Compellence and batna for the Denuclearization of North Korea

After a year of trading colorful barbs with the American president and significant achievements in North Korea’s decades-long nuclear and missile development programs, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared mission accomplished in November 2017. Though Kim's pronouncement appears premature, North Korea is on the verge of being able to strike the United States with nuclear weapons. South Korea has long been in the North Korean crosshairs but worries whether the United States would defend it if North Korea holds the American homeland at risk. The largely ceremonial summit between US president Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and the unpredictability of both parties, has not quelled these concerns and leaves more questions than answers for the two sides' negotiators to work out. The Korean Peninsula’s security situation is an intractable conflict, raising the question, “How did we get here?” In this book, former North Korea lead foreign service officer at the US embassy in Seoul Patrick McEachern unpacks the contentious and tangled relationship between the Koreas in an approachable question-and-answer format. While North Korea is famous for its militarism and nuclear program, South Korea is best known for its economic miracle, familiar to consumers as the producer of Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars, and even K-pop music and K-beauty. Why have the two Koreas developed politically and economically in such radically different ways? What are the origins of a divided Korean Peninsula? Who rules the two Koreas? How have three generations of the authoritarian Kim dictatorship shaped North Korea? What is the history of North-South relations? Why does the North Korean government develop nuclear weapons? How do powers such as Japan, China, and Russia fit into the mix? What is it like to live in North and South Korea? This book tackles these broad topics and many more to explain what everyone needs to know about South and North Korea.

In the nine years after the inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak administration in February 2008, the consensus regarding the alliance between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States was that it couldn't be better. Yet with the inauguration of new administrations in both capitals, despite the reaffirmation of each side's commitment to the alliance, there are some concerns and anxieties over North Korea policy, the implications of China's rise for the regional security architecture, and alliance management. In general, the United States is concerned about the possibility that Moon Jae-in will revive Roh Moo-hyun's Sunshine Policy of engagement with North Korea as well as adopt a pro-Chinese orientation and encourage anti-American sentiment. On the other hand, the ROK has concerns about the Trump administration's protectionism, hostile policy toward North Korea that eschews dialogue, unilateralism in the military sphere, and demand for greater burden-sharing.To maintain, strengthen, and upgrade the U.S.-ROK alliance, both Seoul and Washington should work very closely to increase trust and mutual respect and to iron out possible differences over the aforementioned issues. The following discussion will examine the two allies' areas of convergence and divergence on North Korea policy, China's rise, and alliance management. It will then conclude by assessing the prospects for the U.S.-ROK alliance in the aftermath of political transitions in both countries.Consultation and Coordination on North Korea PolicyFor both Washington and Seoul, North Korea's nuclear weapons program remains the most urgent and important challenge. The overall situation in and around the Korean Peninsula is very unstable and intense, as North Korea seeks acceptance as a nuclear state and relevant parties try to force the Kim Jong-un regime to give up its nuclear weapons.At the moment, Washington and Seoul appear to be on the same page in their commitment to a strategy of pressure and engagement. However, each side seems to have some suspicion about the other. The United States is concerned about the possibility that the new ROK government will revive Roh's Sunshine Policy, which strongly emphasized engagement and positive incentives. On the other hand, the Moon administration might have anxieties that the Trump administration's policies will be too militant and aggressive, potentially inducing a series of crises and confrontations without the possibility of dialogue and negotiation.1 Nonetheless, given North Korea's ongoing missile tests and threats to stage another nuclear test, both the United States and ROK are in a common stance of mounting more pressure on North Korea until it shows meaningful signs of denuclearization.At the moment, despite its desire to have some degree of autonomy in dealing with North Korea, South Korea does not have much room to maneuver. It would be difficult for the Moon government to go against the Trump administration's strategy of maximum pressure and engagement and pursue a completely new policy. From the South Korean perspective, the threat posed by North Korea goes beyond nuclear weapons and missiles. Human rights violations, as well as economic and social instability, are among the conventional security issues that must be resolved. Therefore, the United States must not restrict its North Korea policy to the nuclear and missile threats but should adjust its policy to address all of these issues. To gain the support and cooperation of the United States, and to reduce suspicion between the two allies, South Korea should also clarify its vision, strategy, and action plans to handle and solve the North Korea problem.At the same time, the United States and South Korea should discuss and come to an agreement on the level and scope of pressure to be applied and on the conditions, procedures, and agenda for dialogue. The United States is concerned that the Moon administration will rush into a dialogue with Pyongyang and has reservations about reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Mount Kumgang tours regardless of the progress toward denuclearization. …

