Asia Opinion

Although the situation in Pyongyang following Kim Jong-Il’s recent illness could soon return to the status quo ante, continuing uncertainties about his health and succession arrangements warrant heightened attention and preparation for the possibility of sudden change in North Korea....

These three scenarios would present decision-makers in Washington and the capitals of northeast Asia with challenges and dilemmas of varying complexity and severity that derive from the potential spillover effects of change in North Korea as well as the potential...

North Korea could change suddenly in any number of ways. Given the various structural impediments that reduce if not eliminate the prospects for change from below, the most plausible scenarios still entail some kind of a leadership transition or, put...

For most of the 1990s, North Korea was under what can only be called a prolonged deathwatch, so common and confdent were predictions of its demise.(1) Despite suffering acute economic stress from the loss of its principal economic patron-the Soviet...

North Korea poses diffcult challenges for U.S. foreign policy. It possesses nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, and despite some progress, it is by no means clear that the ongoing Six-Party Talks will be able to reveal the full...

By Joel S. Wit The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2007, 30:2 pp. 53-69 (Joel S. Wit is a former U.S. Department of State official and coauthor of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis.) The 2006 stalemate at the six-party talks, coming after...