North Korea and the East Asian Security Dilemma

RUSI Journal, 2017

European Political and Law Discourse, 2020

The article provides an understanding of North Korea's nuclear program and its path to it. There is a range of reasons that explain why after the breakdown of the USSR, North Korea chose such a strategy and why the South didn't. The U.S. policy on the Korean Peninsula has a significant influence on these countries. Thereby the Bush Administration's policy is viewed as the last chance to speak about North Korea as a challenge for the Nonproliferation regime. Nowadays, after six nuclear tests and numerous ballistic missiles tests (including long-range ballistic missiles since 2017), North Korea is more about Deterrence, as it is already a nuclear state. Crises of 2017 and 2020 show the necessity to build a new strategy for the U.S. and the whole international community. The further dialogue with North Korea is unpredictable and depends on the U.S. elections, consequences of Covid-19, and Kim's readiness to cooperate.

In the early morning hours of 9 September, 2016, residents of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as well as Chinese border towns, were shaken by what felt like an earthquake. In fact, subsequent news reports revealed that the magnitude 5.3 temblor was caused by a nuclear test conducted at the DPRK’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The event drew the usual condemnation from Western and regional governments, and highlighted the international community’s failure to stem the North Korean uranium enrichment program.

2014

Supervisory Committee Dr. Guoguang Wu, (Department of Political Science) Supervisor Dr. Claire Cutler, (Department of Political Science) Departmental Member This thesis investigates the events leading up to and following the first North Korean nuclear test, which took place in 2006, in order to examine first, whether the test helped the North Korean regime survive, and second, how this unilateral action acted as a balance to the United States’ policy of oppression. The thesis will also attempt to shed some light on the validity of the Western International Relations (IR) theories by ascertaining the balance of threat and applying the notion of “two-level games” to the nuclear conundrum. Through the lens of these IR theories, the research described in the thesis addresses three smaller questions: (1) how did the nuclear test stabilize Pyongyang’s integrity as a balance to the threat of a potential American military attack?; (2) how was the test used as a bargaining mechanism to urge ...

UPNM Research Series , 2018

African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research (AJSSHR), 2020

North Korea, a diminutive state geographically located in the North East Asian (NEA) sub-region, has for decades been secretly developing its nuclear weapons and missiles programme which began during the Cold War era. Constituting a threat to regional/international peace and stability, the United States over the years has pursued a foreign policy aimed at getting Pyongyang to freeze or dismantle its nuclear and missile programmes. But isolated North Korea, in defiance to international sanctions and pressure, has conducted several nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests, thus escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula in particular and the NEA sub-region at large.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2005

Arms Control Today, 2007

On Oct. 9, 2006, North Korea conducted a nuclear test and proclaimed itself a world nuclear power. The explosion yield was less than one kiloton, much less than the first nuclear test of other states and even less than the expected yield of four kilotons that North Korean officials forecast to their Chinese counterparts. Nonetheless, the test demonstrated Pyongyang's mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle and at least rudimentary nuclear-weapon design and manufacturing capabilities. On Feb. 13, North Korea signed a six-party agreement to take initial actions to implement a Sept. 19, 2005 Joint Statement for the eventual abandonment of its nuclear weapons program. While this is welcome news, the road to the abandonment of North Korean nuclear weapons and capabilities will be long and arduous, and success is far from guaranteed. Its nuclear program still poses significant risks to international security, the most serious of which is