Russia has had a consistent policy of promoting a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, opposing resolution of the nuclear issue through pressure or sanction, supporting a multilateral process and solution, promoting adherence to Non-Proliferation Treaty rules, and expanding mutually beneficial economic cooperation. Moscow suggested initiating a six-party process regarding a solution to the divided Korean peninsula in 1994. North Korea is generally positive about Russia's suggestions. The United States has belatedly and reluctantly recognized Russia's positive role in the process. Russia hopes the Six Party Talks (6PT) will gradually evolve into a multiparty security and cooperation system including a peaceful DPRK. This will be facilitated by international economic assistance to the DPRK and institutionalization of the 6PT. Successful Russia-U.S. cooperation may have much wider implications. Key words: Russian foreign policy in Korea, North Korea, multilateral security - East Asia, nuclear weapons Early Russian Efforts to Promote Collective Security in Korea On March 24, 1994 the Russian foreign ministry made public a suggestion for a six-party involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia, and Japan. The United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were also supposed to join the discussion on Korea for finding a compromise solution to the first North Korean nuclear crisis. That crisis began in March 1993 when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), suspected of nuclear-weapon development, left the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).1 The proposed comprehensive solution in Korea was meant to include: * promoting nuclear nonproliferation in Korea; * guarantees of noninterference in the internal affairs of the two Korean states; * military confidence-building measures; * replacement of the 1953 Korean armistice agreement with a new peace treaty; and * normalization of bilateral relations between certain members of the talks (U.S.-DPRK, DPRK-Japan).2 The idea itself was not new. After the end of the Korean War the armistice agreement of 1953 recommended that the governments of the countries concerned hold a to solve the problem of withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea and reach a peace agreement. The idea of a six-party consultative conference raised during the 43rd session of the UN General Assembly was proposed by South Korea and was supported by Japan.3 Russia's support for the process was based on the presumption that the Korean security issue (including the nuclear problem) was rooted in the long history of relations between the four powers (Japan, USSR, United States, and China) on the Korean issue. Historically, imperial Japan was the colonial master of Korea and only its defeat in World War II by the United States and the USSR brought about Korean independence. The United States and the USSR agreed on the division of Korea at Yalta in 1945. Soon after, however, they became adversaries in the course of the Korean War, which also involved China. The cold-war confrontation was the product of the global competition between two systems: the USSR and China, both of which, although at odds with each other, had alliance treaties with the DPRK and supported Pyongyang, versus the U.S.-Japan-South Korea bloc. This system provided the security balance on the peninsula. Thus, the 1994 Russian suggestion was not spontaneous and was prompted by Russia's attempt to protect its national interests. However, at that time it was ignored. As Samuel Kim puts it: Being left out of the Chinese bilateral approach and marginalized by US hegemonic sanctions, Russia was attempting to get back into the game. . . . Washington dismissed the Russian proposal as a harmful distraction while Beijing scuttled it as deviating from its declared party line.4 Instead, a 2+2 formula (the two Koreas, the United States, and China) formula was implemented, in 1996, rebuffing Russian attempts to be involved. …

