A Sharper Choice on North Korea
A Sharper Choice on North Korea

Author: Adam Mount

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press

Published: 2016-09-16

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780876096789

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A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force recommends revising U.S. policy toward North Korea to break the cycle of North Korean provocation and promote stability in Northeast Asia.

North Korea
North Korea

Author: Patrick McEachern

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0190938013

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After a year of trading colorful barbs with the American president and significant achievements in North Korea's decades-long nuclear and missile development programs, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared mission accomplished in November 2017. Though Kim's pronouncement appears premature, North Korea is on the verge of being able to strike the United States with nuclear weapons. South Korea has long been in the North Korean crosshairs but worries whether the United States would defend it if North Korea holds the American homeland at risk. The largely ceremonial summit between US president Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and the unpredictability of both parties, has not quelled these concerns and leaves more questions than answers for the two sides' negotiators to work out. The Korean Peninsula's security situation is an intractable conflict, raising the question, "How did we get here?" In this book, former North Korea lead foreign service officer at the US embassy in Seoul Patrick McEachern unpacks the contentious and tangled relationship between the Koreas in an approachable question-and-answer format. While North Korea is famous for its militarism and nuclear program, South Korea is best known for its economic miracle, familiar to consumers as the producer of Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars, and even K-pop music and K-beauty. Why have the two Koreas developed politically and economically in such radically different ways? What are the origins of a divided Korean Peninsula? Who rules the two Koreas? How have three generations of the authoritarian Kim dictatorship shaped North Korea? What is the history of North-South relations? Why does the North Korean government develop nuclear weapons? How do powers such as Japan, China, and Russia fit into the mix? What is it like to live in North and South Korea? This book tackles these broad topics and many more to explain what everyone needs to know about South and North Korea.

No Exit
No Exit

Author: Jonathan D. Pollack

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1351225243

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This book chronicles the political-military development of the Korean Peninsula since 1945, with particular attention to North Koreas pursuit of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, and how it has shaped Northeast Asian security and non-proliferation policy and influenced the strategic choices of the United States and all regional powers. I focus on North Koreas leaders, institutions, political history, and the systems longer-term prospects. How has an isolated, highly idiosyncratic, small state repeatedly stymied or circumvented the policy preferences of much more powerful states, culminating with its withdrawal from the Non Proliferation Treaty (the only state ever to do so) and the testing of nuclear weapons in open defiance of adversaries and allies alike? What does this portend for the regions future? Unlike most of the literature that focuses on US non proliferation policy, this is a book about decision making in North Korea and the states survival in the face of daunting odds. It draws on extensive interviews with individuals in China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the EU who have had ample experience in and with North Korea, additional interviews with former US policy makers, and the results from two visits to the North. The author makes extensive use of archival materials from the Cold War International History Project, enabling a far fuller rendering of North Korean history than appears in most of the literature on the North Korean nuclear weapons issue.

North Korea/South Korea
North Korea/South Korea

Author: John Feffer

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Published: 2003-09-20

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9781583226032

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The Korean peninsula, divided for more than fifty years, is stuck in a time warp. Millions of troops face one another along the Demilitarized Zone separating communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea. In the early 1990s and again in 2002-2003, the United States and its allies have gone to the brink of war with North Korea. Misinterpretations and misunderstandings are fueling the crisis. "There is no country of comparable significance concerning which so many people are ignorant," American anthropologist Cornelius Osgood said of Korea some time ago. This ignorance may soon have fatal consequences. North Korea, South Korea is a short, accessible book about the history and political complexites of the Korean peninsula, one that explores practical alternatives to the current US policy: alternatives that build on the remarkable and historic path of reconciliation that North and South embarked on in the 1990s and that point the way to eventual reunification.

Nuclear Endgame
Nuclear Endgame

Author: Jacques L. Fuqua Jr.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2007-07-30

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0313081352

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Despite the volatility and unpredictability North Korea has come to symbolize in international diplomacy and security issues, it represents only half of the potential danger on the Korean peninsula. In a notable departure from its past role as guarantor of stability on the Korean peninsula, the United States has, under the stewardship of the Bush administration, come to be regarded as, at best, an obstacle to peace and security, and at worst a potential trigger for hostility. The most immediate result of this shift on the Korean peninsula has been the US failure to undertake an effective policy formulation process, which has manifested itself (on both sides of the 38th parallel) in more reactive and convulsive responses to challenges from the North Korean regime. Without such understanding there is little hope of advancing discussions or resolving North Korea's nuclear program. Fundamental to understanding North Korea's endgame is realizing that its nuclear weapons program, while menacing, is unlikely to be used offensively without major provocation; it functions as a tool of its diplomacy—missile diplomacy—to ensure survival of the regime. Working closely with South Korea, the United States must ensure that any potential resolution reached on North Korea's nuclear program does not undermine its longer-term objectives for securing broader peace and security on the Korean peninsula. Ideally, any resolution brokered over the North's nuclear weapons program will provide a synergistic effect in addressing the conventional war threat posed by North Korea on the Korean peninsula. In short, the United States must undertake constructive engagement. Steadfast unwillingness to engage with North Korea only provides more fodder for the regime to stall any action, and, as part of its endgame, makes U.S. behavior the issue. the issue, which is part of its endgame.

North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival
North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival

Author: Young Whan Kihl

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-18

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1317463765

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Featuring contributions by some of the leading experts in Korean studies, this book examines the political content of Kim Jong-Il's regime maintenance, including both the domestic strategy for regime survival and North Korea's foreign relations with South Korea, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. It considers how and why the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) became a "hermit kingdom" in the name of Juche (self-reliance) ideology, and the potential for the barriers of isolationism to endure. This up-to-date analysis of the DPRK's domestic and external policy linkages also includes a discussion of the ongoing North Korean nuclear standoff in the region.

Nuclear North Korea
Nuclear North Korea

Author: Victor D. Cha

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0231548249

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Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang’s Nuclear North Korea was first published in 2003 amid the outbreak of a lasting crisis over the North Korean nuclear program. It promptly became a landmark of an ongoing debate in academic and policy circles about whether to engage or contain North Korea. Fifteen years later, as North Korea tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and the U.S. president angrily refers to Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man,” Nuclear North Korea remains an essential guide to the difficult choices we face. Coming from different perspectives—Kang believes the threat posed by Pyongyang has been inflated and endorses a more open approach, while Cha is more skeptical and advocates harsher measures, though both believe that some form of engagement is necessary—the authors together present authoritative analysis of one of the world’s thorniest challenges. They refute a number of misconceptions and challenge the faulty thinking that surrounds the discussion of North Korea, particularly the idea that North Korea is an irrational actor. Cha and Kang look at the implications of a nuclear North Korea, assess recent and current approaches to sanctions and engagement, and provide a functional framework for constructive policy. With a new chapter on the way forward for the international community in light of continued nuclear tensions, this book is of lasting relevance to understanding the state of affairs on the Korean peninsula.