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 on Korea and the war in Ukraine, I showed that Moon administration moved relatively quickly to join the international sanctions regime and was rewarded by inclusion on Russia’s  "unfriendly nations" list. I also argued that the costs of standing on international legal principle were softened by the fact that the…

Over the last half decade, the Korean Peninsula has seen the prospect of war during Donald Trump’s period of “fire and fury,” but also a period of negotiations that resulted in a series of North-South and U.S.-North Korea summits. While war was avoided, those efforts at negotiation ultimately failed. The aftermath of those failed negotiations,…

After more than two years since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 has finally been detected in North Korea. Despite strict border controls limiting the movement of people and goods to prevent entry of the novel coronavirus, state media reported on 12 May that the Omicron BA.2 variant had been found in a sample taken…

North Korean officials confirmed the first deaths in the country from COVID-19 on May 13, and the latest North Korean news media reports state that well over a million North Koreans are suffering “fever symptoms.” (See reports in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, CNN, Voice of America.) Kim Jong-un appeared…

Please join KEI for a discussion on North Korea’s potential incorporation of AI into its cyber arsenal.