North Korea Archive

As the athletes marched in for the closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics on Sunday, it was hard to find the blue-and-white Korean unification flag. Rather than marching under that flag and in matching white uniforms, like they had for the opening ceremony, athletes from the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea waved their respective national flags and wore separate outfits. Was the spirit of unity from two weeks ago already gone? The diplomatic work to get the North Koreans to the Olympics as part of a single Korean delegation should not be confused with […]

Over the past few months, the Trump administration has reportedly been mulling a limited, preventive military strike against North Korea, what has been called the “bloody nose” strategy. Pushed hardest by President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, it is based on the belief that if North Korea has the ability to strike the United States with nuclear weapons, Washington would be deterred from intervening on the Korean Peninsula, thus allowing Pyongyang to step up its aggression against South Korea and other nearby nations. The only way to prevent this scenario, the thinking goes, is a military […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss three international crises faced by the Trump administration that are now coming to a head. In Syria, North Korea and Venezuela, the administration will soon have to take decisions and actions with important consequences. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get some of our uncompromising analysis delivered twice a week straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free and timely […]