Last spring two North Korean defectors visited Stanford University from Seoul to share their experiences in the North. Hosted by Stanford's Korean Student Association, the event was held to increase awareness of North Korean human rights issues in the Stanford intellectual community. In fact, the Association hosts "North Korean Human Rights Night" every year. Stanford is not alone in this; many other leading American universities across the country, often also led by Korean American students, convene similar gatherings.

In the summer of 2012, Silicon Valley IT giant Google, a Stanford progeny and neighbor, hosted a conference on how technology can be used to disrupt illicit global networks, such as trafficking in human beings, human organs, and weapons. Ten North Korean defectors, ranging from former elite party members to forgotten orphans, flew in from Seoul to participate. They shared their extraordinary stories of survival amid excruciatingly painful quests for freedom.

Growing pressure on Pyongyang

These two stories are not isolated episodes. They reflect a recent trend of the international community paying dramatically more attention to North Korean human rights issues. Most notably, last month the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to put North Korean human rights violations on the U.N. Security Council's agenda, despite objections from China and Russia. International pressure has been intensifying on Pyongyang since the release last year of a U.N. report documenting a network of political prisons in the North and atrocities that include murder, enslavement, torture, rape and forced abortions.

While concerns about North Korean human rights are longstanding at the U.N., this was the first time the U.N. Security Council ever debated the isolated country's human rights situation. In the past the international community focused primarily on curbing North Korea's nuclear programs. Now human rights in North Korea have become a matter rivaling the nuclear issue in seriousness and global attention. Its importance appears likely to continue to grow in the coming years.

That the human rights situation in North Korea is appalling was never a secret. Defectors have produced some searing accounts of life in the North Korean gulag. Why then did the international community largely ignore it until recently?

Partly this was a product of the priority given to security issues. But it also has to do with the closed nature of the regime and Cold War dynamics that made many people in the international community doubt that the situation could be as bad as some asserted. Pyongyang made it virtually impossible for foreign journalists to report out of the country, much less obtain video that could dramatize the situation of the ordinary people of North Korea for an international audience.

Moreover, some Western observers suspected that those focusing on North Korea's human rights situation were trying to demonize the regime for political and strategic purposes. Others, such as China and Russia, stayed away from supporting international criticism of North Korea's human rights situation, apparently for fear of opening up their own human rights situation to heightened international scrutiny. In any event, with few practical means to address the North Korean human rights situation, the international community paid little heed to the problem until the end of the cold war.

Unspeakable atrocities

Then, the great famine in North Korea in the mid-1990s led to many more North Koreans leaving their country and seeking temporary relief in China. More than ever they traveled on to the South and brought their life stories with them. One consequence has been an enormous increase in the amount of information available about circumstances inside North Korea, not least due to the flow of information into the country and the use of cell phones and other technology to get reports out. Along with changing international norms about human rights, this contributed to a dramatic growth during the past decade in the number of people, organizations and states throughout the world actively focusing on human rights in North Korea. In South Korea alone, there are many NGOs, often led by North Korean refugees, that work on North Korean human rights issues.

In a logical conclusion to these developments, a special United Nations Commission of Inquiry in February 2014 published a report detailing what it called "unspeakable atrocities" in North Korea. The head of the inquiry sent a letter to Kim Jong Un, warning, in effect, that Kim himself might be brought before the International Criminal Court. While the U.N. Security Council has not yet taken concrete action, the fact that it placed North Korea's human rights record on its agenda means that, theoretically at least, it can now at any point take the next step of referring these crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court.

How, then, should we deal with the human rights situation in North Korea? While it is not difficult to condemn the current condition on moral and ethical grounds, it is much more challenging to adequately address it in practical terms, especially when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea reacts extremely negatively on such condemnation and uses it as a reason for not engaging on this issue.

