Search

Begin New Search Topic Nuclear Weapons Political Geography South Korea Content Type Special Report

1. Renew, Elevate, Modernize: A Blueprint for a 21st-Century U.S.-ROK Alliance Strategy

Author:
Kristine Lee, Joshua Fitt, and Coby Goldberg
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The U.S.–South Korea alliance is a primary deterrent to the threat North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal poses. But the alliance’s nearly singular functional focus on managing the North Korea threat, despite South Korea’s broadly integral role in advancing a rules-based order in the region, has introduced volatility in the bilateral relationship. Washington’s halting and inconsistent approach to Pyongyang and its failure to reach a timely agreement on its military cost-sharing framework with Seoul have nudged the alliance toward a new inflection point. Beyond the North Korea challenge, South Korea has the potential to play a consequential role in advancing the United States’ broader vision for a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. As Seoul adopts globally oriented policies, buoyed by its position at the leading edge of certain technology areas and its successful COVID-19 pandemic response, the United States should parlay these efforts into a more concrete role for South Korea as a partner on the world stage. Collaborating on global public health issues, combating climate change, and jointly developing norms around critical emerging technologies would position the alliance to meet the challenges of the 21st century. By widening the aperture of the alliance and positioning Seoul to play an integral role in the United States’ vision for the future of the Indo-Pacific, the two allies will be better equipped to address enduring geopolitical risks in Northeast Asia, including those associated with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Alliance, and Modernization
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North America, and United States of America

2. Restoring Strategic Competence: How to Manage Northeast Asian Alliance Dilemmas amid a Nuclear North Korea

Author:
Van Jackson
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
For the foreseeable future, America’s Northeast Asian allies Japan and South Korea must live in the shadow of a nuclear North Korea, whose capabilities they cannot match. During the Obama and Trump administrations, North Korea dramatically expanded and improved its ability to hold Japanese, South Korean, and even U.S. territory at risk with its nuclear and missile arsenal.1 Despite high-profile summitry and promises to the contrary, there is no sign that this imbalance will be rectified, and its continuation exacerbates regional risks and ally insecurity.2 The mounting North Korea threat is compounded by poor timing—U.S. policy has proven exceptionally erratic, unreliable, and risk-prone in recent years. The very existence of Japan and South Korea depends on strategies built around a partnership with the United States that has become shaky, and on faith in the competence of U.S. statecraft—which both countries are starting to perceive as a risk rather than a source of security. Ally perceptions of U.S. strategic incompetence generate real costs and risks for the United States and Northeast Asian security. If the United States continues to squander its deepest relationships in Asia, the allies could become rivals with each other, increase risks of nuclear instability, play a spoiler role in U.S. regional strategy, withhold basing and access rights to U.S. forces operating in the region, and potentially take independent aggressive actions against North Korea that unintentionally escalate to war.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

3. Improving the Role of Intelligence in Counterproliferation Policymaking: Report of the "Speaking Truth to Nonproliferation Project," 2018

Author:
Henry Sokolski
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
This report is the culmination of a two-year project sponsored by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, which engaged more than 50 senior, retired and serving policymakers, intelligence officers, and top academic national security analysts. Its findings are based on hours of group discussions and private conversations that helped develop new primary histories of eight nuclear proliferation cases: India, Pakistan, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Libya, and an Argentine and a separate South African nuclear rocket case. Each history was prepared by an academic historian and was based on open sources. Former officials who had direct roles in these cases then critiqued these accounts. Additional private interviews were conducted with participants to fill in historical gaps. The purpose of the case studies was to identify when and how intelligence shaped or prompted nonproliferation policy actions and, if it did not, why. This set of historical conclusions prompted a more general discussion of how policy and intelligence officials might improve their collaboration to prevent and curb further nuclear proliferation and how academics might contribute by enhancing their treatment of such issues. The project addressed three broad, related questions: How can the role of intelligencein the making of nonproliferation policy be improved? How can the nonproliferation agenda get the priority it deserves? How can the nonproliferation community be sustained and strengthened?
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Intelligence, Nuclear Weapons, History, Nuclear Power, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Africa, South Asia, Middle East, India, Israel, Taiwan, Asia, South Korea, Libya, South Africa, Argentina, South America, and North Africa

