Korea, North

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, North Korea has embraced relations with Russia as a key component of its foreign policy and domestic development. However,…

Relations between Russia and North Korea are growing closer. Pyongyang has been publically supportive of Russia’s war in Ukraine and is reported to have supplied Moscow with millions of artillery…

KEI is pleased to hold a program on Economic Security and U.S.-China Competition: The View From North Korea. One country is conspicuously missing from existing discussions about the dilemmas and…

The recent war in Ukraine, Russia’s overtures towards North Korea, and North Korea’s emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic all signal a sea-change for the DPRK’s place in the international system.…

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.