infantilizing North Korea - John Feffer, Huffington Post

Political cartoonists love to portray North Korea as an irrational and infantile force. It's either a baby with a nuclear rattle or a little truant in need of a timeout. The relati...

Is This the Father of N. Korea's Nuclear Program? - Bill Streifer, NK News

Accounts suggest that Pyongyang acquired scientists for developing nuclear program decades before publicly acknowledging it....

Benghazi: History of Pueblo Repeats Itself - Todd Crowell, RealClearHistory

Comparisons have been made, especially by conservatives, that the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi last September was another Watergate. In fact, the Pueblo I...

Does Young Kim Control North Korea's Military? - Korea Times

North Korea watchers say Pyongyang's frequent military shakeups ― most frontline commanders have allegedly been replaced in recent months ― may be proof that the young North Ko...

Don't Sweat the Closure of Kaesong - Robert E. Kelly, The Diplomat

Although a symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, the once noble Kaesong experiment has long been a failure....

On North Korea, We've Been Here Before - Lowell Schwartz, CS Monitor

As history shows, new nuclear states such as North Korea usually probe the limits of their power and test how other international actors respond. But consider this: Once escalation...

Selling a Unified Korea to the United States - Korea Times

Between the 1960s and ’80s, South Korea’s general-turned-presidents visited the United States to seek economic aid, security guarantees and U.S. endorsement of their legitimacy...

The Isolationists Are Coming! - Matthew Duss, The American Prospect

Ask yourself: Do you oppose putting U.S. troops everywhere, all the time? If you answered yes, you might be an isolationist, according to the word’s new definition....

North Korea's Dangerous Hostage Game - Gordon Chang, The Daily Beast

When North Korea’s Supreme Court sentenced the American citizen Kenneth Bae to 15 years of hard labor for “hostile acts” – a lesser charge than the capital ...

What's 'Hard Labor' Like in North Korea? - John Hudson, Passport

On Thursday, North Korea sentenced U.S. citizen Kenneth Bae to 15 years of hard labor for committing "hostile acts" against the government. The severe punishment raises a...

Syria a Dry Run for Iran, North Korea? - Brian Jenkins, World Report

Both Israel and the United States now believe that chemical weapons have been used in Syria's civil war, most likely by Syrian government forces. If the rebels have even some of th...

How to Negotiate with North Korea - Joel Wit & Jenny Town, The Atlantic

The crisis on the Korean peninsula appears to have died down, but we shouldn't be fooled just because it's no longer front-page news. Serious problems remain that could flare...

Restarting Talks with North Korea - Japan Times

North Korea has not ended its hostile moves, causing a fear that it may carry out rocket launches and its fourth nuclear explosion test. South Korea has decided to withdraw its rem...

How to Keep North Korea in Check - Donald Gross, Huffington Post

Thanks to sure-footed diplomacy by Secretary of State John Kerry, South Korea's President Park Geun-hye and Chinese leaders, the outrageous rhetorical threats of nuclear attack by ...

For South Korea, No Respect, No Kaesong - Bruce Klingner, LA Times

Seoul needs to set limits before returning to its joint economic venture with North Korea....

China's North Korea Dilemma - Julia Famularo, The Diplomat

It remains in Beijing’s self-interest to provide aid to Pyongyang. The alternatives, like a North Korean collapse, could be far worse....

State-Run News North Korea's Weapon of Choice - Chico Harlan, Wash Post

North Korea has kept this region on edge in recent weeks primarily by using its weapon of choice in times of warmongering: the state-run news agency. The massive wire service, kno...

The Market Will Set North Korea Free - Jang Jin-Sung, New York Times

I DEFECTED from North Korea in 2004. I decided to risk my life to leave my home country — where I worked as a psychological warfare officer for the government — when it...

Stay on Guard Against North Korea - Yomiuri Shimbun

North Korea's Chief of General Staff Hyon Yong Chol pledged at the 81st anniversary of the inauguration of the Korean People's Army to mass-produce precise miniaturized nuclear wea...

They Eat Each Other in North Korea - Stephanie Hegarty, BBC

Life inside North Korea's closed borders is hard to imagine. One of the only insights into how ordinary people live, beyond the official line of the regime, comes from those who ha...