For instance, the North Korean human rights situation remains one of the most divisive issues between conservatives and progressives in South Korea. South Korean conservatives advocate a very active program of publicizing and condemning North Korea's human rights situation. Many support steps such as taking the matter before the International Court of Justice with the aim of charging North Korea's leaders with crimes against humanity. Conservatives argue not only that this is the morally correct approach but also that it would put increased pressure on the regime to reform, if not contribute to its collapse.

South Korean progressives, on the other hand, while acknowledging the seriousness of the situation, are adamant that focusing on it will not serve to improve the situation. Instead, they say, by making the regime feel even less secure, it would actually worsen the human rights situation in North Korea as well as hurt efforts to improve inter-Korean relations. Progressives therefore argue South Korea should instead focus for the time being on state-to-state dialogue while providing aid to the North. This would reassure Pyongyang, they say, and eventually contribute to its taking its own reform measures, including improving the human rights situation.

As a result of these very different views, the Republic of Korea has adopted significantly different policies depending on whether a progressive or a conservative leader occupies the Blue House. When progressives Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun were president, the ROK often abstained on votes in UN bodies addressing North Korea's human rights situation. In contrast, conservative governments voted in favor of international criticism of North Korea's human rights situation and sometimes took the lead in raising the issue.

A coordinated effort

Meanwhile, South Korea's National Assembly has for years been unable to pass a North Korean human rights bill at all. Progressives favor "human rights" legislation that deals primarily with providing humanitarian aid to the North, consistent with their perspective on the problem's roots, while conservatives have drafted a bill that focuses on human rights along the lines of the United States' North Korea Human Rights Act, first passed in 2004.

For its part, the U.S. itself became focused on human rights only about a generation ago. It was not until the administration of President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) that the U.S. embraced an activist policy placing international human rights near the top of its foreign agenda. Before then, the U.S. fiercely criticized communist states, but mostly because of the nature of their regimes rather than their human rights practices per se.

Today democratic governments throughout the world routinely criticize aspects of the human rights situations even in friendly and allied countries, not just in those of adversaries. Actions on behalf of human rights that in earlier decades would have been deemed unacceptable "interference in domestic affairs" now enjoy international legitimacy and broad support. Concepts such as the "responsibility to protect (R2P)," which many Japanese have promoted, assert that national sovereignty is not absolute and that the international community must intervene to stop situations where the regime is unable to protect its people.

While concern is well-taken that a focus on the North Korean human rights situation would burden any engagement effort with Pyongyang and, moreover, would not improve the lives of the people of North Korea in the short- to mid-term, we cannot ignore the human rights situation. Any policy toward the North must take into account that the North Korean human rights issue has developed dramatically in recent years.

For South Korea, this requires a principled but nuanced approach. It has long been the primary center for research on North Korean human rights, with the Korea Institute for National Unification producing its annual White Paper since 1996, but it needs to establish a bipartisan body to develop programs to effectively address those areas most in need. It should also support all important and accurate criticism of North Korea's human rights situation at the United Nations and other international organizations.

However, South Korea may not take the lead in addressing North Korea's human rights abuses, while increasing the humanitarian provision of nutritional assistance and public health services in North Korea without linkage to the nuclear issue. Such an approach would deprive North Korea of the argument that South Korea is not actually concerned about human rights but is using the issue as a weapon against Pyongyang.

Like other aspects of North Korea policy, the human rights problem is extremely troubling yet enormously difficult to address effectively. The international community must share its wisdom and its resources to develop and implement principled, pragmatic, long-term approaches to the challenges that Pyongyang presents, especially the human rights situation. Leaders of the international community as a whole but above all South Korea's neighbors should support and participate in such a coordinated effort. This is in fact an area in which Japan and South Korea can easily cooperate more.

Shin recently coauthored the policy report, "Tailored Engagement: Toward an Effective and Sustainable Inter-Korean Relations Policy," released at a hearing of the Korean National Assembly's special committee on inter-Korean relations. This Nikkei Asian Review article was originally carried on Jan. 20 and reposted with permission.

