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Jonathan D. Pollack, Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies and a former chairman of the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College, where he also directs the college’s Asia-Pacific Studies Group, outlines three “three alternative scenarios for North Korea’s nuclear weapons development over the coming decade: (1) pursuit of a symbolic nuclear capability, (2) pursuit of an operational nuclear deterrent, and (3) a deficient or failed effort to achieve an operational capability.”

Christopher W. Hughes, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and author of Japan’s Reemergence as a “Normal” Military Power and Japan’s Security Agenda: Military, Economic and Environmental Dimensions, writes, “Hence, the United States faces a major challenge in attempting to roll back the North Korean nuclear program and may already have failed in this endeavour. Failure of the United States and the region to halt North Korea’s nuclear program need not yet dissolve, however, into a process of wider nuclear proliferation in the region. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan look set to continue to hedge their nuclear bets as long as the United States remains implacable and engaged in its security commitments.”

Joel S. Wit, a former U.S. Department of State official and coauthor of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, writes, “A policy of enhanced engagement that articulates a positive vision for the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia; seeks to rapidly identify common ground with Pyongyang; builds productive communication; sets negotiating priorities; establishes realistic nuclear objectives; and creates a successful, sustained process of implementation holds the best chance for resolving the crisis and securing U.S. interests.”

Andrei Lankov, lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian National University, writes, “news emanating from the North since late 2004 seems to indicate that the government is now working hard to turn the clock back, to revive the system that existed until the early 1990s and then collapsed under the manifold pressures of famine and social disruption.”

James Church (a pseudonym) is the author of the detective novel, A Corpse in the Koryo, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2006. In this essay, Church meets Inspector O, the primary fictional character in A Corpse in the Koryo and discusses the state of play in the DPRK after the October 9th nuclear test.