China's Rational Support for North Korea - Timothy Beardson, FT

Why does China tolerate North Korea’s extraordinary behaviour? The relationship is an unusual one – not based on mutual respect and friendship but on cold calculation. Beijing ...

Do We Really Want to Call North Korea's Bluff? - Jeff Lewis, Foreign Policy

Do we really want the North Koreans to prove they can launch a nuke with a missile?...

Exposing North Korea's Reign of Evil - Freedom House

Last month, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution establishing a Commission of Inquiry (COI) to look into conditions in North Korea. Given Pyongyang's recent nuc...

Patience, Not Pre-Emption, in Korea - Mitchell Lerner, The Diplomat

It is understandable that a growing number of Americans are frustrated with what seems like a never-ending stream of Northern belligerence, and with the seeming inability of Amer...

On North Korea, Kerry Muddles the Message - Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

If Kim Jong-un thinks he can shake down Washington by threatening nuclear apocalypse, President Obama says, the belligerent North Korean dictator has another think coming....

Korea, Iran and the Dual-Loyalty Myth - Ben Cohen, JNS.org

No one of any significance is accusing Korean Americans of putting the interests of South Korea above those of the US....

North Korea's Palace Intrigue - Nicholas Eberstadt, New York Times

North Korea’s recent nuclear brinkmanship is a sign not of strength but of weakness. No matter how hard this Communist dynasty tries to conceal this fact from the outside wor...

North Korea's Forgotten Atrocities - Lamont Colucci, World Report

A common mistake of the mainstream media is their penchant for tunnel vision. The bombings in Boston are a clear case where the news media give Americans the impression that the wo...

Toward a Nuclear Deal With South Korea - New York Times

The United States and South Korea are negotiating a new nuclear cooperation agreement that will have consequences for the conflict with North Korea and President Obama’s broa...

Libya, Korea Guide Iran's Nuke Program - Majid Rafizadeh, The National

Two years of tumult, revolt and change in the Arab world have emboldened Iranian leaders, intensifying their determination to gain access to nuclear capabilities....

So What Does North Korea Really Want? - Victor Cha, JoongAng Daily

Countries do not pursue ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) or nuclear weapons simply to accumulate bargaining chips. Pyongyang is devoting massive amounts of scarce resour...

The Problem with the Asia Pivot - Clifford May, National Review

Toward the conclusion of his visits to Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo this week, Secretary of State John Kerry held out an olive branch to Kim, saying he hoped to “find a way for ...

China and Its North Korea Problem - David Curtis Wright, Globe and Mail

Chinese leaders perceive a divided Korea as serving China’s national interests, but they would vastly prefer a saner, more stable and more pragmatic government in North Korea...

A Dangerous Overture to North Korea - Foreign Policy Initiative

The U.S. recovery of the front section of a ballistic missile fired by North Korea in December 2012 was the basis for the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment with moderate con...

Pyonyang Machiavelli: All of Kim's Men - Adam Cathcart, The Diplomat

Officials below the power circle of the Kim family may not play an overt role in N. Korea, but are vital to understanding the regime and its future....

The Day North Korea Killed 31 Americans - Mark Sauter, RealClearHistory

On April 15, 1969, a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane helmed by Lt. Cmdr. James Overstreet was conducting a routine patrol over the Sea of Japan in international airspace, Korean and...

Why Everyone Gets North Korea So Wrong - B.R. Myers, Newsweek

How much longer will we refuse to face facts? North Korea calls itself military-first, and behaves accordingly. It is frank enough in the espousal of race thinking to have won the ...

Diplomatic Buck-Passing on North Korea - Korea Times

The two Koreas have just finished a first round of sounding each other out about resuming their severed dialogue. The result, as expected, was disappointing with North Korea brushi...

Korean Unification Coming Soon? - Paul Gregory, Hoover Institution

The most significant geopolitical events of the past half century have been unanticipated. Not that we did not expect them, but they were supposed to happen in the distant future, ...

Bomb North Korea, Before It's Too Late - Jeremi Suri, New York Times

Destroying the North Korean missile before it is launched is the best of bad options on the Korean Peninsula. A prolonged crisis would undermine regional security and global effort...

Getting Kim Jong-un's Attention - O'Hanlon & Mochizuki, Brookings

Nothing about the international response to North Korea's third nuclear test in February or subsequent provocations has been unreasonable. The crisis is entirely of Pyongyang's mak...

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