Andrei Lankov, a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, at Australian National University who is currently on leave, teaching at Kookmin University, Seoul, writes “active intervention in North Korea will undermine the remarkable goodwill toward China, which can be seen among many neighbors as the rising giant. So, it is more likely that the Chinese will avoid political adventurism and limit themselves to gaining economic advantages in the northern part of the Korean peninsula.”

Col. Jiyul Kim, Director of Asian Studies at the US Army War College, writes “South Korean politics is in a profound period of transition as the result of a generational shift, the end of the Cold War, democratization, and growing self-confidence. Among the emerging political forces, those that are creating the most important political fault lines are the ideologies of pan-Korean nationalism and anti-Great Power-ism. These trends could well mark the end of the U.S. — South Korean alliance as we know it.”

Ruediger Frank, Professor of East Asian Political Economy at the University of Vienna, writes, “If pressure exerted through economic, political, or military means increases to a level that is high enough to trigger a qualitative change such as regime collapse, we might end up with a successful surgery, but a dead patient. Both sanctions and assistance naturally involve a great deal of uncertainty and risk. But while we can still change the engagement therapy after the failure of one type of medicine, the failure of a hard-line approach will leave us with irreversible damage.”

Ruediger Frank, Professor of East Asian Political Economy at the University of Vienna, writes, “There is nothing mystical about North Korea; it is just a highly intransparent case of ordinary development – as easy or as hard to understand as any other example. It can be expected that the closer the institutional structure in North Korea comes to the international mainstream, the easier it will get to integrate this case into standard theoretical models and to compare it with other examples.”