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Donald Kirk, a Journalist who has been covering Korea – and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia – for more than 30 years, writes, “In the end, some analysts say, Lee’s instincts for business, especially construction, may trump his notion of firmness toward North Korea. As a product of the Hyundai empire, he may well build on progress already achieved by the subsidiary Hyundai Asan in developing tourism to Mount Kumkang, above the eastern border with North Korea, and further investment in the Kaesong special economic zone, also above the line 64 kilometers north of Seoul.”

Bonnie Glaser, senior associate at CSIS as well as with Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu, Hawaii, Scott Snyder, senior associate of Washington programs in the International Relations program of The Asia Foundation, and John S. Park, expert on Northeast Asian security issues at the U.S. Institute of Peace, write, “In the event of instability in North Korea, China’s priority will be to prevent refugees from flooding across the border. If deemed necessary, PLA troops would be dispatched into North Korea… Contingency plans are in place for the PLA to perform at least three possible missions in the DPRK: 1) humanitarian missions such as assisting refugees or providing help after a natural disaster; 2) peacekeeping or “order keeping” missions such as serving as civil police; and 3) “environmental control” missions to clean up nuclear contamination resulting from a strike on North Korean nuclear facilities near the Sino-DPRK border and secure “loose nukes” and fissile material.”

James Goodby, former American Ambassador to Finland and currently is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Markku Heiskanen, a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies NIAS in Copenhagen, write, “the future security architecture of Northeast Asia will have at its core the Korean Peninsula, at peace internally and externally, embedded in a set of cooperative understandings comprising a peace regime, all supported by a regional multilateral mechanism for promoting security and cooperation in Northeast Asia.”