NAPSNET Special Report Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos March 29, 2016 I. INTRODUCTION North Korea upgraded its nuclear and military power and grew its economy slightly, thereby realizing Kim Jong Un’s byungjin line. It also attempted to open new external fronts and to coerce the South to cooperate on its terms, but failed. Instead, it […]
North Korea’s new leader inherited a large standing conventional military. Shortly after taking over, he succeeded in launching a rocket and testing a nuclear device. His actions were likely primarily driven by domestic concerns. North Korea’s governance system seems to seek strong domestic support in part by being able to demonstrate a set of strong external forces allied against the nation, which helps to make acceptable the consolidation of decision power under one charismatic leader and justifies diverting a larger portion of the populace away from the civilian sector of the economy and into the military than is the case in any other country. This large standing conventional force demands a surprisingly modest proportion of North Korea’s overall energy usage (though a much larger fraction of the DPRK’s limited petroleum fuels supplies) indicating a large, but not particularly active military. Despite increased tensions in recent years, it is not clear that North Korea’s military has actually increased its overall energy demand. North Korean military energy usage seems more or less static over the years and is consistent with observations that North Korean rhetoric regarding potential military actions has increased, but that the actual actions of the DPRK’s conventional military remain muted.
by David von Hippel Contributing authors: Yi Wang, Kae Takase, Tetsunari Iida, Myungrae Cho, and Sun-Jin Yun 28 July 2015 I. Introduction David von Hippel writes that following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, there is an increasing ‘recognition that new paradigms are needed to deal with expanding complexity in the relationships between the issues and actors […]
by Peter Hayes, Yi Kiho and Joan Diamond 2 July 2015 I. INTRODUCTION This Special Report is an extract (Preface and Introduction) to the book Complexity, Security and Civil Society in East Asia, edited by Peter Hayes and Yi Kiho, published by Open Book Publishers in June 2015 (http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/326/). This book is devoted to improving our understanding […]
by Peter Hayes 1 June 2015 I. Introduction In this Policy Forum Peter Hayes writes that “reunification will become harder and increase in social, economic, and security cost the longer and deeper the DPRK develops nuclear weapons. The faster nuclear weapons are removed from the scene, the sooner reunification can commence at a cheaper cost, with […]
by Morton Halperin 16 March 2015 Introduction In this Policy Forum Morton H. Halperin writes ‘A new approach is clearly needed to prevent the DPRK from testing and deploying its operational nuclear weapons capability and to persuade it to de-nuclearize.’ Halperin lays out a plan for achieving a comprehensive security agreement in Northeast Asia, ‘one […]
NAPSNet Special Report by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos 9 March 2015 I. SUMMARY In 2014, North Korea neith…
by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos NAPSNet Special Report 2 March 2015 I. SUMMARY In this report Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos lay out a possible roadmap for North Korea’s nuclear operational force. The authors state: “The laws of physics that determine how nuclear weapons and delivery systems perform are the same in North Korea […]
Roger Cavazos asserts that spring on the Korean peninsula is often associated with provocations. This spring …