4. China’s Role in North Korea Nuclear and Peace Negotiations

Author:
USIP China-North Korea Senior Study Group
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
This is the second in the Senior Study Group (SSG) series of USIP reports examining China’s influence on conflicts around the world. A group of fifteen experts met from September to December 2018 to assess China’s interests and influence in bringing about a durable settlement of the North Korean nuclear crisis. This report provides recommendations for the United States to assume a more effective role in shaping the future of North Korea in light of China’s role and interests. Unless otherwise sourced, all observations and conclusions are those of SSG members.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Nuclear Weapons, Conflict, Negotiation, and Peace
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

5. North Korea’s Diplomatic Strategy, 2018

Author:
Mark Tokola
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
With an outbreak of diplomacy under way for the Korean Peninsula, a review of North Korea’s approach to negotiations is timely. A summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in was held on April 27. President Trump has accepted an invitation to meet with Kim Jong-un.1 The secretive nature of the North Korean state makes it difficult to assess how it will engage with and what it expects to gain from talks with the international community—not just with the United States and South Korea, but with China, Japan, Russia, the EU, and others. However, its past behavior, official statements, the testimony of defectors, and the expert opinion of North Korea watchers can provide helpful insights. This chapter presents a brief history of talks and agreements with North Korea prior to the inauguration of Trump, followed by an overview of North Korea’s diplomatic outreach in 2018 to date. It then presents indicators as to what North Korean diplomacy may look like through the rest of the year based on assessments of its stated and implicit objectives—ends it would wish to attain in any event, either through diplomacy or by coercion. I conclude with a list of key upcoming dates and scenarios describing how North Korean diplomacy may play out for the remainder of 2018. North Korea’s recent diplomatic moves mark an abrupt policy change. During 2017, it carried out in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions three test flights of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); conducted its fifth and sixth underground nuclear tests, the latter being the most powerful to date and almost certainly thermonuclear; threatened an “unimaginable attack” against the United States;2 and officially announced that it would “never give up its nuclear weapons.”3 If North Korea is indeed now willing to negotiate denuclearization with the United States and South Korea, its diplomacy can at least be described as agile.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korea

6. North Korea's Strategy in 2018

Author:
Korea Economic Institute of America
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
What does North Korea seek at a time of unprecedented sanctions and pressure against it and suddenly developing opportunity, as South Korea and four great powers explore diplomatic overtures? This set of four chapters completed at the height of anticipation for summits in 2018 approaches Pyongyang’s strategy from diverse angles: public relations—how it is striving to shape images of itself, beginning by taking advantage of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics; diplomacy—how it is engaging one state after another to forge an ideal diplomatic environment for securing maximum concessions; economy— how it is coping with sanctions and preparing to realize byungjin by boosting the economic side while deriving credit from the military side; and military—how it continues to develop threat capacities and prepare for contingencies. There is a lot that is unknown about what is driving Kim Jong-un’s behavior with some accentuating the strength achieved by building his threat capacity and others emphasizing the weakness exposed by draconian sanctions. These chapters explore the drivers behind his moves through the lens of strategic objectives, recognizing that the North Korean leader sees a mix of opportunities. This volume covers well into the spring of 2018—including the New Year’s Day address by Kim Jong-un that opened the door to a public relations blitz, the delegations sent to South Korea to kick-start “smile diplomacy” against the backdrop of the Winter Olympic Games, the personal diplomacy by Kim with South Korean officials followed by his outreach to Donald Trump and then a hurried visit to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping, and finally the Panmunjom summit with Moon Jae-in in the last week of April. This whirlwind of public relations and diplomacy against diverse interpretations of their economic and military background captured the world’s attention. Yet, Kim’s strategic intentions largely remain a mystery. Does he expect to retain his missiles and nuclear weapons and be recognized as one of the nuclear powers on essentially equal footing with the world’s great military powers? Does he seek to cut a grand bargain, eliminating these threatening weapons in return for acceptance in the international community with guarantees of security and bountiful economic assistance? Is Kim Jong-un playing a multi-stage game with long-term objectives hidden as he capitalizes on differences among five countries to maneuver in ways still difficult to fathom? Much remains unknown, as we delve into his strategic choices.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Affairs, and Grand Strategy
Political Geography:
South Korea and North Korea