IntroductionNorth Korea is no longer the isolated communist country it has been portrayed as for the last half century. In recent years North Korea has entered into diplomatic ties with i3 countries, giving them a total of i49 formally established international relationships, compared to i36 such relationships just three years ago. This is no less significant than the i84 ties to countries that South Korea has, considering South Korea has been an active partner with the U.S. and many other countries in the free world for the last half century.There are few countries that are watched, studied, and monitored as much as North Korea is. The country has been receiving much attention recently for two reasons. The first reason is a decade-long economic decline that has led to speculation that millions of North Koreans have starved to death. No one knows for sure how many North Koreans died from food shortages in the 1990s because North Korea restricts most media reporters. U.S. Congressional sta∂ers who have visited the country concluded that from 1995 to 1998 between 900,000 and 2.4 million people died from starvation, with deaths peaking in 1997 (Kirk, 1998). International aid organizations estimate that the number of starving people ranges from 2.8 to 3.5 million (Noland, Robinson & Wang, 200i).The second reason is the political fallout from being branded, along with Iran and Iraq, in President Bush's 2002 State of the Union address as the axis of evil (Bush, 2002). In the address, North Korea was described as a regime arming itself with missiles and weapons of mass destruction while starving its citizens. The majority of Americans (59%) believe that North Korea is a major problem, but of those surveyed a greater number of people support a diplomatic relationship between the United States and North Korea. The Harris Poll conducted in November 2000 showed support for a diplomatic relationship with North Korea by 69% of Americans, 63% of Japanese, and 70% of South Koreans (Polling Report.com, 2003). The percentages in these three countries may have spiraled upward as the result of the Iraq war.North Korea has adopted economic reforms as of July 2002 to improve its market system, and has revealed nuclear energy programs to deter U.S. military threats. The World Food Program has been a lifeline to sustain one-third of the 23 million North Koreans. We have yet to see results from the economic policies.Four Reasons to Do Business with North KoreaThere are four compelling reasons to do business with North Korea: (i) its potential economic growth, (2) a peaceful political future, (3) the availability of a highly motivated workforce, and (4) its strategic geographic location. This paper explores each of these four reasons in order to shed a brighter light for Far-Eastern prospects than the common dark picture drawn by some ultra-conservative viewers.Reason One: Potential Economic GrowthToday North Korea is seen by people around the world as the recipient of a vast amount of economic aid. Between 1996 and 2004 North Korea became the largest recipient of U.S. aid in Asia, with annual contributions totaling more than $i billion in food, conditional fuel oil, and medical supplies. The relationship with the Clinton administration was much friendlier than has been the Bush era relationship. In the late 1990s, the U.S. allowed the easement of 50-year-old trade sanctions with North Korea that fell under the Trading with the Enemy Act. In conjunction with the easement of trade sanctions, North Korea hosted U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright for an unprecedented three-day visit to Pyongyang in 2000. President Clinton himself was tentatively planning to visit the country, though the trip did not materialize.Improving diplomatic relations with North Korea is not a question for only the United States. North Korea's positive relationship with countries around the world presents a more favorable environment for commerce than in the past. …

On March 7, 2013, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2094 (2013), bolstering the scope of United Nations (UN) sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Resolution represents the international community’s latest attempt at applying diplomatic and economic pressure to the DPRK so as to curb its nuclear weapons program. The resolution is also a response to the DPRK’s third nuclear test on February 12, 2013 and its subsequent threat to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea. Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council responded to these grave violations of its existing Resolutions—seen as clear threats to international peace and security—by building upon, strengthening, and expanding the scope of the sanctions regime against the DPRK.

Making Sanctions Smart Again:Why Maritime Sanctions Have Worked against North Korea Robert Huish (bio) Following a period of escalating tension between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), in which the Kim regime conducted a series of ballistic missile and nuclear tests and the Trump administration pursued a policy of maximum pressure, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un met for a historic summit in Singapore on June 12. What changed to bring the two leaders together? The main reason North Korea sat down at the bargaining table was not sports diplomacy at the Winter Olympics or Trump's Twitter barrages. It was that the country is out of resources as a result of the international maritime sanctions.1 These sanctions have worked, and worked well, by targeting the environment on which the Kim regime depended to acquire belligerent materials. The 2017 maritime sanctions against North Korea, particularly U.S. Executive Order 13810 and UN Security Resolution 2397, worked for three reasons.2 First, owing to its unique geography, North Korea was almost entirely dependent on illicit maritime trade for its weapons programs, which stands in contrast to long-held claims that most military hardware came overland from China.3 Second, some argue that North Korea's already hollowed-out, authoritarian economy created an "inner isolation" among most of the country's nearly 26 million inhabitants.4 Sanctions are often responsible for increased suffering; however, most North Koreans survive through limited self-sufficiency or black markets that are often unaffected [End Page 42] by formal sanctions or the country's international economic environment. Third, sanctions that targeted foreign companies, in particular maritime insurance companies that may have provided protection and indemnity (P&I) insurance to North Korean vessels, provoked a swift reaction by the insurers to absolve themselves from dealings with North Korea. The important message of the sanctions imposed in 2017 is that this focus on pressuring the maritime industry led to a noticeable behavioral change in North Korea. The remainder of this essay examines what lessons about the efficacy of smart sanctions can be drawn from the case of maritime sanctions against North Korea. The next section will describe the 2017 sanctions from a maritime standpoint and analyze why they worked. The essay concludes by considering the potential to effectively apply similar sanctions to other targets. Have You Been to Sea? To understand why maritime sanctions worked so well against North Korea, two issues must be discussed. First, what are effective sanctions? And second, what role does China play in enabling North Korea to outsmart sanctions? For years, the international community made two major errors in dealing with North Korea. Many experts believed, first, that any sort of sanction would be a good measure against the Kim dynasty and, second, that China is the sole provider of resources, including military resources, to North Korea. Both of these claims are problematic. Sanctions aim to encourage a behavioral change of a target nation or its leadership. Traditional, or "dumb," sanctions either prohibit the target from any financial dealings with the issuer's market or seize the target's assets in the issuer's territory. Such ham-fisted sanctions often do more to further the suffering of the population than apply pressure on the leadership. In the 1990s, then secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Annan encouraged the use of "smart" sanctions in order to overcome such blunders. Speaking in hindsight of the tragedies in Iraq, the Balkans, and East Africa, Annan argued that economic policy could be crafted so that despotic leaders are pushed toward behavioral change given that their own personal assets were at risk.5 In the 1990s this logic made sense because many dictators had offshore assets that could be directly targeted. Even so, many tyrants, including members of the Kim dynasty, managed to acquire [End Page 43] luxury goods and odious resources through shady networks involving fake currency production, narcotics trafficking, weapons smuggling, and insurance scams. Moreover, sanctions did not deter the Kims from pursuing nuclear tests or overseeing brutal human rights violations. One of the faultiest assumptions about North Korea in the international relations literature was that North Korea...

