The World of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un

North Korea is in the news for two reasons: It has expanding nuclear weapons and missiles programs and it threatens to attack South Korea, the United States, and Japan. The nuclear program is hardly news. The Kim regime has been working since the 1980s on this program, and despite occasional denials of any desire to have nuclear weapons, it has forged ahead relentlessly, even during the days when it had reached a non-nuclear agreement with the United States. It is highly unlikely that the North Koreans were ever willing to completely abandon the program, no matter what incentives they were offered, and in recent years they have firmly renounced any interest in even discussing the program.
Kongdan Oh
Research Staff Member at Institute for Defense Analysis

Dr. Kongdan (Katy) Oh is a Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analysis and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. She conducts research on North and South Korean politics and economy, inter-Korean relations, Japan-Korea relations, inter-Asian cooperation, East Asian culture and society, and U.S. foreign and security policy toward East Asia.
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