Policy Forum

The following is an excerpt from the annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom dealing with religion in the DPRK. The report states “there is no evidence that religious freedom conditions have improved in the past year. The Commission continues to recommend that North Korea be designated a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, which the State Department has done since 2001.”

The following is an essay by Lutz Drescher. Drescher, lived as an ecumenical worker in the ROK from 1987 to 1995. Since 2001, he works for the Association of Churches and Missions in Southwest Germany (EMS) as liaison secretary for East Asia. He has participated in numerous meetings with representatives of the North Korean Christian Federation. He coordinated the first official Visit of an EKD (Evangelical Church Germany) delegation to the DPRK in May 2002. The essay states “there is thus freedom of religion, and yet it is a restricted freedom insofar as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not a democratic country with individual rights of liberty in the Western sense. One can say that the members of the church in North Korea live out their faith under particularly harsh conditions. For precisely this reason, they depend on our intercessions and visits.”

The following is a paper by Robert J. Einhorn, Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and formerly Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation in 1999 to August 2001. Einhorn writes: “if the North Koreans have decided they must have a substantial nuclear weapons capability whatever we may do (hardly a remote possibility), they would likely reject a reasonable offer. In that event, the next U.S. administration would have little choice but to turn to a longer-term strategy of pressure, containment, and eventual rollback. But having made a proposal that North Korea’s neighbors considered fair and balanced, we would be in a stronger position to gain multilateral support for that strategy.”

This is an except from a paper by Sook-Jong Lee, Korea Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. Dr. Lee writes: Under these circumstances, it is imperative for the leadership in the U.S. and South Korea to take a long term view of the alliance. By avoiding excessive politicization, both governments should be able to redefine their alliance relationship in a way that suits their individual as well as mutual national interests.

This paper by Marta J. Bailey, was initially written for a National War College course titled Fundamentals of Strategic Logic taught by Dr. David Auerswald and COL Dave Knack. The expanded version of the paper won the ?National War College 2004 Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs Award for Excellence in Research and Writing.? Bailey argues that, ?keeping North Korea coming to the table and maintaining a cohesive alliance with the regional partners is in itself important. Ultimately, it is the parallel passage of time, North Korea?s continued interactions with other countries, and eventual change in leadership that will facilitate the achievement of long term goals. The key is not to let North Korea disrupt our overall strategic regional goals for Asia.?

This policy forum essay is by Ian Bremmer, the President of the Eurasia Group and Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute. Bremmer argues that, ?far from being aligned in a strategy to put pressure on Kim’s rogue regime, unilateral initiatives by the U.S.’s two allies at the negotiating table are undermining the prospects for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear issue.?

This essay by Taik-young Hamm, Professor of Political Science at Kyungnam University and Advisor to the Civil Network for a Peaceful Korea, discusses the US troop withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula and its implications for the ROK. Prof. Hamm writes, ?the current asymmetric ROK-U.S. alliance structure is excessive, as is the South Korean mentality of dependence on the United States for security. South Korean citizens and government alike need to overcome this latter neurosis, while the government additionally must foster self-reliant defense posture and doctrine, diplomacy skills, and an effective indigenous ?crisis management? system rather than undertake simple arms buildups with an enlarged defense budget.?

This essay by Mark Noland, Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics, argues that ?the US conditions its international economic diplomacy on a variety of political concerns that redound to the detriment of the DPRK.? Thus as long as ?the trend is toward adding more such conditions to US policy, and absent significant changes in North Korean behavior, these considerations will remain relevant for the foreseeable future.?

Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, compares the recent six-party talks in Beijing over the DPRK nuclear issue with “Conference Diplomacy” in the 1930s. Eberstadt writes that “Conference Diplomacy” only came to an end when the escalating provocations of dictators awakened the sleepers, and shredded the last remaining illusions of the would-be appeasers.

The following is a paper presented by B. C. Koh, Director of the Institute for Far-Eastern Studies. In this paper Mr. Koh argues that the change in both the US and the DPRK?s position at the workshop was a repositioning, not a softening, of each countries stance. The United States is still looking for CVID (complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantling) even if it is not using that specific term. The DPRK is likewise still unwilling to acknowledge the existence of a HEU or compromise on the distinction between a peaceful and a military nuclear program.