Posts Tagged ‘nuclear’
Pit or Get Off the Shot: Is North Korea Going to Flight Test the Musudan or Not?
So, are the North Koreans going to test a fricking Musudan or what? Along with many of my close friends from my days as a research assistant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), one of my first bosses was a rather colorful retired Army Colonel who would respond to our youthful indecision with a metaphor involving bodily [...]
North Korea: Danger and Opportunity for Park Geun-hye’s Presidency
South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s speech to the Joint Session of the United States Congress will be a great opportunity to signal that the Korean peninsula is headed toward a new era of inter-Korean cooperation, test the rough waters with policies for a breakthrough on the North Korea policy conundrum and dispel much of the jitteriness that [...]
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 [...]
Start-up of North Korean Experimental Light Water Reactor Could Begin by Mid-2013 if Fuel is Available
A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jeffery Lewis and Nick Hansen Summary According to new commercial satellite imagery, North Korea is nearing completion of an experimental light water reactor (ELWR) that is primarily intended to generate electricity for civilian purposes. The North now appears to be putting the finishing external touches [...]
Taking Stock of North Korean Rhetoric
It’s now almost impossible to imagine North Korea without a barrage of bellicose rhetoric mainly consisting of die-hard nuclear threats. Over the past few weeks, we have been inundated with shrill terms such as zooktang (sledge-hammer blows), beolcho (killing people like cutting the weeds at the ancestor’s graves), “venomous swish of [...]
War and Peace on the Korean Peninsula
Reports coming from the Korean peninsula in the past few weeks have been disturbing and contradictory. On the one hand, tensions continue to escalate as Pyongyang and Seoul are locked in an upward spiral of threats to raze each other to the ground. This is the most severe situation since the 1968 Korean crisis, when the DPRK captured the US [...]