No one would be surprised if they were told that South Korea had achieved fully-fledged democracy, particularly during the “2016 Candlelight Vigil Revolution,” a series of massive, peaceful, popular protests by citizens holding up candles in the streets and demanding the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, daughter of former military dictator Park Chung-hee (1961-1979). Park Geun-hye ended up the first elected president of South Korea to be forced to leave office in disgrace when, on 9 March 2017, South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the National Assembly’s 9 December 2016 impeachment vote over her involvement in an influence-peddling scandal with her longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil. South Korean society, heavily divided along conservative and liberal lines, was gripped by political paralysis amidst the turmoil caused by this scandal. During the period of Park’s presidency (2013-2016), the foreign policy capabilities of the South Korean government had become seriously compromised, especially in relation to issues concerning North Korea. During the Park administration, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un conducted fifty-five tests of mid- or long-range ballistic missiles. These included the Pukguksong No. 1, the nation’s first submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), tested in August 2016, signaling North Korea’s heightened military readiness with its attempt to produce an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of crossing the Pacific and striking the US. During Park’s presidency, North Korea conducted one nuclear test in 2013 and two more in 2016. Given the Obama administration’s reportedly somewhat pusillanimous diplomatic policy of “strategic patience” with respect to North Korean issues, Park appeared, by 2016, to have lost much of her diplomatic leverage in this area, appearing to become increasingly reliant on Xi Jinping’s alleged power in order to control North Korea. South Korea came to look like a mere bystander in regional diplomacy in response to North Korea’s continued threats to the international community. For Park, it seemed as though North Korea was simply being ticked off when it came to diplomatic matters. International relations and Korea specialist Victor Cha (2015) delivered a commentary regarding Park’s “gravitating into the Chinese orbit” as a deliberately strategic diplomatic “upgrade” to “build a trilateral dialogue among China, South Korea, and her key ally the United States about the [Korean] peninsula’s future.” Park’s vigorous diplomatic efforts, as depicted by Cha, fell short, however, ending up as fumbling in relation to North Korean issues, and frustrating China, whose renewed diplomatic friendship with South Korea peaked when Park sat near Xi at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing to watch a military parade marking the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War on 3 September 2015. On 8 July 2016, the Park administration announced that it would deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD), an advanced anti-ballistic missile defense system produced by Lockheed Martin, the associated military technology costing the Park administration approximately ten billion US dollars over the four years of her presidency. This provoked a furious reaction by China. Claiming that the THAAD’s X-band radar would penetrate into China to spy on its missiles, the Xi administration immediately retaliated against South Korea by impeding travel to South Korea by Chinese tour groups and issuing fire safety code violations to South Korean retail facilities in China run by Lotte, the conglomerate that had approved a land swap with the South Korean government for the purpose of deploying the THAAD at Seongju, 125 miles south of Seoul. In short, the Park administration allowed its original diplomatic attention to wander, leading it to stray into an international relations quagmire. What made Park abruptly turn her back on Xi? What diplomatic and military situations involving China, Japan, and the US, as superpowers active in Northeast Asia, can help us in understanding Park’s seemingly peculiar diplomatic decisions? To assist in answering these questions, I will first chronicle some significant diplomatic and geopolitical events that shed light on the strategies and positions of these superpowers, especially in relation to North Korean threats to the region. I will then offer a critical evaluation that can help account for Park’s failed diplomatic legacy with respect to North Korean issues, which I believe can be considered reflective of the broader circumstances leading to her impeachment.

