Young-sun Ha, Chairman of the East Asia Institute (Emeritus Professor at Seoul National University), discusses South Korea's options in responding to the escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea adopted an aggressive nuclear doctrine and law declaring itself to be a nuclear weapons state, and demonstrated its ability to carry out ...

Jia Qingguo, Professor at Peking University, claims that the sanctions imposed on North Korea have failed to achieve the goal and the rising tension between the U.S. and China and the Russia-Ukraine war would continue to make it difficult to resume the denuclearization process of North Korea. Dr. Jia argues that Beijing will highly likely not coope...

In normal economies, currencies weaken in times of difficulty, but something counter-intuitive happens in North Korea. Eun-lee Joung, a research fellow at Korea Institute for National Unification claims that the value of the North Korean won appreciated, and the market prices were remarkably stable although North Korea’s economy suffered its bigg...

Mr. Ken Gause, Research Program Director of the Center for Naval Analyses claims that while the Great Power competition has been Washington’s top priority, the North Korea issue has been put on the back burner. As North Korea was likely to be ignored in the interest of the status quo, Pyongyang strengthened its military capabilities to show off t...

Kipoom Jeong, M.A. Candidate at Seoul National University, highlights the importance of developing South Korea’s stance to ameliorate the human rights condition in North Korea based on the understanding of how other states react to it. She compares the two different approaches of the United States and European nations toward North Korean human ri...

Unification Minister Kwon Youngse explains that the key component of the Audacious Initiative is to achieve complete denuclearization of North Korea through large-scale support to Pyongyang in economic, military, and political sectors. He states that agreements signed by the previous government of South Korea with North Korea should be inherited. H...

Won Gon Park, a professor at Ewha Woman’s University, appreciates that the Yoon government’s “Audacious Initiative” reaffirms the goals and methods of denuclearization. However, Dr. Park points out that Pyongyang refuses to accept President Yoon’s proposal to receive economic incentives in return for denuclearization, as DPRK has recently...

Li Nan, a Senior Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of American Studies, criticizes the Biden administration’s North Korea policy as undermining the Korean Peninsula’s denuclearization process. Dr. Nan indicates that United States’ “alliance-first approach” puts North Korea on the opposite side of the US a...

In this interview, Dr. Victor Cha, Vice Dean and D.S. Song-KF Professor of Government at Georgetown University, states that North Korea is ready to conduct the 7th nuclear test. He expects additional sanctions measures led by the US and Japan as well as further movements of American military assets to the Korean Peninsula after the test. Dr. Cha ex...

Minju Kwon, Assistant Professor at Chapman University, analyzes the records of the Security Council, keynote speeches at the UN General Assembly, and official remarks of state representatives and foreign ministers to properly assess the competition for legitimacy taking place between Northeast Asian countries in the United Nations. Dr. Kwon demonst...