You’ve either seen the Netflix show Squid Game, considered watching the South Korean series before giving it a pass because of its violence, or read about it and wondered what all the fuss is about. You know, therefore, that this global hit is about hundreds of indebted Koreans competing against one another for a huge… Continue reading The Real Meaning of Squid Game
Gwen Berry recently protested the playing of the U.S. national anthem by turning away from the flag and holding up a shirt that read “activist athlete.” The protest took place at the Olympic trials in Oregon where Berry had placed third in the hammer throw competition. Her action immediately drew angry responses from the right-wing… Continue reading The Politics of American Protest–with a North Korean Twist
North Korea has blown up the inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong. It is threatening an all-out pamphlet war in response to defectors sending anti-regime propaganda to the north. South Korea’s unification minister has stepped down after failing to meet with his North Korean counterparts during his 14-month tenure. Pyongyang is not happy about the balloons… Continue reading Time to Rethink the US-ROK Alliance
The current pandemic has led to the postponement of elections around the world. Over 75 countries have declared some kind of state of emergency. Several illiberal leaders, like Viktor Orban, have used the crisis to seize virtually unlimited powers. The Chinese model of full-spectrum clampdown has elicited praise across the political spectrum for its apparent… Continue reading A Progressive Victory over the Coronavirus
Review of In North Korea: A Trip to the Last Communist Dynasty (En Corea del Norte: Viaje a la Ultima Dinastia Comunista) by Florencia Grieco (Buenos Aires: Debate, 2018), 339 pages The Argentine journalist Florencia Grieco took two trips to North Korea, in 2015 and 2017. Her account of those trips, along with some… Continue reading In North Korea (Review)
One of the hallmarks of a democratic political system is that voters change their minds. In North Korea, 100 percent of voters support the ruling party coalition in election after election. In South Korea since 1998, voters backed 10 years of progressive candidates followed by 10 years of conservative candidates. Then, after a dramatic turnaround… Continue reading Will Impeachment Affect Trump’s Reelection Chances?
Donald Trump is now the subject of an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. Congress. He has committed a range of potentially impeachable offenses. But the Democrats have decided to focus the impeachment investigation on one aspect of the president’s foreign policy. Trump tried to persuade a foreign government, Ukraine, to dig up evidence of corruption… Continue reading Impeachment’s Effect on Trump’s Foreign Policy
North Korea belongs to a dwindling category of countries known as “totalitarian.” Compared to their authoritarian cousins, totalitarian regimes aspire to control all aspects of society. As Italian fascist Benito Mussolini once put it: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” In such countries, there is no autonomous business sector… Continue reading North Korea’s Momentous Transition
When Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un shook hands on June 30 at the line dividing the two Koreas, the pictures that appeared on front pages all over the world depicted two very different leaders. Trump is a tall, 73-year-old white man who leads the world’s most powerful democracy. Kim is a short, plump, 35-year-old… Continue reading Pyongyang on the Potomac
Of all the bizarre things that Donald Trump utters — the lies, the garbled words, the fanciful stories — his comments on his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are in a category by themselves. “I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth,” Trump told a crowd… Continue reading Summit Interruptus
The second meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un is scheduled for next month. The most likely location will be Vietnam. The agenda is much the same as before: how to get North Korea to denuclearize and the United States to dismantle its sanctions regime. The question remains: which side will make the first substantial… Continue reading The Next US-North Korean Summit
Review of Un-Su Kim, The Plotters (Doubleday, 2019), translated by Sora Kim-Russell Assassination has been an integral part of Korean history. So many leading political figures have been felled by assassins – or, at the very least, threatened by them – that you might think that plotters are constantly at work behind the scenes of… Continue reading The Plotters (Review)
Review of The Great Successor, Anna Fifield (Public Affairs, 2019), 308 pages North Korea is a notoriously unchanging place. In its nearly 75 years of existence, the country has had only three leaders – and they were all related to each other. The Kim dynasty has presided over the closest thing to a totalitarian… Continue reading The Great Successor (Review
Review of BG Muhn, North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism (Seoul Selection, 2018), 80 pages Americans, if they have seen anything of North Korean art, have probably caught glimpses of the propaganda posters that occasionally appear in newspaper photographs of North Korean street scenes. The more knowledgeable North Korea watcher might be familiar with the… Continue reading North Korean Art (Review)
Remarkable changes are taking place on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas are actually starting to demilitarize the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Just in the last couple weeks, they have taken down 22 guard posts, demined the Joint Security Area, and established a no-fly-zone about the peninsula’s dividing line. They’ve pulled back from confrontation along their… Continue reading Is Korea’s Cold War About to End?
