Daily Report Archives
Established in December 1993, the Nautilus Institute’s *N*ortheast *A*sia *P*eace and *S*ecurity *N*etwork (NAPSNet) Daily Report served thousands of readers in more than forty countries, including policy makers, diplomats, aid organizations, scholars, donors, activists, students, and journalists.
The NAPSNet Daily Report aimed to serve a community of practitioners engaged in solving the complex security and sustainability issues in the region, especially those posed by the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program and the threat of nuclear war in the region. It was distributed by email rom 1993-1997, and went on-line in December 1997, which is when the archive on this site begins. The format at that time can be seen here.
However, for multiple reasons—the rise of instantaneous news services, the evolution of the North Korea and nuclear issues, the increasing demand for specialized and synthetic analysis of these and related issues, and the decline in donor support for NAPSNet—the Institute stopped producing the Daily Report news summary service as of December 17, 2010.
This essay focuses on the consequences and future implications of relations between North Korea and the United States given the North Korea’s surprise admission of a clandestine nuclear weapons program via enriched uranium. It argues that the United States is in a lose-lose foreign policy situation due to potential accusations of hypocrisy (vis a vis its foreign policy with Iraq) and accusations of wrongful appeasement. While it remains unclear why North Korea chose now to reveal its nuclear weapons program, the essay asserts that Pyongyang stands to gain much potential political leverage over the United States, as war is not an option, and neither is permitting Pyongyang to continue its uranium enrichment program.
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This essay analyzes breaking news that the United States holds the DPRK to be in “material breach” of its promise to not develop nuclear weapons. It reviews what the DPRK might be doing with uranium enrichment and concludes that there is no innocent explanation. It speculates that the DPRK might have aimed to force the United States to resume dialogue. Alternately, it might have been developing a clandestine nuclear weapons capacity for long run strategic value in the face of its degraded conventional military forces. Finally, the essay states that the Agreed Framework has been dead for some time, but that short of war, it is inevitable that eventually the DPRK and the United States create a new cooperative framework.
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Republic of Korea 1. DPRK on SEZ Chief The DPRK has worked out a compromise with the PRC to sack Chinese-born Dutch businessman Yang Bin from his post of governor of the DPRK’s fledgling capitalist enclave. The deal was aimed at defusing a diplomatic row as DPRK leader Kim Jong-Il plans to visit Beijing this […]
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