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A central problem in dealing with North Korea is the low signal-to-noise ratio in Pyongyang’s policy pronouncements, a point made tellingly in an interesting academic piece by Vito D’Orazio we discussed around the time of the joint military exercises last year. (For those with journal access, the piece was subsequently published in the Journal of [...]
Economists have a disconcerting habit of studying their own models for so long that they lose track of reality; one such tendency is to focus on “efficiency” to the exclusion of all other values in human relations. Political scientists do the same thing with concepts like “regime preservation.” But understanding that all professions suffer from [...]
Recently the website Buzzfeed published an article highlighting some of the more obscure dating sites available online. It appears there is an online dating site for just about every interest. SeaCaptainDate, as the name suggests, matches lonely sea captains with potential first mates. WomenBehindBars provides women currently in prison with a venue to attract potential pen [...]
Unable to afford Superbowl ad rates, North Korea went the El Cheapo route, uploading an internet ad for one of its traditional products, “Belligerence.” Or at least that’s what the “North Korea taunts US with weird video” headlines would lead you to believe, but what’s really going on here? First, of all the ad is [...]
The South Korean public regards “economic growth” as the top priority for the incoming Park Geun-hye government according to two recent polls. I recently received a short report from the TNS office in Seoul summarizing South Korean public opinion on a variety of issues, and comparing those views to those found five years ago as [...]
North Korea has responded to UNSC Resolution 2087 with an extraordinarily inflammatory statement, issued by the National Defense Commission, directly threatening the United States. The statement is reproduced in its entirety below. It is worthwhile to read what the North Koreans actually say without assuming that it is the opening bid in a game with a [...]
You have to hand it to the North Koreans: sometimes they come up with really clever wheezes to extract money from others. Last week the Ministry of Unification announced that they had been informed that on 30 December the Supreme People’s Assembly had added 2-3 January to the list of public holidays for 2013. No [...]
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 [...]
To welcome in the new year, let’s see that’s Juche 102. I thought that I would take a quick stroll through some of the stories we blogged on or at least meant to blog on in the past year. First, as even the most casual reader of this blog knows, we have a thing for [...]
Teach a man to fish: Joongang Ilbo is reporting that “North Korea used construction equipment and materials from South Korea to aid with the latest launch of the ballistic rocket Unha-3.” The unnamed South Korean government source went on to claim that “The U.S. and South Korean intelligence authorities spotted the North using cranes, forklifts [...]
