The North Korean Nuclear Dilemma: Does China Have Leverage?

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiqi Zhang ◽  
Ginger L. Denton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Community ◽  
The North ◽  
The Impact

North Korea has repeatedly defied the international community with regards to its nuclear weapons programme. Many look to China for leverage to change North Korea’s behaviour. This study reviews the development of the China–North Korean relationship and conducts a statistical analysis on the impact of China’s influence on North Korea. Our analysis finds China’s leverage on North Korea to be nuanced. We maintain that North Korea has been wary of China’s influence. Complete isolation or pressure from China under certain conditions will render North Korea more resistant to China’s influence. We also suggest that the key to the North Korean issue is still in the hands of the United States and the entire international community through the use of an engagement strategy.

North Korea

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McEachern
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
The North ◽  
American President

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.

Reluctant Reconciliation: South Korea's tentative détente with North Korea in the Nixon era, 1969–72

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-94
Author(s):  
CHOI LYONG
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Short Article ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The North ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article discusses the impact and implications of Sino-American reconciliation on South Korea's policy towards its conflict with North Korea as well as its effect on South Korean politics in the early 1970s. Specifically, this article will examine how the Park regime altered its policy toward the North in response to the demands of the Nixon administration, before discussing the limitations of the policy in terms of the hostile approach of the Park regime toward Pyongyang during its talks with North Korea in 1972.Based on recent findings in the South Korean and American archives, and an interview with former KCIA official Gang Indeok, this article contends that this particular focus provides an interesting case study to explain the impact of global changes on the domestic politics of specific nation(s) during the Cold War era. Along with many other American client states, the Republic of Korea misunderstood the objective of the United States before Nixon announced his Doctrine in 1969 and intention to reduce American support for Park. To be sure, it was not Washington's intention to build a democratic country in the Korean Peninsula. Rather, as Westad has indicated, the superpower sought greater control over the world and the expansion and extension of its power. This short article will thus demonstrate the process by which the client states of the United States—in particular, South Korea—came to understand the real aims of Washington and learned how to utilize these American intentions for their own national interest.

scholarly journals La dissuasion nucléaire et les rapports sino-japonais - l'interaction entre une puissance nucléaire et une puissance non nucléaire en Asie de l'Est (Note)

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 685-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Shihmin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Nuclear Potential ◽  
Missile Defense ◽  
The North ◽  
Nuclear Policy ◽  
Security Relationship

Since the end of 1950s, the Japanese nuclear policy has consisted in keeping the legal option open for the development of the "defensive" nuclear weapons and maintaining a nuclear potential. The motivation of this" open nuclear option" of Japan would be mainly the development of the nuclear force of China. The us retreat of all the ground-launched and submarine-launched tactical nuclear weapons in 1991 implied the end of the age of dependence on tactical nuclear weapons for "war-fighting" in Asia. The conventional deterrence would already be sufficient for maintaining the stability of the East Asia. The mission of the extended nuclear deterrence of the United States could be reduced to Us vital role for countering only the nuclear attack of other country, not for any conventional attack. The controversies about the "antimissile defense" have influenced the security relationship between China and Japan. The important strategic significance of the antimissile defense for Beijing would be that a strategy of the first strike against China would be easier to consider. A theater missile defense in Japan would be less challenging for China and would be useful against the threat of missiles from North Korea. Nonetheless, a strategic missile defense could have a destabilizing impact on Sino-Japanese security relations. The Japanese nuclear policy would be a hind of "recessive deterrence" which operates by the potential and the possibility of developing nuclear weapons. The nuclear crisis in Korea provides a chance to observe the working dynamic of this deterrence. Owing to the worry about the nuclear proliferation of Japan, Tokyo finds it appropriate to ask Beijing to prevent the nuclear development of the North Korea and to maintain the credibility of the extended deterrence of the United States.

scholarly journals COVID-19 In United States: Statistical Analysis and Inferences From the Empirical Data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nivedita Rethnakar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Statistical Inference ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Respiratory Diseases ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mortality Statistics ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper investigates the mortality statistics of the COVID-19 pandemic from the United States perspective. Using empirical data analysis and statistical inference tools, we bring out several exciting and important aspects of the pandemic, otherwise hidden. Specific patterns seen in demo- graphics such as race/ethnicity and age are discussed both qualitatively and quantitatively. We also study the role played by factors such as population density. Connections between COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases are also covered in detail. The temporal dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak and the impact of vaccines in controlling the pandemic are also looked at with suf- ficient rigor. It is hoped that statistical inference such as the ones gathered in this paper would be helpful for better scientific understanding, policy prepa- ration and thus adequately preparing, should a similar situation arise in the future.

