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Andrei Lankov, Associate Professor at Kookmin University, writes, “Perhaps the most important reason why Pyongyang should be engaged is the long-term domestic impact of talks. Negotiations and aid create an environment where contacts between the isolated population and the outside world steadily increase, exposing the total lie in which North Koreans have to live. In the long run, this will undermine the regime, bringing the country’s radical transformation – and, probably, a solution of the nuclear issue.”

Barry M. Blechman, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center and a Stimson Distinguished Fellow, writes, “the contrast between murmurings of defense officials in private meetings and their horror at the thought of public debate about nuclear deployments makes clear that extended deterrence is a concept that served a vital purpose during the Cold War, but whose time has come – and gone.”

Tong Kim, Adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University SAIS and a visiting professor at the University of North Korean Studies, writes, “it is high time that both Washington and Pyongyang take a fresh look at where they are and to get out of the box in search for a bold pragmatic path toward a win-win resolution of the half century old U.S.-North Korea hostile relationship. North Korea can survive without nuclear weapons and the United States can undertake negotiations before the North gives up its nuclear programs. The Clinton trip offers both sides a fresh opportunity to make the first positive move.”

Read a discussion of this article here.