7. The U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral: Better at Deterrence than Diplomacy?

Author:
Sheila A. Smith
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
Once more, the United States, South Korea, and Japan have confronted a crisis with North Korea. The pattern is now well established. First, there is a provocation—a missile test, a nuclear test, and even worse, the use of force. Next, the United States and its allies in Northeast Asia muster their forces, strengthen their trilateral policy coordination, and sanction the belligerent Pyongyang. The three nations advocate for the accompanying effort by the United Nations Security Council to condemn North Korea’s behavior. Setting aside their political differences, Seoul and Tokyo intensify their military cooperation and Washington calls for greater trilateral unity in confronting a shared security challenge. In 2017, policymakers in Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo found themselves in a similar cycle but with the threat of war ever more real. The dramatic escalation of tensions between President Donald J. Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un seemed to bring the region to the brink of a second Korean conflict. But today, just as dramatically, an accelerated series of high-level summits suggests that the Korean Peninsula could be on the brink of peace. President Moon Jae-in met with Kim at Panmunjom, and both Kim and Moon stepped across the line of demarcation at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. The two leaders have embraced a “new era of peace,” with the promise of ending the state of war on the peninsula. Trump has also said he is willing to meet Kim to discuss denuclearization. CIA director Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang on April 1 to test out that proposition, and as secretary of state, Pompeo had the lead in setting the stage for a meeting in Singapore. The Moon-Kim meeting set up the premise of a negotiated denuclearization process. Trump and Kim will define the contours of that path forward.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, and Peace
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, South Korea, North America, Korea, and United States of America

8. The Inter-Korean Summit Declaration of April 27, 2018: a review in detail

Author:
Charles Knight
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Project on Defense Alternatives
Abstract:
The April 27, 2018 Inter-Korean Summit was a visibly cordial, even happy, event. At its conclusion, North and South Korea released a “Declaration of Peace, Prosperity and Unification.” This paper reviews a selection of key sections and phrases in “The Declaration” with attention to understanding their implications for the goal declared by both parties of ending “division and confrontation” on the peninsula and for addressing the overhanging issue of denuclearization. Notably, both parties strongly assert their rights as Koreans to take leadership in this task before them. Among the issues this review examines are the implications of various provisions in The Declaration for two great powers with long-standing interests in and influence on the Korean peninsula: China and the United States.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Power, and Disarmament
Political Geography:
Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea, and United States of America

9. Dismantling the DPRK’s Nuclear Weapons Program: A Practicable, Verifiable Plan of Action

Author:
David Albright and Corey Hinderstein
Publication Date:
01-2006
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Science and International Security
Abstract:
Verified dismantlement of the nuclear weapons program of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) can be accomplished successfully. Although difficulties abound in reaching an agreement with the DPRK to achieve this goal, the methods and steps involved in the dismantlement process are well understood. Because this goal remains vital to U.S. and international security, the United States has joined with China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea in working toward verified denuclearization of the Korean peninsula with the cooperation of the DPRK. These six nations have launched a series of negotiations, called the Six-Party Talks, aimed at resolving the crisis over the DPRK’s nuclear program. These nations are also attempting to create a plan to dismantle the DPRK’s program in a manner with which all the nations can feel secure.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, International Security, and Disarmament
Political Geography:
Russia, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and United States of America