scholarly journals Quebec’s Economic and Commercial Linkages with the United States, 1994–2017

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Earl H. Fry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
The Impact

This article examines the ebb and flow of the Quebec government’s economic and commercial relations with the United States in the period 1994–2017. The topic demonstrates the impact of three major forces on Quebec’s economic and commercial ties with the US: (1) the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which became operational in 1994 and was fully implemented over a 15-year period; (2) the onerous security policies put in place by the US government in the decade following the horrific events of 11 September 2001; and (3) changing economic circumstances in the United States ranging from robust growth to the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The article also indicates that the Quebec government continues to sponsor a wide range of activities in the United States, often more elaborate and extensive than comparable activities pursued by many nation-states with representation in the US. 1 1 Stéphane Paquin, ‘Quebec-U.S. Relations: The Big Picture’, American Review of Canadian Studies 46, no. 2 (2016): 149–61.

scholarly journals Rethinking the Security Architecture of North East Asia

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
Michael J Kelly ◽  
Sean Watts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
East Asia ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War

In the aftermath of the Cold War, many began to question the continuing efficacy, or at least call for reform, of collective security structures such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations Security Council. Yet, North East Asia never enjoyed a formal, institutionalised collective security structure. As Russia and the United States recede and China emerges in North East Asia, this article questions whether now is the time to consider such an arrangement. Financially, Japan and South Korea are locked into a symbiotic relationship with China (as is the United States), while the government in Beijing continues to militarise and lay territorial and maritime claims to large areas of the region. Moreover, the regime in North Korea, with its new nuclear capabilities, remains unpredictable. Consequently, central components to the question of collective security in North East Asia are the equally vexing questions of what to do about North Korea and whether a new formalised security arrangement would include or exclude the People's Republic of China.

Hedging between the United States and China? South Korea’s ideology-driven behavior and its implications for national security

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min-hyung Kim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Security Cooperation ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Secondary State ◽  
Cooperation Partner

Abstract Given the limits of the prevailing hedging account for Seoul’s puzzling behavior that is in conformity with the interests of its adversary (i.e. North Korea) and potential threat (i.e. China) rather than those of its principal ally (i.e. the United States) and security cooperation partner (i.e. Japan), this article emphasizes the impact of the progressive ideology on Seoul’s security policy. In doing so, it calls for attention to a domestic source of ideology in explaining the security behaviors of a secondary state, which is under-researched and thus is poorly understood.

The continuing threat of nuclear war

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Cirincione
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Nuclear Winter

The American poet Robert Frost famously mused on whether the world will end in fire or in ice. Nuclear weapons can deliver both. The fire is obvious: modern hydrogen bombs duplicate on the surface of the earth the enormous thermonuclear energies of the Sun, with catastrophic consequences. But it might be a nuclear cold that kills the planet. A nuclear war with as few as 100 hundred weapons exploded in urban cores could blanket the Earth in smoke, ushering in a years-long nuclear winter, with global droughts and massive crop failures. The nuclear age is now entering its seventh decade. For most of these years, citizens and officials lived with the constant fear that long-range bombers and ballistic missiles would bring instant, total destruction to the United States, the Soviet Union, many other nations, and, perhaps, the entire planet. Fifty years ago, Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, On the Beach, portrayed the terror of survivors as they awaited the radioactive clouds drifting to Australia from a northern hemisphere nuclear war. There were then some 7000 nuclear weapons in the world, with the United States outnumbering the Soviet Union 10 to 1. By the 1980s, the nuclear danger had grown to grotesque proportions. When Jonathan Schell’s chilling book, The Fate of the Earth, was published in 1982, there were then almost 60,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled with a destructive force equal to roughly 20,000 megatons (20 billion tons) of TNT, or over 1 million times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile system was supposed to defeat a first-wave attack of some 5000 Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 missile warheads streaking over the North Pole. ‘These bombs’, Schell wrote, ‘were built as “weapons” for “war”, but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history, yet they threaten to end history. They were made by men, yet they threaten to annihilate man’.

U.S.-Russian Relations and the North Korean Crisis: A Role for the Russian Far East?

Asian Survey ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 722-735 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Clay Moltz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Russian Far East ◽  
Far East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Energy Reserves ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Far East

Because of its energy reserves and long history of economic links with North Korea, the Russian Far East could provide useful incentives needed to help convince Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program. For this reason, the United States should begin crafting a regionally based strategy that includes Russia.

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