When senior Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei left for North Korea in early February to persuade Kim to step down from his threat of launching a missile, not only did his entreaties fall on deaf ears, Kim also ordered the launch a day earlier so that it fell on that same day, the eve of the Lunar New Year.
With the passage of a new round of sanctions against North Korea, there is an expectation that Pyongyang will not go gracefully into negotiations over its weapons programs. How might Pyongyang respond to the new sanctions?
In last night’s CNN-Telemundo Republican debate, the remaining candidates got the chance to comment on the situation on the Korean Peninsula and highlight their policy for the region.
KEI Communications Director Jenna Gibson, host of Korean Kontext, recently interviewed Justice Michael Kirby who led the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea. The following is a partial transcript of that conversation.
Commentators have sometimes hypothesized that one of its positive effects of the COI Report could be that North Korean prison officials moderate some of their brutality out of fear of eventually being held accountable. We have now heard that this may be happening in reality.
To what extent should financial losses coinciding with North Korean provocations be considered as wholly isolated from market trends or at least marginally interconnected?
Five books that look at the human face of North Koreans.
Seoul has chosen to change the international dynamics surrounding North Korea’s nuclear program, and may be beginning to see early dividends in its shift in policy.
Make no mistake, South Korea’s shuttering of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) which it had operated just across the border in North Korea since 2004 is a big deal.
Shortly before the 8th Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire North Korea conducted its second successful satellite launch. North Korea was also topic of discussion at the 5th Democratic presidential debate a few days earlier. Here is what the candidates had to say about the satellite launch in the Republican debate and more generally about North Korea in the Democratic debate.