Grain problems in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have been the focus of global attention for many years. In this context, scientific evaluations of grain supply and consumption are very important as a component of agricultural cooperation between China and the DPRK and will also promote a stable development of the society across Northeast Asia. The results of this analysis showed that DPRK grain production in 2019 was equivalent to that seen in 1975. Dominant grain-producing areas within the DPRK include the plains in the west and southwest encompassing North Phyongan, South Phyongan, Pyongyang, North Hwanghae, and South Hwanghae. The data showed that the DPRK was basically grain self-sufficient prior to 1995 but subsequently has been unable to meet the demand, even given reliance on imports and international assistance. The cultivated land area within the DPRK includes large proportions of slope farmland, an important factor that influences the grain production. The DPRK also boasts good irrigation infrastructure that provides a good basis for grain production. This means that, under normal circumstances, 56.59% of cultivated land can be effectively irrigated. Chemical fertilizer supplies have, however, been unable to meet the agricultural production demands, currently remaining at the 1970s levels. It is clear that the DPRK needs to increase chemical and organic fertilizer inputs in order to ensure soil fertility. As the southern region of the DPRK has sufficient water and is hot enough, the implementation of multi-cropping farming systems will ensure an increase of at least 4.9 million tons in grain production and will guarantee supply for at least 1.88 million people.

Pressure from the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)One of the more ambitious programs that could be employed to put pressure on the Kim regime of North Korea is PSI. PSI's interdiction regime lies on a continuum of containment that includes isolation, economic sanctions, interdiction, and blockade. The DPRK has always been relatively isolated from the international community, by circumstance and by choice. The United States and many other countries already impose extensive economic sanctions on the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).PSI was introduced on May 31, 2003. The first meeting was held in Madrid on June 12, 2003, when eleven charter members met: Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Japan was the only Asian member.Membership is multilateral but restricted. PSI's methods were not spelled out in detail, but they inevitably involved interdiction of transport. Interdiction was initially to be limited to legal interdictions within the territorial waters of member states. However, the possibility of creatively interpreting international law was leftopen for the future. What was never made clear was whether PSI was primarily targeted at certain illicit activities or at certain states.Prospects for PSI's SuccessEconomic sanctions have a mixed record of success. A study by Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott (i990), with further conclusions by Elliott (2003), found that sanctions were at least partially successful in 34 percent of ii5 examined cases. Surprisingly, success was negatively correlated with international cooperation. Sanctions were most e∂ective when: (i) The goal was relatively modest; (2) The target state was economically weak and politically unstable; (3) The sanctioning state and target state were initially on good terms; (4) The sanctions were imposed quickly and decisively; and (5) The sanctioning state was able to avoid high costs to itself.A collection of papers on sanctions edited by Haass (i998) reached the following conclusions: (i) Sanctions alone rarely achieve their desired result if the aims are large or the time to achieve them is short; (2) Sanctions are more e∂ective when used in conjunction with other policy tools, e.g., threat or military force; (3) Unilateral sanctions are rarely e∂ective; (4) Sanctions often produce unintended and undesirable consequences; (5) Sanctions can be expensive to the sanctioning state; (6) Authoritarian societies are often able to withstand sanctions; (7) Military enforcement can increase the impact of sanctions; (8) Sanctions can increase the pressure to intervene militarily when they are unable to resolve a crisis; (9) Sanctions are easier to introduce than to lift; and (i0) States often tire of imposing sanctions when they fail to achieve their goal.Sanctions may also have unstated goals. For example, they may serve to calm a domestic political audience that demands a quick solution. They may buy time in the absence of a better strategy. They may serve as a first, peaceful, stepping stone toward stronger measures-similar to the idea of hawk engagement (Cha, 2002; Cha and Kang, 2003). They may intentionally or unintentionally provoke the target state to make the first military move, thus justifying the use of force by the sanctioning state.Participation in PSINeither China, Russia, nor the Republic of Korea (ROK) is a PSI member. Yet these are the regional powers with the largest stake in the future of the DPRK. Japan is a PSI member, and played a central role in the PSI exercise o∂ the coast of Australia in September 2003. In the exercise, dubbed Pacific Protector, a coast guard vessel intercepted the target vessel. Because interdiction of a foreign ship would violate law, the exercise designated the target as Japanese (Asahi Shimbun, 2003). Japan, China, the ROK, and Russia say they are opposed to instituting sanctions against the DPRK until other options have been exhausted. …

