While North Korea’s economy is suffering greatly under the combined pressure of sanctions and border closures because of COVID-19, by escalating tensions it puts pressure on South Korea to grant concessions and frames it to a domestic audience as responsible for North Korea's economic situation.
When North Korea wants a crisis on the peninsula, it does not allow a peace process with the U.S. president to get in the way.
The recently released Korea Net Assessment addresses the gap between strategic realities and political assessments on the issues most important to Korean security: North Korea’s military threat, the health of the alliance, and South Korean relations with China and Japan.
As nations confront the pandemic, rumors of Kim Jung-un’s death and a flurry of North Korean missile tests injected even more uncertainty in the international landscape. How do views in Washington, Seoul, and Beijing differ or align on North Korea?
As South Korea ponders the future of inter-Korean ties and the prospects for unification, one abiding reality is that core security choices are going to become increasingly difficult and politically charged.
While the Trump administration is consumed with the coronavirus, China and North Korea are seizing the moment for strategic advantage.
Resolving security issues on the Korean peninsula will require diminishing the role of deterrence in inter-Korean affairs. Cooperative security is a useful concept to guide this shift.
President Trump, a marketer by inclination, has succeeded in convincing his followers that the North Korean problem is well on its way to being solved.
The most striking feature of the security environment on the Korean Peninsula is the gap between assessments made by political leaders and the growing array of asymmetrical threats emanating from North Korea.
In holding out for the big deal, unfortunately, the Trump administration—like its predecessors—sacrificed a more immediate and necessary operational objective: stopping North Korean progress toward a larger and more menacing nuclear arsenal that could reliably target the mainland United States.
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