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I do not know what motivated the North Koreans to repeatedly threaten the US over the last couple of months, but I do know what the effect has been: the threats greatly narrow the Obama Administration’s options going forward, especially with respect to any action that would require Congressional approval. It is particularly difficult for [...]
My colleague Marc Noland has recently written on this problem of the collateral damage caused by sanctions, and the way this damage can be politically manipulated. The problem came up in Iraq, and is about to resurface as the effects of recent sanctions hit North Korea (see his posts here and here; our other sanctions [...]
The old joke about North Korea is that if it weren’t a country we’d indict it under RICO. New sanctions legislation introduced by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Ca), chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and seven co-sponsors in the House, the “North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act of 2013,”comes pretty close. Frequently overlooked in sanctions analysis are [...]
In the pre-interview for a recent live radio appearance, the producer asked if the suffering of the North Korean people was not the product of economic sanctions. I responded that the suffering of the North Korean people had begun long before the imposition of United Nations sanctions in 2006; that most of the sanctions were [...]
North Korea is already under multilateral economic sanctions and tightened sanctions in response to continued activity in the missile and nuclear spheres can be anticipated. Yet already one is hearing rumblings critical of sanctions, blaming them the suffering of innocent civilians. The issue was essentially framed in these terms in an Australian radio talk show [...]
At the end of last week, there was mounting evidence that the Park Geun-hye government was trying to lower the temperature on the peninsula and that humanitarian assistance would play a central role. On Thursday, Minister of Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae made the mistake of admitting that the closure of Kaesong was causing pain to [...]
We have a standing interest in sanctions: when they work and when they don’t. We have followed the sanctions efforts vis-à-vis Iran in particular, as it is the only current comparator case to North Korea: a regime that thrives on posing nuclear challenges to the rest of the world. VOX has recently posted a short [...]
Why is the US Treasury Department unilaterally sanctioning a bank that conducts no direct business with the United States? And why does this seemingly phantom action represent a major escalation on the part of the US? Park Hyun at Hankyoreh offers some particularly cogent reporting that correctly explains Treasury’s bet. Since it was established in [...]
Bahng Tae-seop and his colleagues at SERI have released the 2013 first quarter report on the Korean peninsula security outlook. It may come as no surprise that the experts surveyed forecast heavy weather. The index of current conditions fell for the fourth consecutive quarter to 42, approaching the all-time minimum of 41 at the time [...]
Voice of Russia correspondent Stephen Schaber speaks with Stephan Haggard to discuss the nullification of the armistice, South Korea’s talk about nukes and what it means for the highly charged peninsula. access the interview here.
