Time to Rethink the US-ROK Alliance

Posted by on Aug 16, 2020 in Articles, Featured, Korea | 0 comments North Korea has blown up the inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong. It is threatening an all-out pamphlet war in response to defectors sending anti-regime propaganda to the north. South Korea’s unification minister has stepped down after failing to meet with his North Korean counterparts during his 14-month tenure. Pyongyang is not happy about the balloons launched by defectors carrying...
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A Progressive Victory over the Coronavirus

Posted by on May 31, 2020 in Articles, Featured, Korea | 0 comments The current pandemic has led to the postponement of elections around the world. Over 75 countries have declared some kind of state of emergency. Several illiberal leaders, like Viktor Orban, have used the crisis to seize virtually unlimited powers. The Chinese model of full-spectrum clampdown has elicited praise across the political spectrum for its apparent effectiveness in combating the...
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Will Impeachment Affect Trump’s Reelection Chances?

Posted by on Dec 19, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Korea | 0 comments One of the hallmarks of a democratic political system is that voters change their minds. In North Korea, 100 percent of voters support the ruling party coalition in election after election. In South Korea since 1998, voters backed 10 years of progressive candidates followed by 10 years of conservative candidates. Then, after a dramatic turnaround in public opinion, South Koreans rallied to...
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Impeachment’s Effect on Trump’s Foreign Policy

Posted by on Oct 24, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Korea, US Domestic Policy | 0 comments Donald Trump is now the subject of an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. Congress. He has committed a range of potentially impeachable offenses. But the Democrats have decided to focus the impeachment investigation on one aspect of the president’s foreign policy. Trump tried to persuade a foreign government, Ukraine, to dig up evidence of corruption connected to one of his Democratic challengers,...
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North Korea’s Momentous Transition

Posted by on Sep 1, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Korea | 0 comments North Korea belongs to a dwindling category of countries known as “totalitarian.” Compared to their authoritarian cousins, totalitarian regimes aspire to control all aspects of society. As Italian fascist Benito Mussolini once put it: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” In such countries, there is no autonomous business sector or civil...
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Pyongyang on the Potomac

Posted by on Aug 30, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Korea | 0 comments When Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un shook hands on June 30 at the line dividing the two Koreas, the pictures that appeared on front pages all over the world depicted two very different leaders. Trump is a tall, 73-year-old white man who leads the world’s most powerful democracy. Kim is a short, plump, 35-year-old Korean who heads up the world’s most notorious non-democracy. They look like the...
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