North Korea poses the most serious security challenges for South Korea and Japan that they have faced in many decades as well as formidable challenges for the United States, and it is prompting China and Russia to reassess security concerns in a changing regional framework. The chapters in Part 2 cover these challenges from the separate perspectives of four front-line states. After the North’s aggressiveness in 2010 and the interlude in 2011 as Kim Jong-il exercised more restraint in return for much increased assistance from China and in the process of positioning his son, Kim Jong-un, to step into his shoes, the countries most concerned are preparing for security issues again to rise to the forefront. Their views on how to manage security on the peninsula offer a snapshot of a region gearing for an uncertain transition.

This section contains the following chapters:

• The View from China
  Andrew Scobell, RAND Corporation
• The View from Russia
  Stephen Blank, U.S. Army War College
• Japanese Security Strategy and the Korean Peninsula
  Michishita Narushige,National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan
• The View from South Korea
  Taeho Kim, Hallym University