Foreign Affairs
Evil geniuses, stumbling fools, or something in between, we will attempt to divine the real motives behind Pyongyang’s foreign policy moves.
Fear Prevails Over Greed: The Kaesong Shutdown
North Korea’s shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) is the culmination of a steady deterioration in inter-Korean relations during the political transition from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un in the North and conservative rule in the South. Pyongyang appears to have decided to close the KIC primarily for internal security concerns and for [...]
Whither the Kaesong Industrial Complex?
Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy was a bold experiment that sought to achieve unification by decreasing inter-Korean tensions and establishing a cooperative framework of engagement. To accomplish this, the policy promoted the restoration of road and rail links and economic assistance projects that included aid and inter-Korean business ventures in [...]
How North Korea Evades Financial Sanctions
In response to North Korea’s third nuclear test in February 2013, the UN Security Council voted to tighten financial sanctions on North Korea to “prevent the provision of financial services” that could “contribute” to the North’s missile and nuclear programs. US financial sanctions dating back to September 2005 are more comprehensive [...]
Has Japan’s DPRK Policy Reached a Dead End?
On February 12 2013, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test. In response, the United Nation’s Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2094 and imposed additional economic and financial sanctions against Pyongyang. Still, North Korea remains defiant as ever as events of the past few weeks have shown. As the international [...]
North Korea: Turning in the Wrong Direction
When Kim Jong Un assumed power, the world saw him as a young new leader who, given his education in Europe, might be reform-minded. Just over a year later, he comes across more like a reckless bully. Since the beginning of 2013, the security situation on the Korean peninsula has taken a dramatic turn for the worse, following North Korea’s [...]
Dealing with a Sore Lip: Parsing China’s “Recalculation” of North Korea Policy
Chinese media went wild—as wild as censored media gets—immediately following North Korea’s third nuclear test in February 2013. Global Times criticized the event as a failure of China’s North Korea policy, while Weibo was flooded with frustrated comments that called for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and even the punishment [...]
