Experts are debating what precisely are the motives behind North Korea’s recent spike in belligerent rhetoric and posturing, with answers ranging from the opinion that “war talk” is an attempt by the North’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, to solidify his hold on power to the worry that the regime is losing its grip on reality. What is more certain, however, is the set of assumptions guiding Pyongyang’s strategic calculus. Whether the North Korean leadership’s assessments are accurate or not — and what steps the other powers in the region take to correct them — may help determine how this [...]
When North Korea surprised the international community by detonating a nuclear device in February, America’s at the time brand new secretary of state, John Kerry, drew a link between Pyongyang and Tehran. Failure to respond decisively to North Korea’s provocation, Kerry warned, risked emboldening Iran. Kerry was suggesting that the impact of the North Korean crisis on Iran would come as a result of the conclusions Tehran might draw about its own nuclear program from closely observing international reactions to North Korea’s. But it is likely that the impact of the North Korean situation on the diplomatic standoff with Iran [...]
On March 11, North Korea declared that it would withdraw from the 1953 armistice that stopped the war on the Korean Peninsula. In an email interview, Balbina Y. Hwang, a visiting professor at Georgetown University and a former adviser at the U.S. State Department who has written extensively on the Koreas, discussed the significance of the move and its likely impacts. WPR: Technically, what does the armistice control? Balbina Y. Hwang: The Korean Armistice, signed on July 27, 1953, established the parameters of a cease-fire between the official warring parties of the Korean conflict: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [...]
