North Korea Archive

Unless you’re Rip Van Winkle, you probably already know that next month, international attention will be on the world’s two acute nuclear weapons cases: Iran and North Korea. May 12 is the deadline for U.S. President Donald Trump to decide if he will continue to waive sanctions against Iran as part of the seven-nation nuclear agreement signed in 2015. And all month long, teams in Washington and Pyongyang will be planning an unprecedented summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with the North’s nuclear program the main item on the agenda. There are at least two ways […]

Peace processes are always excruciatingly complex, in part because peacemaking is rarely just a matter of making peace. Power politics almost always gets in the way. Two particularly difficult cases that currently loom over international politics are heading in strikingly different directions. Multilateral efforts to end the Syrian war are grotesquely stalled. North and South Korea, by contrast, are hurtling toward peace with an almost indecent haste. The two cases offer very different visions of the future of major power cooperation and conflict, and above all the continuing role of America as a global peacemaker. Since the end of the […]

Peacemaking is generally a quiet and deliberative business. Professional mediators typically approach international standoffs and civil wars in a methodical and low-key manner. They assume that any sudden moves or big news stories about a peace process will throw everything off-track. If you ever meet a group of mediators from organizations like the United Nations, you will notice that they have a penchant for long silences, oblique comments and inscrutable glances. Donald J. Trump is known for exactly none of these things. The U.S. president’s extraordinarily high-profile decision to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over Pyongyang’s nuclear […]