For North Korea to rise higher on the list of U.S. priorities, Washington policymakers will have to stop considering it in isolation.
My Strategic Impatience
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North Korea
Why North Korea Today Is Not East Germany 1989
Policymakers have long predicted that North Korea will go the way of East German Communism. Not so fast.
Kim the Third
No one performs Shakespeare in the theaters of Pyongyang. Instead, he is enacted in the corridors of power.
Keeping North Korean in Japan
Parents and students in Japan’s “North Korean” schools struggle to maintain their identity in an increasingly hostile environment.
Korea’s Domestic Cold War
South Korea’s conservative government is rolling back free speech protections and going after progressive activists and political parties.
Nothing to Celebrate: North Koreans with Disabilities
On the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, a look at the grim prospects for disabled North Koreans.
Collapsism
When small children want something to go away, they close their eyes. Poof! The monster disappears. The spoonful of spinach vanishes. The spilled milk evaporates. Except that they don’t. U.S policymakers indulge in a similar variety of child’s play called collapsism....
Southern Inhospitality
In every way, Yu Woo-seong was a model defector. In his early 30s, he was smart, friendly, ambitious, and well liked. Trained as a doctor in North Korea, he eschewed the competitive South Korean medical school system and instead pursued a bachelor’s degree in business...
North Korea and the Myth of U.S.-China Rivalry
As Iraq and Afghanistan fade from memory, North Korea has entered the U.S. imagination as the latest threat to national security. Alongside hysterical warnings of impending attack, many foreign policy analysts argue that events on the peninsula reflect an emergent...
Competitive Suffering
I was nearly at the end of a presentation on the North Korean prison camp system, when the last person in the audience grasped the microphone to ask a question. His question was so unexpected that I was literally blindsided.