Author: Ron Huisken, ANU

The Australia-Japan International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament released its initial report on December 15, 2009. While the reaction, in Australia at least, has been subdued, The Australian newspaper has run two substantive reactions – both somewhat disdainful. One contended that that the report consisted of little more than naive noble sentiments thrown at intractable realities while the other insisted that the report dangerously discounts essential security functions performed by a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent.

Both reactions have merit, but neither engages the real issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: James Lister, Korea Economic Institute

Free elections are not part of North Korea’s political fabric, but Kim Jong-Il and his advisors are undoubtedly aware that the regime’s legitimacy will be challenged if it fails to meet its promise of achieving a strong and prosperous nation by 2012, particularly if it faces a leadership transition. The November 30 announcement of currency reform, entailing redenomination of the North Korean won such that 100 old won = 1 new won, appears to be a gamble that it can achieve that objective in an ideologically acceptable manner. It is a huge bet.

As clarified and adjusted over the course of the subsequent weeks (according to press reports, as official announcements remain lacking) the measures required residents to exchange old won for new won currency up to a limit of 500,000 old won per individual—equivalent to US$200 or less at unofficial market rates. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Yoon Young-kwan, Seoul National University, Korea

With the backdrop of global economic crisis, the Korean economy also experienced serious decline. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the economic growth rate fell by 5.1 per cent compared to the previous quarter. However, the economy returned to positive growth in the first quarter of 2009 and recovered to pre-crisis rates of 2.6 percent and 3.2 per cent in the second and third quarters. The Korean economy is recuperating faster than any other OECD country, except Australia, and the IMF expects 4.5 per cent growth in 2010. Though there were some discussions recently inside the government about the exit strategy, President Lee Myung-bak opted for a cautious approach.

In contrast to a positive economic performance, domestic politics in South Korea remained turbulent in 2009 if not more so than in the previous year. Read the rest of this entry »

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 100^th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, Kim Jong Il’s 70^th birthday, and the 30^th 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 the rest of this entry »

Author: Amy King, Oxford

Obama’s first visit to Asia as President has attracted widespread criticism. On everything from his decision to bow to the Japanese emperor, to his failure to achieve concessions from China on climate change and human rights, US press coverage in particular has characterised the visit as a failure (although James Fallows has attacked the mainstream US press for ‘manufacturing’ this failure).

Yet on North Korea, the Obama administration has achieved some success. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrei Lankov, Kookmin University

North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, but it makes sense for the United States to continue talks now with a more realistic understanding of the North’s strategies and goals.

President Barack Obama arrived in Seoul last Wednesday for a summit meeting with President Lee Myung-bak. No doubt, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme will play a major role in the forthcoming negotiations. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner

Relations with North Korea seem heeded in a more positive direction after the Chinese PM Wen’s visit to Pyongyang, President Hu’s talk with Kim’s envoy and after the informal meeting between State Department official, Sung Kim and North Korean nuclear negotiator, Ri Gun in San Diego at the end of October. Yet tensions are still simmering with the naval clash between North and South Korea Monday the 9th.

On top of that Obama is going to tour the region starting Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrei Lankov

When it comes to dealing with North Korea, the United States and its allies have no efficient methods of coercion at their disposal; the regime is remarkably immune to outside pressure. Its leaders cannot afford change, so they make sure their state continues to be an international threat, using nuclear blackmail as a survival tactic while their unlucky subjects endure more poverty and terror.

Since outside pressure is ineffective, change will have to come from the North Koreans themselves. The United States and its allies can best help them by exposing them to the very attractive alternatives to their current way of life. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner

Barack Obama: ‘America … has to talk with its enemies.’ ’[It] requires allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other’.

