Nuclear North Korea

Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang’s Nuclear North Korea was first published in 2003 amid the outbreak of a lasting crisis over the North Korean nuclear program. It promptly became a landmark of an ongoing debate in academic and policy circles about whether to engage or contain North Korea. Fifteen years later, as North Korea tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and the U.S. president angrily refers to Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man,” Nuclear North Korea remains an essential guide to the difficult choices we face. Coming from different perspectives—Kang believes the threat posed by Pyongyang has been inflated and endorses a more open approach, while Cha is more skeptical and advocates harsher measures, though both believe that some form of engagement is necessary—the authors together present authoritative analysis of one of the world’s thorniest challenges. They refute a number of misconceptions and challenge the faulty thinking that surrounds the discussion of North Korea, particularly the idea that North Korea is an irrational actor. Cha and Kang look at the implications of a nuclear North Korea, assess recent and current approaches to sanctions and engagement, and provide a functional framework for constructive policy. With a new chapter on the way forward for the international community in light of continued nuclear tensions, this book is of lasting relevance to understanding the state of affairs on the Korean peninsula.

In September 2017, North Korea shocked the world by exploding the most powerful nuclear device tested anywhere in 25 years. Months earlier, it had conducted the first test flight of a missile capable of ranging much of the United States. By the end of that year, Kim Jong Un, the reclusive state's ruler, declared that his nuclear deterrent was complete. Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile and ballistic missile arsenal continues to grow, presenting one of the most serious challenges to international security to date. Internal regime propaganda has called North Korea's nuclear forces the country's "treasured sword," underscoring the cherished place of these weapons in national strategy. Fiercely committed to self-reliance, Kim remains determined to avoid unilateral disarmament. Kim Jong Un and the Bomb tells the story of how North Korea-once derided in the 1970s as a "fourth-rate pipsqueak" of a country by President Richard Nixon-came to credibly threaten the American homeland by November 2017. Ankit Panda explores the contours of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the developmental history of its weapons programs, and the prospects for disarming or constraining Kim's arsenal. With no signs that North Korea's total disarmament is imminent over the next years or even decade, Panda explores the consequences of a nuclear-armed North Korea for the United States, South Korea, and the world.

North Korea is perilously close to developing strategic nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States and its East Asian allies. Since their first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has struggled to perfect the required delivery systems. Kim Jong-un’s regime now appears to be close, however. Sung Chull Kim, Michael D. Cohen, and the volume contributors contend that the time to prevent North Korea from achieving this capability is virtually over; scholars and policymakers must turn their attention to how to deter a nuclear North Korea. The United States, South Korea, and Japan must also come to terms with the fact that North Korea will be able to deter them with its nuclear arsenal. How will the erratic Kim Jong-un behave when North Korea develops the capability to hit medium- and long-range targets with nuclear weapons? How will and should the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China respond, and what will this mean for regional stability in the short term and long term? The international group of authors in this volume address these questions and offer a timely analysis of the consequences of an operational North Korean nuclear capability for international security.

"Leading Asian and security studies experts consider the question: What would happen if North Korea "goes nuclear?" and their answers are critical. Scholars and policymakers alike need to understand the implications not only for northeast Asian regional security, but also for the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. Moore's contributors evaluate political, economic, and security issues including: how South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia would react to such an event, and the possibility of a regional arms race; what diplomatic and strategic options the U.S. has; and how the global community's expectations regarding nuclear non-proliferation would be effected. Given the instability and mystery surrounding North Korean politics, scholarship on the implications of the country's nuclear capability is critical, which makes this volume with its unique focus a timely addition to the East Asian security studies field"--

The 2020 Commission report on the North Korean nuclear attacks against the United States posits that there was a nuclear attack against the U.S. on March 21, 2020 by North Korea, and that a national bipartisan commission was created to investigate what and how it happened

Drawing on previously unpublished Russian archival materials, this book is the first detailed history and current analysis of the North Korean nuclear program. The contributors discuss Soviet-North Korean nuclear relations, economic and military aspects of the nuclear program, the nuclear energy sector, North Korea's negotiations with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, cooperative security, and U.S. policy. Unique in its focus on North Korean attitudes and perspectives, The North Korean Nuclear Program also includes Russian interviews with North Korean officials.

When George W. Bush took office in 2001, North Korea's nuclear program was frozen and Kim Jong Il had signaled he was ready to negotiate. Today, North Korea possesses as many as ten nuclear warheads, and possibly the means to provide nuclear material to rogue states or terrorist groups. How did this happen? Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with key players in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing, including Colin Powell, John Bolton, and ex–Korean president Kim Dae-jung, as well as insights gained during fourteen trips to Pyongyang, Mike Chinoy takes readers behind the scenes of secret diplomatic meetings, disputed intelligence reports, and Washington turf battles as well as inside the mysterious world of North Korea. Meltdown provides a wealth of new material about a previously opaque series of events that eventually led the Bush administration to abandon confrontation and pursue negotiations, and explains how the diplomatic process collapsed and produced the crisis the Obama administration confronts today.

Examines the origins, history, international implications, extent, and potential solutions to the nuclear threat of the rogue state of North Korea and its tyrannical leader Kim Jong Il.

Former Pentagon insider Van Jackson explores how Trump and Kim reached - and avoided - the precipice of nuclear war.

This book chronicles the political-military development of the Korean Peninsula since 1945, with particular attention to North Koreas pursuit of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, and how it has shaped Northeast Asian security and non-proliferation policy and influenced the strategic choices of the United States and all regional powers. I focus on North Koreas leaders, institutions, political history, and the systems longer-term prospects. How has an isolated, highly idiosyncratic, small state repeatedly stymied or circumvented the policy preferences of much more powerful states, culminating with its withdrawal from the Non Proliferation Treaty (the only state ever to do so) and the testing of nuclear weapons in open defiance of adversaries and allies alike? What does this portend for the regions future? Unlike most of the literature that focuses on US non proliferation policy, this is a book about decision making in North Korea and the states survival in the face of daunting odds. It draws on extensive interviews with individuals in China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the EU who have had ample experience in and with North Korea, additional interviews with former US policy makers, and the results from two visits to the North. The author makes extensive use of archival materials from the Cold War International History Project, enabling a far fuller rendering of North Korean history than appears in most of the literature on the North Korean nuclear weapons issue.