Policy Forum

John H. Kim, a Korean American attorney who served in the U.S. Army in South Korea, and Indong Oh, a Korean American Medical Doctor and co-chair of the June 15th Korean American Committee for Peace and Reunification of Korea, write, “As a candidate who got elected on a campaign promise of “change,” President Obama has a unique mandate and opportunity to shape a new U.S. policy toward Korea, including ending the long, costly Korean War finally and normalizing our relations with North Korea. However, it is not clear whether he recognizes the golden opportunity to bring a real change to the old, misguided U.S. policy toward Korea.”

Kawasaki Akira, Peace Boat Executive Committee member and ICNND NGO Advisor, writes, “There are several evident tasks for Japanese civil society in relation to its upcoming engagement with the ICNND. Firstly… civil society efforts to ensure the participation of Diet members and key party policy-makers as part of its engagement with the ICNND will be key… The second task is to utilise ICNND debates as the first step towards a reexamination of Japan’s nuclear disarmament policy in the leadup to the 2010 NPT Review Conference… The third task is… [that] civil society engagement with the ICNND must not be limited to just Japan, but also spread to Korea, China, and the whole of Northeast Asia.”

Rudiger Frank, Chair of East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna, writes, “If we want to discourage the DPRK from reprocessing more fuel rods, from further refining their ICMBs and from developing a functioning nuclear warhead, we should stop telling them that all their efforts so far are not enough. By ridiculing these attempts, we win a small propaganda victory but also demonstrate to Pyongyang that they must work harder on these issues.”

James Goodby, former U.S. Ambassador to Finland and a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Markku Heiskanen, Senior Fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen, write, “It is clear is that only a comprehensive approach to the security problems of Northeast Asia will really get at the basic issues… By expressing a willingness to negotiate other mili­tary, political and economic issues together with the nuclear issue, the U.S. can significantly improve the political conditions for the negotiations.”

Andrei Lankov, Associate Professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, writes, “There is no alternative to negotiations with Mr Kim’s clique. But Pyongyang dictators should be taught that provocations do not pay (or, at least, do not pay handsomely and immediately). This is especially important now, when Mr Obama’s administration has its first encounter with North Korean brinkmanship.”

Bruce E. Bechtol, Professor of International Relations at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, writes, “Iran is North Korea’s oldest and most profitable purchaser of ballistic missiles and ballistic missile technology… any missile test by North Korea should be assessed not only for its potential should a missile be launched from the North Korean landmass, but what it would mean if such a missile was launched from the Middle East – and who it would threaten.”

Sourabh Gupta, Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates, Inc., writes, “with each successive adjustment of the legal framework of Japan’s security policy, an even greater separation has tended to set in between the original Article 9 aspiration of a force posture that is non-coercive and built around minimal use of force in defense of exclusively individual self-defense ends, and its actual practice on the ground.”

Hui Zhang, Research Associate in the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, writes, “From China’s perspective, the first step should be taken by the side with the least to lose. This is not North Korea… Washington should take the first step that will eventually lead to North Korean denuclearisation.”

Amii Abe, Visiting Fellow at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, writes, “it is simply counterproductive to constantly criticize North Korea and shout demands at them. That is not the way to honestly engage a negotiating partner – even a dishonest one. More importantly, it fails to serve Japan’s legitimate national interests.”

Stephen Noerper, Senior Fellow at the EastWest Institute and a Nautilus Institute Senior Associate, writes, “A Chinese adage suggests that a ‘cornered dog bites.’ President Obama and the international community should signal that we are not simply responding to a crisis or ‘managing’ the North Korean problem. It is time to address and, where possible, eliminate problem areas with North Korea-while maintaining a ‘stern and unified’ stance on the core issues.”