Author: Joel S. Wit, John Hopkins University

In 1998, I led a team of American government experts to an underground installation to determine if North Korea was cheating on a 1994 agreement to eliminate its nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang had recently tested a long-range missile, and relations were tense.

For a week, we passed barking guard dogs and shouting soldiers doing their synchronised morning exercises to wander through a maze of tunnels. Read more…