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Official Chinese statements about the nuclear test are so bland and formulaic that analysts are reduced to parsing non-official sources that may or may not reflect actual policy. Given that China’s policy intellectuals have pretty wide latitude these days, these exercises can easily result in faulty inference or worse: wishful thinking. Scanning the commentary is [...]
On Friday, we outlined the guts of a significant new proposal from Mort Halperin on how to move forward on the Korean peninsula. His strategy—buttressed by thorough vetting at conferences sponsored by Peter Hayes and the Nautilus Institute–rests on jettisoning the Six Party Talks. Rather, Halperin proposes we move directly to a more comprehensive peace [...]
As we hold our breath about the pending nuclear test, everyone is trotting ideas about what should be done. Frankly, many of these ideas are disposable. But a proposal advanced by Mort Halperin deserves serious scrutiny. One version is posted on the Nautilus website; another version can be found in Global Asia, a highly-readable journal [...]
Elsewhere, we documented the cycles of rhetorical—and actual–escalation that followed the missile tests of 2006 and 2009. We found the 2013 version of this dance to be even more vitriolic than in the past, including threats of direct attacks on the US and South Korea. But we thought it would be worthwhile to briefly sum [...]
Pacific Forum CSIS just sent us the list of their 2012 publications, and we thought we would pass on those on the Korean peninsula; several sparked interesting debates and in combination, they provide a good overview of the year. Among the issues on offer were not only what to do about the launches and collapse [...]
Now that President Obama has nominated John Kerry to replace Hillary Clinton at the State, analysts are reading past tea leaves on the new Secretary’s approach to various international issues. An interesting nugget: an op-ed penned by the Senator in June 2011 for the LA Times. Recall the context. At the time, US policy was [...]
About a month ago, we did a “nuclear update” based on a long, tedious, but nonetheless comprehensive Foreign Ministry statement on North Korea’s nuclear policy. Our conclusion: not good. The new leadership was basically following the footsteps of the old, with little fresh thinking and perhaps even a harsher edge. Given the elections in the [...]
The US is not the only country in the midst of a presidential election. In an earlier post, I reprinted some snippets of Ahn Cheol-soo’s musings on North Korea taken from his book. Opposition rival Moon Jae-in has made a major policy speech on North Korea; Karin Lee at the National Committee on North Korea [...]
Chung-in Moon is one of Korea’s most important foreign policy intellectuals and a perennial thorn in the side of South Korea’s hawks. In the 1980s, when it was genuinely risky to do so—both politically and professionally—Moon was thinking about alternative approaches to North Korea. He subsequently became an advisor to both the Kim Dae Jung [...]
Anyone who watches North Korea closely has to take seriously what Lee Sigal writes. He has consistently made the case that the North Koreans are willing to respond to positive incentives, while sanctions are counterproductive; in short, Pyongyang plays a tit-for-tat game. A short annotated bibliography of important pieces are appended below, and they cover [...]
