Security

On June 25, 1950, North Korea launched a surprise invasion of South Korea and started a war that is still technically ongoing. But it was – as North Korea’s Kim…

It’s been nearly one year since the Singapore Summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un and the two countries are at an impasse. North Korea signals no intention of giving…

Even before the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, foreign policy practitioners and observers were talking about the difficulties of sequencing international sanctions relief for North Korea…

The second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on February 27 and 28 ended without an agreement. The key difference in the two leaders’ negotiating…

A three-hour military parade and a fireworks display in Pyongyang on January 14 punctuated the end of the 8th Congress of the Workers Party of Korea.  The 8th Congress, which lasted eight days, was the first such high party gathering since 2016 and only the second since the 6th Congress was held in 1980.  Such…

Joseph Biden will be inaugurated on Wednesday, 20 January, bringing the Trump era to an end. Under the 45th president, American alliances faced significant stress from his skepticism of multilateralism and preference for transactional agreements. The U.S.-ROK alliance was no different, with friction arising between Seoul and Washington from time to time. As the Biden…

On January 9, the DPRK’s Permanent Mission to the UN sent out a press release reproducing a portion of a much longer report that North Korean media sources had released on the first days of the Party Congress. It appeared to contain a mildly hopeful message, taking note of the Singapore summit declaration that “assures…

With Joe Biden headed to the White House, North Korea watchers are speculating how the incoming administration will deal with this long-standing foreign policy irritant. One place to look for cues is to review the spate of Obama-era memoirs to outline his administration’s first year with North Korea. In Part 1 and Part 2, I…