Every morning, in a school located in the heart of Tokyo, high school students change into traditional uniforms, file into their classrooms, and gather under portraits of North Korea’s former leaders Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung. Most have never set foot on the Korean peninsula. This is a school for Koreans in Japan; specifically, those […]
Tag: North Korea
The Koreas: Stars of a Familiar Global Standoff
70 years after South Korea and North Korea called a ceasefire on their ongoing armed conflict, tensions have run high between the two countries, but not culminating in mass violence. Their diplomatic relations continue to remain frosty, and their differences have diverged further through their respective alliances with the United States and Russia. Given the […]
Japan and South Korea Seek Reconciliation Amidst North Korean Missile Threats
Following a North Korean missile launch on the 14th of April, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea have agreed to increase the frequency of missile defense exercises and discussed resuming joint training. While the U.S. has maintained its presence in East Asia as well as its good relationships with both Japan and South Korea, this […]
Why China’s Growing Influence in the Middle East Matters
Trailing behind the exit of the United States, China has taken an interest in the Middle East, brokering diplomatic deals between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is a surprising role for China to take on, as the country has, in the past, shown relatively little interest in that region of the world. The spike in […]
Who Has Missiles, Who Buys Missiles, Who Decides
Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, according to friends I’ve spoken with, successfully romanticized the arms contracting business in the 2016 movie War Dogs. Guns, girls, excitement and fear all play into the fetishes in a boy’s mind should he be raised amidst American capitalism and the international military industrial complex. The film focuses on those […]
Schooled: Could North Korea Learn from Vietnam’s Higher Education Reforms?
Going to college has never been as popular in Vietnam as it is now. The number of students in higher education has skyrocketed from 133,000 students in 1987 to 2.12 million students in 2015—nearly a sixteen-fold increase over less than thirty years. This increase in education has provided the human capital necessary for Vietnam to […]
Whither Vietnam? A Q&A with Professor T.J. Pempel
In light of Donald Trump’s recent Hanoi summit with Kim Jong Un, Caleb Groen asks Professor T.J. Pempel how the Vietnamese communist party liberalized the economy while retaining its hold on power.
To Engage or Not to Engage: Diplomacy with North Korea?
Editors’ disclaimer: this debate was crafted during early 2018, before the development of new events between North and South Korea’s possible peace treaty that would formally end the Korean War. The contents discussed in the debate below ought to be evaluated as if such a groundbreaking event has yet to occur. RESOLVED: The United States […]
Sanctions: A Foreign Policy Tool, or a Political One?
In September 2017, The United Nations Security Council placed a new round of sanctions on North Korea, which were deemed the harshest yet. In response to North Korea’s ballistic missile test in November 2017, a newer, tougher round of sanctions was passed. At the time, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, claimed, “Today, […]
An Olympic Thaw, or Not
The opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was a symbol of hope. Dressed in all white, athletes from North and South Korea marched together under the same flag. The Olympics have long been a site of international sportsmanship, but the last time the two Koreas marched together was in the Olympics of Winter 2006, under the […]
Whose Allies Are They, Anyway? : North Korea’s Illicit Trade and the Role of China
North Korea. The world’s least free society, behind the world’s most militarized border, with the world’s most threatening nuclear weapons program. Despite a fanatical ideology of self-reliance, juche, Pyongyang maintains selective contacts with the outside world. These contacts are primarily aimed at maintaining the stability of the North Korean economy, and they have generally been […]
The North Korean Nuclear Crisis: Where to Go From Here
On September 15th, North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido for the second time in the span of three weeks. This provocative launch comes just four days after the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous adoption of new U.S.-drafted sanctions on North Korea. Despite the new sanctions’ unprecedented severity and the […]
The Danger of Land-Based Nuclear Weapons
“I am become death destroyer of worlds” said J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Hindu scripture The Bhagavad Gita, as he watched the first nuclear weapon explode before his eyes. Since then, the US nuclear arsenal has changed dramatically to confront evolving adversaries, but our overreliance on land-based missiles may make Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic rhetoric a reality. […]
K-poppin’ Politics
On April 1, South Korea’s biggest Korean Pop stars arrived in Pyongyang to perform a joint concert with North Korean colleagues. The countries planned the three-day tour with meticulous attention to detail to avoid conflict over dances, lyrics, and costumes. They organized the concert, forebodingly titled “Spring is Coming”, as a gesture of good will […]
Nothing is Fair, Sanctions or War
At the ripe age of 12, most American kids are concerned with making friends at school or convincing their parents to let them see R rated movies. When Joseph Kim was 12, he was solely concerned with survival. Joseph grew up at the height of North Korea’s decades’ long drought in the 1990s. Before even making […]
The State of Affairs in Congress: In the Era of Hyperpolarization, Embrace Bipartisanship or Fail
As the 2016 US primary season nears its end, so too does the current session of Congress. Both houses will be off for half of July for the Democratic and Republican conventions, as well as for most of August and October. A RealClearPolitics average of congressional approval polls from the last month shows only 14.5% of […]
North Korea’s Nuclear program: time for a new strategy
January 7th, 2016: North Korea announced that it had just conducted its first successful test of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon estimated to have the destructive power of 9 kilotons of TNT. World leaders protested the tests in unison. Brazil said that the situation was cause for “great concern,” Russia condemned the nuclear tests as […]
The Waning Hermit Kingdom (Part II): The Challenges of Korean Reunification
In January 2014, the North Korean government supposedly announced that it had successfully landed a man on the sun. However, contrary to such macho announcements from government mouthpieces, the sun is beginning to set for the backwater Hermit Kingdom. Continued famine, declining international aid, and increased dissemination of non-governmental information (discussed in Part I) have […]
The Waning Hermit Kingdom (Part I): A Faltering Kim-Regime
When tensions rose along the Korean Peninsula this past August, it was not military provocation, but South Korean speakers blaring anti-North Korean propaganda that spurred Pyongyang to declare a quasi-state of war. The recent clash between the Koreas involved their first major armed encounter in five years. However, unlike previous military aggression from the Hermit […]
Apocalypse Tomorrow
Part 4 of a series on U.S. cybersecurity. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -Albert Einstein The age of cyberwarfare is finally upon us. This transformation is irreversible; former Defense Secretary Chuck […]