Drought is the main agrometeorological disaster in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which has great influences on the growth of the crops and directly affects grain yield. Technologies of agricultural production level is low sciences of investment is little, and irrigation installation is poor in DPRK. Therefore, it is easy to cause a reduction in grain yield if drought occurs in DPRK. The Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS) had proposed to warning food security of DPRK in 2017. Meanwhile, the food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations had also claimed that the rainfall in summer was insufficient and the grain yield would be reduction in DPRK. Hence, assessing the drought condition in DPRK is very important to understand the effects of drought on grain yield in 2017. In this study, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)3B43 time series dataset from 1998 to 2017 was used to monitor the temporal and spatial characteristics of drought in DPRK in 2017. At national scale, the results show that the annual precipitation in 2017 was clearly lower than average precipitation during 1998 and 2017 in DPRK. Particularly, the annual precipitation was the lowest since 1998 in southern DPRK. A large number of studies show that Z-index can accurately assess the grade of drought. In this study, Z-index was applied for assessment the drought condition basis on TRMM data in 2017, which is used by the National Meteorological Center of China. The main agricultural regions were strongly affected by the drought in the study area, such as, in Hwanghaenam-do, Hwanghaebuk-do and Pyonganbuk-do. Furthermore, we assessed drought condition of crop growing season during March and September in 2017. According to Z-index, there was obvious drought in March, June and September in DPRK. The drought was severity in western DPRK in March. The magnitude of drought in Pyonganbuk-do was extreme drought and the Z-index value was -2.41 that was the lowest in 2017. Meanwhile, the magnitude of drought was severe drought in parts of Chagang-do and Pyongannam-do indicating obviously affected by drought. Moreover, 1.14 × 105 km2 (93.5%) area was affected by drought in June including Pyonganbuk-do, Pyongannam-do, Pyongyang City, Hwanghaebuk-do, Hwanghaenam-do and Hamgyungnam-do where showed magnitude of the drought is extreme drought. The maximum Z-index value was −1.95, that appeared in the Hwanghaenam-do. In addition, 75.3% of the study area appeared drought in September, especially eastern and central DPRK. The magnitude of drought was extreme drought in Gangwon-do. Totally, there were more than 2.0×104 km2 of croplands affected by drought in DPRK in 2017. The grain yield would be reduced due to drought occur during growing season in 2017. Thus, it is expected that the food gap would be appearance in 2018. Food aid should be provided by the international community in future.

In September 2005, the U.S. imposed financial restrictions on North Korea after blaming the North for illicit financial activities, including counterfeiting and money‐laundering. The U.S. financial sanctions against the North had direct and immediate impact on the ongoing six‐party negotiations on North Korea's nuclear issue. North Korea insisted on the lifting of U.S. financial sanctions as the precondition for returning to the negotiating table and consequently the six‐party talks on North Korea's nuclear issue stalled. The third session of the fifth round of six‐party talks in February 2007 produced an important accord on North Korea's nuclear question. This agreement was made possible after the U.S. and the DPRK reached a compromise on the financial sanctions issue. This article discusses the U.S. financial sanctions against North Korea and their implications for North Korea's nuclear question. It begins with an overview of the U.S. financial restrictions. This study then examines the nexus between the financial sanctions and the impasse at the six‐party talks on North Korea's nuclear issue. This is followed by a discussion of the breakthrough on the financial restrictions issue and the landmark agreement on North Korea's nuclear issue in February 2007. In this study, the authors argue that a mutually satisfactory resolution of the BDA dispute holds the key to a peaceful settlement of the second North Korean nuclear crisis. With the BDA dispute behind, the six‐party talks should gain momentum and prepare a road map for implementing the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Both the U.S. and North Korea should not miss this golden opportunity and make earnest efforts to build a firm foundation for peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia.

