Foreign Relations

North Korea’s ballistic missile tests in July 2006 shone a spotlight on security issues in East Asia. The media paid much attention to political challenges facing the U.S.-ROK alliance. Another…

During the past few years, the United States has begun three important initiatives that alter its defense commitment to South Korea (Republic of Korea [ROK]). First, Washington started to decrease…

By Troy Stangarone With the passage of a new round of sanctions against North Korea, there is an expectation that Pyongyang will not go gracefully into negotiations over its weapons programs. While negotiating and passing a new resolution took the Obama Administration more than twice as long as any prior resolution in response to a…

By Troy Stangarone Faced with a fourth North Korean nuclear test and a new long range missile test, along with the possibility that North Korea once again could face relatively mild sanctions from the international community, South Korea faced a strategic dilemma. Should it allow prior patterns of response to prevail and potentially subsequent nuclear…

Shortly before the 8th Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire North Korea conducted its second successful satellite launch. North Korea was also topic of discussion at the 5th Democratic presidential debate a few days earlier. Here is what the candidates had to say about the satellite launch in the Republican debate and more generally about…

By Troy Stangarone After moving up its launch window, North Korea again violated previous UN Security Council resolutions by conducting a long-range rocket launch as part of a mission to put its second satellite in orbit. Combined with it fourth nuclear test a little more than a month ago, Pyongyang has undertaken two major provocations…