Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
With Russia using North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine, Kim Jong Un denouncing his father’s and grandfather’s stance on Korean unification, and borders beginning to reopen to the world after over three years of strict closure, North Korea appears poised for big changes in 2024.
The two Koreas are mired in an intense security dilemma, which could cause future crises between them to spiral quickly into a possible, large-scale war.
This essay is part of a series, Pursuing Peaceful Coexistence with North Korea, exploring how can the United States and South Korea peacefully coexist with a nuclear North Korea.
Here’s how the Kim regime has proven so resilient.
DPRK escapees around the world have helped build bases of support, broadening diasporic efforts and amplifying advocacy.
North Korea’s exploitation of growing rifts between Russia and the West, paired with its ambitions for advanced nuclear capabilities, should prompt a substantial reevaluation in Washington of the problems posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and how the United States approaches the Korean Peninsula.
Nuclear and nonnuclear missile capabilities are quickly spreading the Indo-Pacific. What is driving this surge, and what are the consequences for possible nuclear escalation in future crises on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait? Join Carnegie for an event addressing this and more.
The United States can’t simply demand that North Korea stops its provocations. But it can handle each such provocations with care, responding with coordinated, confident messaging that makes it clear North Korea is not the only actor with much at stake.
It is in both countries’ interests to cooperate, since each can provide the other with something in short supply: Russia needs artillery shells for its war, while North Korea needs humanitarian aid.
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