By Scott Snyder

Every North Korean seems to have been mobilized for an all-out push to mark their country’s arrival as a “strong and powerful nation” in 2012, which marks the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, Kim Jong Il’s 70th birthday, and the 30th birthday of Kim Jong Il’s third son and reported successor, Kim Jong-Eun. Pyongyang citizens have cleaned up the city during a 150-day labor campaign, followed by a second 100-day campaign now underway. The Ryugyong Hotel in the middle of Pyongyang, unfinished for over two decades, has been given a facelift courtesy of the Egyptian telecommunications firm Orascom, which expects to have 100,000 mobile phone customers in Pyongyang by the end of the year. But it is still difficult to shake the feeling in Pyongyang that one has walked onto a movie set in between takes. Or that the used car looks good on the outside, but you really don’t know what you might find if you were able to look under the hood or give it a test-drive.
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President Obama will also visit Korea on this trip against a backdrop of tensions between North and South Korea after a naval skirmish and just-announced plans to send special envoy Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang in the near future. On the heels of the joint vision statement between South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak and President Obama in June, The Asia Foundation’s Seoul office hosted a seminar last week to explore the challenges and opportunities of what the Hon. Hwang Jin-Ha, Member of the ROK National Assembly, called in his keynote address “one of the strongest alliances in the world.” Three presentations focused on international peacekeeping, overseas development assistance, and maritime security. Co-hosted by the Foundation’s Center for U.S. Korea Policy (CUSKP), this is the second discussion in a three-part series examining opportunities for U.S.-ROK cooperation. Read more about the speakers.
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The “Joint Vision for the Alliance of the United States of America and the Republic of Korea,” released by Presidents Barack Obama and Lee Myung-bak on June 16, 2009, forged a new agenda for the U.S.-ROK alliance extending to cooperation on common challenges beyond traditional security. Earlier this month, The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and the Brookings Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies presented a seminar at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., that assessed the opportunities for expanding the U.S.-ROK alliance partnership on such newly-emerging issues as pandemics, counter-terrorism, and space cooperation. Speakers included James L. Schoff, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis; Kevin Shepard, Kyungnam University; and Clay Moltz, Naval Postgraduate School. Their presentation abstracts are available for download.

A new book Engagement with North Korea: A Viable Alternative released in September 2009, by SUNY Press, features a chapter written by The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Seoul, Edward Reed. Dr. Reed’s chapter, “From Charity to Partnership: South Korean NGO Engagement with North Korea,” discusses the contribution of South Korean NGOs in reducing South-North tensions. Reed also examines the scope of South Korean non-governmental humanitarian assistance to the North and concludes that the major NGOs have adjusted their strategies over time to ensure greater impact on the people and improved transparency.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. Snyder blogged on Global Security about policy implications of three scenarios related to North Korea’s succession process and the task of responding to potential instability in North Korea. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

In North Korea’s totalitarian system, political stability depends on the health of the leader more than on any other factor. For this reason, Kim Jong Il’s rumored health problems have drawn careful scrutiny since he failed to appear almost exactly one year ago at public events marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The possible policy implications of three scenarios related to North Korea’s succession process – a managed succession, a contested succession, and a failed succession – were analyzed in a Council on Foreign Relations Special Report released in January entitled “Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea,” by Paul Stares and Joel Wit.

See-Won Byun’s “North Korea Contingency Planning and U.S.-ROK Cooperation,” the latest report of The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy, explores the policy coordination challenges the United States and South Korea are likely to face in the context of potential instability in North Korea. According to the report, contingency planning efforts were marginalized or neglected as a focal point for coordination under progressive South Korean administrations that prized engagement with North Korea over planning for possible North Korean instability. Read the full post.

By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He was quoted on former President Bill Clinton’s  trip to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American journalists in The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and Slate. Today, Snyder blogged on Global Security about the implications of this visit. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Bill Clinton’s dramatic mission to secure the release of two American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee following North Korea’s harsh verdict regarding their unauthorized entry into North Korea has succeeded on multiple fronts, based on criteria for success I offered yesterday: 1) the visit secured the release of the two journalists, 2) the visit has provided a first-hand opportunity for a direct assessment of Kim Jong Il’s health and the leadership’s decision-making capacity, 3) the visit provided an opportunity to convey directly to Kim Jong Il an American view of North Korea’s situation and the unacceptability of North Korea’s continued nuclear weapons pursuits. We do not know yet whether Kim Jong Il has been able to use the opportunity to make a new start in relations with the Obama administration.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He recently spoke at an Atlantic Council and Korea Economic Institute of America-sponsored event on U.S. policy alternatives in the event that North Korea refuses to return to dialogue. A full write-up is posted on Global Security. Below is an excerpt. Read Vanity Fair.com for Snyder’s comments on North Korea’s leadership. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound.org.

“The premise underlying the question of what do we do if North Korea says no is that we are still waiting for a North Korean answer…. It is North Korea’s pursuit of escalation that has foreclosed dialogue possibilities for now as Pyongyang, for a variety of domestic and international reasons, attempts to lock in its nuclear status as a fait accompli.
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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 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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