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In October 2006, Kim Jong-il’s North Korea again seized international attention. With its claimed underground nuclear test, Pyongyang upped the ante in its confrontation with the United States and the…
In 2023, KEI has set out on its “Rethinking Korea initiative,” which explores the evolution of U.S.-Korea relations, Korea’s place in the world, and rapid changes in Korean society itself.…
You’ve probably heard the Korean War referred to as an unfinished conflict – but that’s not just a reference to the frozen war on the Peninsula. The sudden outbreak of…
We often talk about whether the sanctions against North Korea are working. And we have spoken occasionally on this very podcast about the ways North Korea also cheats and gets…
North Korea is putting on a tough face as the world confronts the COVID-19 pandemic. Authorities in Pyongyang continue to reassure the rest of the world that nothing is wrong…
In the last two posts, we have provided data on the share of military personnel in the Politburo and analyzed in more detail the diversity of military backgrounds, some tied to the weapons program, but others linked more clearly to the military-industrial complex, technology and internal security. Here, we consider several intepretations of these developments,…
In a previous post, we provided data on the shifting composition of the Politburo, based on a classification of personnel into six different career paths: military, diplomatic, party, state, economic and provincial. We showed that since the failed Hanoi summit of 2018, the share of military personnel has returned to levels not seen since the…
One prominent strand of North Korea watching takes the form of tracking individual personnel movements: the ups and downs associated with retirements, purges and the promotion of new favorites. Yet there is persistent doubt about whether these movements are really consequential, particularly in a highly personalist political system. We can get a somewhat more rounded…
After the first U.S-North Korea summit held in Singapore in 2018, President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un vowed to “establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.” Although an end of war declaration has been identified as one way for both sides…
Please join KEI for a discussion on North Korea’s potential incorporation of AI into its cyber arsenal.