Don Oberdorfer, Distinguished Journalist in Residence and adjunct professor of international relations at the Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, wrote: “Despite distrust on the part of some of their superiors in both capitals, these people will tell you, as they have told me, that they have worked well with one another in common purposes in the Six Party Talks, bilateral talks about the U.S. military deployments in Korea and in other instances. To sum up, I believe the U.S.-R.O.K. alliance is in trouble but that it will continue, at least for a while, depending in large part on choices that Koreans decide to make.”

David L. Asher, Adjunct Scholar, Institute for Defense Analyses, Coordinator, North Korea Working Group and Senior Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Department of State, wrote: “The North must cease its dealings with trans-national organized criminals, its illicit export of weapons, its nuclear reprocessing, its threats to engage in nuclear proliferation, etc. Instead it should accept the extremely reasonable terms the US, with the others parties in the talks, have offered for promoting a positive and peaceful transformation of relations in the context of full denuclearization.”

Jeong-jin Lee, wrote the following paper for the IFES Forum, noting: “Since it established a democratic constitution in 1992, Mongolia has shown peaceful transfers of power in four parliamentary elections and four presidential elections. However, the citizens did not give the power to any one group for a long time. After experiencing the governance of both groups for 14 years, the citizens chose a balanced government in 2004. Such peaceful and stabilized transfers of power show that procedural democracy has been established in Mongolia.”

Stephen E. Noerper, Nautilus Institute Senior Associate and former director of the Nautilus Institute’s Washington, DC office, wrote: “Mongolia also stands as a potential harbinger of democracy and transition from a Stalinist economy to North Korea, a mere 1800 miles away. Though the regime of Kim Jong-il has no ready inclination to discuss Mongolia’s political model, it has expressed continued interest in how Mongolia had transitioned to free market capitalism and privatized eighty percent of once state-held assets.”