The main actors in inter-Korean cooperation are the residents of South and North Korea. The individuals who play a key role in achieving reunification, the residents of both North and South Korea, should collectively become the owners, ensuring the freedom, welfare, and human dignity of each individual. They should strive to form a national community where a free and prosperous life is attainable. However, the reality is that the residents of South and North Korea have yet to fully assume the role of effective participants in cooperative exchanges. This study aims to identify legal disputes arising from the application of social security systems for North Korean laborers entering South Korea's border areas and proposes legal and practical directions. Ultimately, the study seeks to contribute to the establishment of a substantive legal framework for inter-Korean unification by fostering pre-emptive discussions in the legal and policy dimensions. The focus is on creating a foundation for the human and social integration of North and South Korea during the process of unification.

The purpose of this paper is to find literary motifs that South Korean and North Korean literature can handle together even under different political systems. Previous studies have generally tended to focus on examining how the literature of present-day South Korea differs from that of North Korea when identifying certain aspects of North Korean socialist literature. The goal of this paper is to find out what literary motifs the literature of North and South Korea can nevertheless share. To this end, we looked into which materials most honestly reveal the instinctive side of humans as research subjects. It is considered to be none other than the alcohol and drinking culture that the South and the North have side by side. In other words, it is believed that Korean alcohol and its culture, which originated from myth, will be an excellent material that both South and North Korea can empathize with as human beings even today, without any special interpretation, and can be reinterpreted in a modern way. Accordingly, among the literary works published in North Korea from 1948 to the early 2000s, medium and short stories and poetry were the focus of the study. This period was a period in which division was solidified on the Korean Peninsula for nearly 70 years. According to the research method, the period was divided into four sections: liberation and the establishment of North Korea's independent government, the Korean War and post-war recovery, the Chollima Movement, and the Juche ideology and Juche period. This is because North Korean literature is inseparable from the transformation of the political system. In conclusion, we analyzed North Korea's political system and reality through the socialist constitution that North Korea advocates, and explained how the element of alcohol appears in North Korean literature as a factor that prevents us from losing humanity and humanity, which literature generally pursues. Next, the symbolic nature of alcohol was identified as a common literary motif that can be shared between South and North Korea.

The core questions addressed by Noland (2019) are how, and whether, engagement could foster market-orientation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and reduce direct state control over the country's economy. Noland presumes that the DPRK regime's objective is to obtain revenue with minimum changes to its internal practices and associated risks to political stability, and argues that the nature of engagement is important in inducing desired changes in the country. Noland highlights the modality of economic exchange in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), and analyzes whether the KCI model could serve as a means of transformative engagement. Through his analysis, Noland demonstrates that the labor practices in the KIC appear to be both exploitative and limit the extent the DPRK workers are exposed to new ways of organizing work, and concludes that it is unlikely to generate the desired changes. In order to encourage real institutional change, Noland concludes that the DPRK's partners must emphasize “more transformative approaches,” especially by means of introducing international norms and voluntary codes into the country. Otherwise, Noland assesses that the economic growth would merely enable the DPRK to achieve its status of “a de facto nuclear state.” In order to promote “effective transformative engagement,” Noland focuses on the means to expose DPRK workers to “new ways of organizing work.” To advance this argument further, it is also necessary to address the broad question of how the empowerment of workers could lead to real institutional changes in the country. As Babson (2019) notes, for the DPRK's economic growth, the regime would need to reform the economic system by embracing the role of markets, stimulating private initiative, and transforming international relations. The reformative measures include (but are not limited to) building institutions for legal and financial systems, trade and macroeconomic management; state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform; and shaping the economic leadership and core agencies as well as the role of the international financial institutions. Additionally, it should be noted that “animal spirits” among the empowered workers and entrepreneurs are an essential ingredient for any market growth. What options are available for external partners to affect such a reformative process? How can these countries help the empowered DPRK workers challenge state control over the economy and promote a desired realignment of the incumbent domestic coalition? These broader questions may deserve scrutiny as well. In this regard, experts are debating the extent to which the SOE reform since 2014 and the increasing level of private business activities could affect the DPRK's future economic development and relations with its external partners. Sakai (2018) argues that the DPRK regime does not intend to pursue a Chinese-style of economic reform and continues to oblige all DPRK citizens and entities to obey absolutely the “leadership,” while emphasizing the importance of “self-development spirit,” as opposed to international cooperation. Sakai offers a cautious view with regard to the opportunities for external partners to affect the DPRK's reformative process. To the contrary, Mimura (2017) highlights a possible window of opportunity to affect the DPRK's thinking about foreign partnership by focusing on the internal debate surrounding the new economic strategy since January 2018. Mimura observes that SOE autonomy is a key subject in the debate and focuses on the increasing autonomy for SOE managers, as opposed to the state planners, in making decisions on issues related to human resource management and production and sales of excess commodities. Babson (2019) also points to an increasingly blurred boundary between SOE and private business activities, referring to the emergence of successful entrepreneurs in both SOEs and private ventures. Babson recommends to explore options for enterprise organization models that would best support the DPRK's future economic development and relations with its partners. Such endeavor would complement Noland's proposal on the empowerment of DPRK workers. The DPRK's new line of economic policy is surely intended to secure the survival of the regime which would reject any external pressure if it felt threatened. The transformative engagement approach could succeed so long as the DPRK leadership became confident of its merits, which would likely require a prolonged period of adjustment, at a minimum. The DPRK's future decision to abandon its nuclear weapons, if it ever happens, would be affected by the regime's confidence in the security environment in which the economy is a crucial, but not necessarily the sole, factor. Political rapprochement is also another essential element in undertaking effective transformative engagement.

