KEI Contributor – Mark Tokola

This article was published in United States Institute of Peace on March 25, 2024. The September 13, 2023, meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Russia’s Amur Oblast marked a…

KEI’s Vice President  Mark Tokola was interviewed on VOA’s Washington Talk. This interview was published on June 10, 2023. https://keia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/01000000-0a00-0242-e308-08db6945ecad_Trim.mp4   To watch the full clip on VOA, please click here.…

Directly addressing the question of how the U.S. government should respond to China’s hostile economic behaviors, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola published an op-ed on National Interest that outlines how…

In his latest column for the Asia Times, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola notes that there are four assumptions that underpin the U.S. approach to North Korea. There is a…

Does the forty-fifth president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, have a foreign policy, not least of all inclusive of the vital Northeast Asian region? The question is not…

With an outbreak of diplomacy under way for the Korean Peninsula, a review of North Korea’s approach to negotiations is timely. A summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and…

For the proverbial visitor from Mars, the political situation in Northeast Asia is inexplicable. Sitting amidst a group of relatively stable, wealthy, and powerful countries, is a small, poor, belligerent…

Today’s relationship between the United States and China is more varied, complex, and cooperative than the accumulation of headlines would lead one to believe. The news media and commentators spotlight…

By Mark Tokola 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.  Far from being a commercial venture of marginal overall economic importance to the two countries, it has been a powerful symbol that no…

By Mark Tokola North Korea’s claim to have recently tested a Hydrogen bomb is disputable because the explosion seems to have been no larger than during its 2013 test of a “conventional” nuclear device.  That does not in itself diminish the seriousness of North Korea having conducted a fourth nuclear weapons test.  Foreign policy questions…

By Mark Tokola No one apart from the representatives of the North Korean and South Korean governments who took part in the marathon talks over the weekend of August 22 can know exactly what took place.  But there is some inevitable spin regarding who came away the “winner.”  North Korea says that it forced South…

By Mark Tokola Short conversations about North Korea generally end with similar conclusions: it is too soon to tell whether Kim Jong-un has successfully entrenched himself; the North Korean economy whether by design or necessity has introduced some market elements; China is growing impatient with North Korea’s unpredictability and belligerency; and Kim Jung-un’s regime is…