Posts Tagged ‘park geun hye’
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 [...]
Kim Jong Un’s Foreign Policy Record: The Juche Revolution Continues
During his first year in power, Kim Jong Un maintained the strategic foreign policy line he inherited from his father without making any major adjustments. In a nutshell, that approach seeks to alter the regional balance of power in North Korea's favor, expand its resource base, and gain international recognition by building up strategic arms [...]
South Korea’s President-elect Needs a “Team of Rivals” to Deal with North Korea
“The Presidency has become a sort of family business here in South Korea,” grumbled an IT-related businessman friend of mine through Twitter after watching the election results. He went on to make the point that “the main reason the pan-liberal groups have lost support was that they failed to perform effectively on issues of livelihood.” [...]
The “Satellite State’s” Ulterior Motive
Pyongyang’s decision to launch its Unha-3 rocket and accompanying satellite during the countdown to a tightly poised South Korean presidential election seems odd, on the face of it. North Korea’s preference, it is widely assumed, is for a pro-engagement administration under Moon Jae-in, given his likely resumption of large-scale inter-Korean [...]
Will a New South Korean Policy for Inter-Korean Relations Help or Hinder Economic Reform in North Korea?
South Korean presidential candidates Park Geun-hye, left, of the ruling Saenuri Party, Moon Jae-in, centre, of the main opposition Democratic United party and independent hopeful Ahn Cheol-soo, right, who has pulled out. (Photo: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP) It is now clear that following the South Korean Presidential elections this week there will be a [...]
