Foreign Relations

Seoul has gradually adopted a more outspoken position regarding the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and framed it in increasingly expansive terms—as a regional and global…

The development of the concept of the Indo-Pacific strategy, since its adoption by the United States in 2017, has primarily been driven by the emergence of China as an object…

On January 6 North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test and its second successful satellite launch on February 7, 2016. The following is a collection of the international response to these two actions. United States January 6, 2016 – South Korea and the U.S. has stepped up joint defense readiness by increasing surveillance activities to…

By Thomas Lee With almost three months remaining before the 7th Korean Worker’s Party Plenum is scheduled to convene in May, South Korean intelligence sources state that North Korea appears to preparing for its fifth nuclear test. Although few if any signs of test preparations have been detected by satellite imagery, the recent experience with…

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…