North Korea is a litmus test for Obama’s foreign policy tenets. On the one hand, Obama promised to speak with the enemy to bring new results in foreign policy. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Amy King, Oxford University

On August 4, the North Korean regime released two detained American journalists after former US President Bill Clinton’s visit to Pyongyang. Clinton’s surprise visit to North Korea was, at best, bittersweet for Japan. The US has consistently exhorted Japan to use the six-party framework to resolve its abduction issue, so Clinton’s ‘humanitarian’ visit to North Korea appeared hypocritical to Japan. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Kawamura Takeo, welcomed the release of the two US journalists and thanked Clinton for pressing North Korea on the Japanese abduction issue. However, the Japanese press was not nearly so magnanimous and was quick to link the Clinton visit to Japan’s ineffectual handling of the North Korean abduction issue. The Japan Times ran with the headline ‘Clinton’s success highlights Japan’s abductees failure’, while Japan Today questioned why Japan did not have its own Clinton to deal with North Korea.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrei Lankov

In the past decade or so, the small army of Pyongyang watchers have been looking for signs of a coming great event, which most expected to happen at any moment. They waited for Dear Leader Kim Jong-il’s decision on the power succession in the world’s only communist monarchy. There were false alarms, waves of unconfirmed and mutually exclusive rumors, but finally, early this year, signals emerging from the North seemingly confirmed: the succession was finally decided.

The first reports were met with some skepticism. However, by April there were no doubts: Kim Jong-un, Kim’s youngest son, began to be frequently mentioned in the North Korean classified propaganda materials. These publications are off-limits for common North Koreans, but the message was clear: the virtues of the ‘brilliant comrade’ Kim Jong-un were extolled in a way which would be proper only for the next leader. So, Kim Jong-il finally made up his mind about succession – or at least that is what most observers came to believe.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Ron Huisken

It is not hard to read into Pyongyang’s behaviour in the Six Party talks. There is a profound ambivalence about what it should be asking for and even about whether it should be in the negotiations at all.

This ambivalence seems to have been tested by the Bush administration which, in its second term, switched from demands to negotiations, and private bilaterals with the DPRK outside the Six-Party framework. It even delivered on a key demand: delisting the DPRK as state sponsor of terrorism, in October 2008.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrei Lankov, Kookmin University

Bill Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang and the release of the American journalists confirmed what many observers have suspected since early July: North Korea is indicating its willingness to re-start talks with the United States. There are reasons why Washington should not rush to the negotiation table immediately, but few people doubt that these talks will start relatively soon.

The negotiations are likely to be characterized as talks about getting the North to give up its nuclear weapons. But one should not be misled: No amount of diplomatic dealing can achieve that goal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris

The LDP continues to set the tone in the non-campaign campaign. Speaking in Hiroshima on the occasion of the sixty-fourth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, Prime Minister Aso Taro stressed the existence of ‘a country with nuclear weapons that could attack as our neighbor,’ and reiterated the importance of the US nuclear umbrella.

That Aso stressed the US nuclear umbrella ought to deflate the impact of the first statement somewhat: if the US nuclear umbrella is adequate to meet the North Korean nuclear arsenal, then the prime minister is suggesting that North Korea can be dealt with in the same way that Japan has dealt with the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals. But, of course, Aso’s purpose was to call attention to North Korea as a country THAT COULD ATTACK Japan rather than his suggestion that the North Korea could be managed via the same arrangement by which the much larger and sophisticated Russian and Chinese arsenals have been contained.

In other words, another day of the LDP’s playing on the public’s fears to make its case for a new mandate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Mel Gurtov, Portland State University

The photograph that came out of an Asian regional security meeting—the ARF (Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum)—in Bangkok last week told it all: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walking past her North Korean counterpart without so much as a nod of greeting. ‘We really don’t have any intention of talking to them,’ she said. ‘What we are interested in is North Korea coming back to the table and continuing the negotiation that will lead to a denuclearized Korean peninsula.’ Yet a member of the North Korean delegation did not dismiss the idea of a meeting with Secretary Clinton on the sidelines. ‘It will depend on the situation,’ one delegate from the North Korean foreign ministry reportedly said. Other North Korean spokespersons have reportedly said the same thing since.

To meet or not to meet, that is the question. An assumption widely shared by North Korea specialists is that one purpose of all the saber rattling by Pyongyang in recent months is to refocus American attention on the Korean situation and negotiate a new agreement in bilateral talks with Washington. The Obama administration has not ruled out a new package of incentives, according to some reports, though the price North Korea would have to pay may at this point be too high: complete, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear disarmament, the same demand once made by the Bush administration. So far, however, any such U.S. offer would only be made in the context of the Six Party Talks (6PT).

Read the rest of this entry »