Continued diplomatic progress with North Korea will be a journey of many steps, as A. Glaser and Z. Mian describe in their Policy Forum “Denuclearizing North Korea: A verified, phased approach” (7 September, p. [981][1]). Leaders in North Korea, South Korea, and the United States agree that one step could be dismantlement or civilian repurposing of the nuclear reactors at Yongbyon. We propose a cooperative method for verifying reactor shutdown or conversion. The key tools are meter-scale, field-deployable detectors that track neutrino emissions from reactor cores. Neutrino detectors can track power levels and fuel evolution in nuclear reactors, as experiments in South Korea, China, Russia, the United States, and Europe have demonstrated ([ 1 ][2]–[ 7 ][3]). At Yongbyon, neutrino detectors could be deployed to verify reactor shutdown or civilian operations without the need for operational records or access inside reactor buildings. Shutdown of North Korea's main plutonium production reactor could be verified with a detector in a standard freight container parked outside the reactor building. Existing neutrino technology may be attractive to all parties in the ongoing talks. North Korea may value a tool for demonstrating treaty compliance while maintaining custody of the reactor buildings. Other parties may value the tamper resistance of the neutrino signal and resilience of neutrino detectors, which require minimal on-site access and can reconstruct reactor operational history even after a data-taking pause. Neutrino projects are also a natural opportunity to strengthen relations between North and South Korea and to build international scientific ties. South Korea has an active neutrino community and could choose to deploy a counterpart to a Yongbyon-based detector at one of its own reactors. Resulting scientific collaboration could benefit Korea and the world. We encourage policy-makers to consider neutrino detectors as one step toward stability and security on the Korean Peninsula. 1. [↵][4]1. Y. J. Ko et al. (NEOS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 121802 (2017). [OpenUrl][5] 2. 1. F. P. An et al. (Daya Bay Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 251801 (2017). [OpenUrl][6] 3. 1. I. Alekseev et al. (DANSS Collaboration), arXiv:1804.04046 (2018). 4. 1. G. Bak et al. (RENO Collaboration), arXiv:1806.00574 (2018). 5. 1. J. Ashenfelter et al. (PROSPECT Collaboration), arXiv:1806.02784 (2018). 6. 1. N.S. Bowden et al. (SONGS Collaboration), J. Appl. Phys. 105, 064902 (2009). [OpenUrl][7] 7. [↵][8]1. G. Boireau et al. (Nucifer Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 93, 112006 (2016). [OpenUrl][9] [1]: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6406/981 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-7 [4]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text [5]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DPhys.%2BRev.%2BLett.%26rft.volume%253D118%26rft.spage%253D121802%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [6]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DPhys.%2BRev.%2BLett.%26rft.volume%253D118%26rft.spage%253D251801%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [7]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DJ.%2BAppl.%2BPhys.%26rft.volume%253D105%26rft.spage%253D064902%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [8]: #xref-ref-7-1 View reference 7 in text [9]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DPhys.%2BRev.%2BD%26rft.volume%253D93%26rft.spage%253D112006%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx