By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He recently presented a paper at a conference called “Nuclear Politics, North Korea and the Political Economy of Northeast Asia in the Wake of the World Economic Crisis” at the University of Washington. Download the paper here. Also, an English-language version of Scott’s blog piece “Is North Korea Playing a New Game?” first posted on Chosun Ilbo, is featured on GlobalSecurity. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound.org.

North Korea’s nuclear aspirations have served as the driving force for the development of ad hoc security multilateralism in Northeast Asia. This development has occurred in stages, with each successive phase in responding to the North Korean crisis resulting in strengthened regional cooperation, despite persisting underlying strategic mistrust among the parties. This presentation will briefly evaluate the significance and contributions of three stages in the development of ad hoc security multilateralism in Northeast Asia: KEDO, the Four-Party Talks/establishment of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG), and the Six Party Talks. Then, the author will offer a critical evaluation of prospects for Six Party Talks and analyze whether the six party process might develop into a permanent feature of the security architecture in Northeast Asia or whether a fourth stage might be necessary to achieve a lasting security framework for the region. The author will also evaluate the extent to which the North Korean nuclear issue and the U.S.-led bilateral alliance system, respectively, may be both a catalyst and an obstacle to the establishment of an effective Northeast Asian regional security framework.

Read the full paper.

By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. Below are excerpts from his June 17, 2009, testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. The transcript of his full testimony is posted on our website. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Snyder on The Six Party Process: A Regional Framework for North Korea’s Denuclearization: “North Korea’s unilateral pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities over the last two decades has ironically been a primary catalyst for strengthened regional cooperation in Northeast Asia. But this cooperation has thus far been insufficient to deter North Korea’s nuclear development given the existence of longstanding regional security cleavages. … No single actor, including the United States, can meet this challenge without cooperation and collective action from North Korea’s neighbors. But the concerned parties most directly affected by North Korea’s destabilizing actions have been least willing to challenge or block North Korea’s nuclear development.”
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By Soo-Mee Park

Soo-Mee Park is The Asia Foundation’s public affairs officer in the Korea office. She can be reached at smpark@asiafound.org.

Standing in Gwanghwamun, the heart of downtown Seoul, amid the sea of sobbing mourners at the funeral of the former Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, a curious déjà vu struck me.

Out of nowhere, the scene in front of me overlapped with a black and white footage of the funeral of Park Chung Hee I had seen some years ago on a local history channel. For a moment, the connections seemed rather unclear. Then it hit me: there was something unusual to the public grief toward the deaths of these two men that somehow surpassed the loss of a political leader.

For years growing up in Korea, I always wondered why there was such hype surrounding Park’s glory in our history textbooks.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. His latest book, “China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security,” was published by Lynne Rienner earlier this year. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

North Korea did exactly what it said it would do on May 25, 2009, when it conducted a nuclear test as promised in its April 28 statement in response to UN sanctions imposed on three North Korean firms in accordance with an April 13 UN Security Council Presidential Statement condemning North Korea’s April 5, 2009, missile test. The test furthers North Korea’s strategic objective of making permanent its status as a nuclear weapons state. North Korea’s announcement of the test shows that a primary political target of North Korea’s nuclear test is domestic, as was the case with North Korea’s April 5th missile launch.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. His latest book, “China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security,” was published by Lynne Rienner earlier this year. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

The death of Roh Moo-hyun, the 16th president of the Republic of Korea (2003-2008), is a huge shock to South Korea’s political world. A human rights lawyer with no college degree, Roh campaigned to revolutionize Korean politics and society by promoting clean politics, fighting corruption, and challenging personal and elite ties as the basis for advancement in Korean society. His political idealism was both profoundly attractive and disappointing to the South Korean public since he ultimately became a victim to the flaws in the Korean system he had set out to overcome. His apparent suicide on May 23, 2009, following revelations of personal corruption is a shocking political and personal tragedy, with very mixed reverberations for Korean politics.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Korean Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book, “China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security,” was published by Lynne Rienner earlier this year. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org. Scott Snyder will discuss his book at a Pacific Council on International Policy program May 15 in San Francisco. To attend this event, contact Heather MacClelland.

Within hours following an April 14, 2009, United Nations Security Council presidential statement condemning North Korea’s missile launch, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) foreign ministry responded by stating that “six-party talks have lost the meaning of their existence, never to recover,” and that the “DPRK will never participate in such six-party talks, nor will it be bound any longer to any agreement of the talks.”
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By Edward Reed and Lee Kyung-sook

Edward Reed is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Korea and Lee Kyung-sook is Senior Program Officer in Korea. They can be reached at ereed@asiafound.org, and kslee@asiafound.org, respectively.

Korea is well known for the massive and frequent street demonstrations organized by various civil society groups to bring pressure on the government over issues of the day. Last spring, we witnessed the sight of hundreds of thousands of Koreans marching with candles almost every night for two months to protest against importing beef from the United States. Many smaller demonstrations take place every week at the Seoul City Hall Plaza. Less well known, however, is that these public demonstrations are increasingly becoming part of non-governmental groups’ strategies to bring about changes in public laws, regulations, and processes. These strategies have sometimes borne fruit. As a result of this interplay between a very activist civil society and a large government bureaucracy, Korea’s public governance has gradually become more transparent, accessible, responsive, and service-oriented.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. His latest book, “China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security,” was published by Lynne Rienner earlier this year. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

The Obama administration was a political target of North Korea’s April 5, 2009, missile test in addition to the targets of internal political consolidation, exploiting China’s DPRK dilemma, and the exploitation of possible divisions within the UN Security Council.

North Korea’s strategic objective has been to secure its position as a nuclear weapons state. In a statement released immediately prior to President Obama’s inauguration, the DPRK Foreign Ministry declared that normalization and the nuclear issue are “two separate matters” and that “the DPRK’s status as a nuclear weapons state will remain unchanged.” Pyongyang’s tactical objective has been to shape the field for bilateral negotiations with the United States on terms favorable to the DPRK by controlling the agenda and terms of interaction. Crisis escalation tactics and brinkmanship are tried and true negotiating tactics that from a North Korean perspective have never failed to deliver. The challenge for the Obama administration is whether it will be possible to break this pattern and to establish a dynamic of interaction with the North on its own terms.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He just published a report called “Pursuing a Comprehensive Vision for the U.S.-South Korea Alliance.” Yesterday he blogged about the alliance for Globalsecurity.org. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

The conventional wisdom among Asia specialists on both sides of the aisle has been that there would be little need for change in a new administration’s policy toward Asia. At the same time, there is no question that America’s preoccupation with Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East has prioritized the question of how America’s Asian allies might make “out of area” contributions while seemingly neglecting the long-term challenge posed by the rise of China. The virtually exclusive focus of former Assistant Secretary for East Asia Chris Hill on North Korea appeared on occasion to take the support of America’s Asian allies for granted…read more.

By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder is The Asia Foundation’s Senior Associate and Director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He recently provided analysis on the UN Security Council Presidential Statement in an op-ed on Globalsecurity.org. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

North Korea’s efforts to exploit divisions among members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in its response to its April 5, 2009 test of a multi-stage rocket has proven to be a slightly harder political target than some in Pyongyang may have anticipated…read more.