Nuclear weapons have held the world hostage for more than 70 years. Although they possess terrifying power and the world has come close to nuclear war on several occasions, these weapons have only been used twice, in 1945, by the United States against Japan. Advocates of deterrence believe that nuclear weapons actually kept the peace… Continue reading North Korea: Nukes vs. War?
Donald Trump loves to talk about war. Last year, Trump was ready to invade Venezuela, until calmer heads in his inner circle persuaded him that it wasn’t a good idea. He has recently escalated his threats against Iran, and his secretary of state has explicitly endorsed regime change there. After his meeting with NATO leaders,… Continue reading Trump’s Next Move on North Korea
The Trump administration wants North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons by 2020 after which it would get sanctions relief. Pyongyang insists on a phased and synchronized approach with incentives and concessions along the way. On paper, these are not entirely incompatible approaches. In reality, however, nuclear weapons occupy too important a place in… Continue reading What’s Next with North Korea?
Donald Trump loves to tell the following story. You go to a bank and borrow $3 million. If you can’t pay it back, you have a problem. But say you go to a bank and borrow $300 million. Then, if you can’t pay it back, both you and the bank have a problem. In other words, the bank… Continue reading Trump’s Investment in North Korea
If the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un doesn’t happen, it’s easy to finger the culprit. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who started in his position after the U.S. president agreed to meet with the North Korean leader, has never concealed his desire to effect regime change in Pyongyang. In February, he published an… Continue reading The Real Obstacle to Peace between Pyongyang and Washington
Conmen always keep up a patter. While they’re extracting the wallet from your pocket, they maintain a nonstop monologue so that you focus on their mouth and not what they’re doing with their hands. Beware the voluble stranger. Donald Trump has always been a talker. Even before he discovered Twitter, Trump was constantly bending people’s… Continue reading The Korean Shell Game
When, in early March, Donald Trump agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the Washington foreign policy elite nearly suffered a collective heart attack. For one thing, the announcement came as a complete surprise. Trump had telegraphed his other foreign policy bombshells well in advance: leaving the Paris climate accord, ripping up the Iran… Continue reading Playing Trump for Peace
For a man with a reputation for venting spleen and flying off the handle, John Bolton bided his time before finally rising to the position of power he now occupies. The former U.S. ambassador to the UN spent much of the last decade consolidating his political base through stints at right-wing institutes like the American Enterprise… Continue reading Thus Begins the Bolton Administration
In South Korea these days, a popular dish at trendy restaurants is budae jjigae—an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink stew full of noodles, red pepper paste, Spam, sausages, kimchi, American cheese, baked beans, tofu, and whatever else the chef might want to throw into the mix. Budae means “battalion” in Korean, which points to the stew’s origins in the Korean War.… Continue reading Left Behind by Korea’s Success
Korean reunification is, for the most part, an ideal rather than a concrete plan. But that hasn’t always been the case. In the 1950s, reunification was a military goal: the forced absorption of one side by the other. Neither side was able to achieve that goal. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the two Koreas… Continue reading What Would Korean Reunification Look Like?
The president giveth and he taketh away. Donald Trump is a stern and wrathful leader. He thinks nothing of raining down fire and fury upon the enemies of his “chosen people.” Indeed, he even flirts with ending the world if he doesn’t receive due respect and the requisite number of burnt offerings. But he can… Continue reading Two-Faced Trump: Peace in Korea, War in the Middle East
In geopolitics, everything is impossible — until, suddenly, it isn‘t. Wars that no one ever believed could happen flare into existence, and stable societies descend into chaos. On the other side of spectrum, peace agreements that only Pollyannas thought possible are suddenly on the table after months of secret talks, as wicked problems untangle themselves… Continue reading Korea and the Geopolitics of Impossible
In a surprise announcement in early March, President Donald Trump said that he would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un within two months. The preparations for the meeting were hampered by the lack of North Korea expertise within the administration, the short-staffed State Department, and the mercurial temperament of the president. The North Korean… Continue reading How Those Trump-Kim Talks Might Go: A Transcript
In the Stockholm syndrome, the victim starts to identify with the captor. In one of the most famous examples, the heiress Patty Hearst took up arms on behalf of the radical group that abducted her. She denounced her old friends and began to make speeches in praise of the Symbionese Liberation Army. To a certain… Continue reading A Nobel for Donald Trump over Korea?
The United States has not yet appointed an ambassador to South Korea. This shouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as an insult. A number of other important places still lack U.S. ambassadors: the European Union, Germany, Turkey. The Trump administration has been notoriously slow in filling these top diplomatic slots. In some cases, as with Germany, Democrats… Continue reading No Diplomacy for South Korea