Author: Scott A. Snyder, CFR
North Korea’s leadership succession from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un has gone according to script.
The Korean Workers’ Party and the Korean People’s Army are supporting Kim Jong-un as North Korea’s new leader and North Korea’s propaganda machine has not missed a beat in announcing new titles, manufacturing accomplishments and portraying Kim Jong-un as a Great Successor worthy of the name. Read more…
Author: Scott A. Snyder, CFR
North Korea’s National Defense Commission recently released a rare public statement on inter-Korean relations in response to Lee Myung-Bak’s 9 May Berlin speech inviting Kim Jong Il to attend next year’s Nuclear Security Summit.
The statement came only days after Kim Jong Il’s return from last week’s visit to China where he met with PRC President Hu Jintao, and it responds to the 19 May revelation by South Korea’s Blue House spokesperson that secret contact had been made with North Korean counterparts in advance of Lee’s Berlin invitation. Read more…
Author: Scott Snyder, Asia Foundation
Ten years ago, North Korea snubbed China’s defence minister on the 50th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese people’s volunteers into the Korean War: Instead, Kim Jong-il hosted the first-ever visit by a US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. A mirror image of that snub was recently delivered to a former American president, marking North Korea’s changed circumstances.
The snub to Beijing in 2000 arguably underscored the depth of North Korea’s desire to balance its dependency on China by pursuing diplomatic normalisation with the United States. Read more…
Author: Scott A. Snyder, CFR
I’ve been watching North Korea ramp up efforts to attract foreign investment since Jack Pritchard and I heard last November in Pyongyang from the chairman of Pyongyang’s Foreign Investment Advisory Board a presentation of new laws that provide for repatriation of investments, tax benefits, and wages of 30 Euros/month that undercut the $57/month wage rate at the Kaesong Industrial Zone.
Although catastrophic failure of currency revaluation implemented from late November of last year has severely eroded the credibility of the government’s economic policies, there are serious efforts underway to realise new foreign investment at Rajin-Sonbong port at the northeastern tip of North Korea. Read more…
Author: Scott Snyder, Asia Foundation, Korea
Every North Korean seems to have been mobilized for an all-out push to mark their country’s arrival as a ‘strong and powerful nation’ in 2012, which marks the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, Kim Jong Il’s 70th birthday, and the 30th birthday of Kim Jong Il’s third son and reported successor, Kim Jong-Eun. Pyongyang citizens have cleaned up the city during a 150-day labor campaign, followed by a second 100-day campaign now underway. The Ryugyong Hotel in the middle of Pyongyang, unfinished for over two decades, has been given a facelift courtesy of the Egyptian telecommunications firm Orascom, which expects to have 100,000 mobile phone customers in Pyongyang by the end of the year. But it is still difficult to shake the feeling in Pyongyang that one has walked onto a movie set in between takes. Or that the used car l ooks good on the outside, but you really don’t know what you might find if you were able to look under the hood or give it a test-drive.
North Korean foreign ministry officials seem to have moved on from nuclear talks, although they make it clear their outrage at United Nations condemnation of their April multi-stage rocket launch as an affront to their sovereignty. Read more…
Author: Scott Snyder, Asia Foundation
As global leaders convened in Pittsburgh to address the global economic crisis for the third time in less than a year, there is cause for both optimism and a heavy sense of responsibility to sustain early signs of a global recovery.
Follow-up measures from Pittsburgh within the G20 will fall primarily to South Korea as the chair and host of G20 meetings during 2010 shifts from London to Seoul. This development will mark a significant symbolic turning point in global governance, as South Korea will be the first non-G8 country to hold those responsibilities Read more…
Author: Scott Snyder, Asia Foundation
Given North Korea’s history of crisis escalation, it should have been apparent that the ‘Dear Leader’–Kim Jong Il–would not abide the prospect of being ignored by a new American President who has pursued a strategy of continuity, containment, and incrementalism. In fact, North Korean never gave the President a chance to reach out before acting provocatively by conducting a second nuclear weapons test as well as more missile tests. This highlights the need for a proactive US policy toward the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia.
In the face of North Korea’s stream of hyperbolic nuclear threats, President Obama’s Rose Garden June 16th press conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak gave the impression that North Korea had exhausted its threat capacity. The President argued that the US should calmly and firmly break North Korea’s past pattern of bad behavior, but North Korea is unlikely to respond well to such an approach.
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