Sony Pictures Entertainment was set to release a satirical comedy, “The Interview,” in late 2014, but a cyberattack hit the organization that leaked corporate information, leading the company to initially pull the film and opening up a string of theories over who was behind the attack and how to respond.

Speculation began to mount as a clearer picture of the unprecedented hacking, both comprehensive and large in size, began to emerge. The breach is thought to be retribution for Sony’s production of the film, which carries a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Then, a threat was directed at movie theaters and moviegoers planning to screen and see “The Interview.” The message warned those against involvement ahead of the film’s Dec. 25 opening, indicating a “bitter fate” and alluding to the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

An unknown group, The Guardians of Peace “GOP,” claimed responsibility for the cyberattack. Media and those familiar with North Korea began to point blame on the country, which had already publicly condemned the film last June and has a history of cybercrime. Responding to accusations, top North Korean leadership rejected any involvement in the attack.

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The White House responded as Sony canceled the film’s New York premiere and said it would discontinue distribution. Following his year-end press conference, President Barack Obama condemned the hacking, citing the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s conclusion that North Korea was behind the attack. The President said the United States would respond “proportionally,” and on Jan. 2, signed an Executive Order that put into action a series of sanctions imposed by the Department of the Treasury.

David Straub, a Korea expert at Stanford University, answered questions about the Sony hacking and its policy implications for the United States and North-South Korean relations. Straub is the associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He formerly served as the State Department’s Korean affairs director.

What do we know about the Sony hacking? Who’s responsible?

Based on many types of evidence, including confidential information, U.S. government officials appear to be quite confident that North Korea did in fact conduct this operation. There’s still some disagreement in the media and among tech experts over who is responsible. They’ve cited a number of reasons but the main one is that the FBI’s official statement attributing the attack to North Korea provided evidence that they believe is far from conclusive. I myself am not a technical expert, but based upon my following North Korea for many years – the attack strikes me as being very likely to have been a North Korean operation. The FBI statement noted that the Sony attack is similar to an attack that the North Koreans conducted against South Korean banks and media outlets in March 2013. In that attack, many South Korean banks had their hard drives completely wiped clean. It was a hugely destructive attack and very similar to what happened to Sony.

Does North Korea’s response to the Sony hack coincide with past behavior?

In addition to the 2013 South Korean bank cyberattack, the North Koreans apparently sank a South Korean naval vessel in 2010, killing 46 sailors. In both instances, the North Koreans denied that they did it, expressed outrage over being accused, demanded that the South Koreans produce proof, said that they could prove that they didn’t do it, and then requested that the South Koreans conduct a joint investigation. These same demands are being made in response to the U.S. blaming Pyongyang for the Sony cyberattack. It couldn’t be more similar. More generally, the North Korean regime is very calculating. They know they can’t win an outright military confrontation with South Korea, much less the United States, so what they do is try to find a weak link and go after it in a way in which they have plausible deniability – a situation where it’s very difficult for the attacked party to prove who did it.

Describe North Korea’s hacking capabilities.

North Korea is a very secretive country, so it’s hard to be completely certain of their cyber capabilities. However, according to many accounts, the North Korean government has established professional hacking schools and units over the years, resulting in hundreds if not thousands of trained hackers. North Korea has engaged in a number of attacks in the past, the most prominent one was the attack on South Korean banks in March 2013. But also, a few years ago, North Korea conducted less sophisticated attacks on major U.S. government websites.

Why would they conduct an attack?

The North Koreans appear to have both the capability and the motivation to attack Sony. The nation’s entire political system rests on a cult of personality – now a cult of family, actually – that began with the founder of the regime, Kim Il-sung, and extends to his grandson today, leader Kim Jong-un, who has been in power since Dec. 2011. It’s the only thing holding the political system together at this point. The cult of personality is so strong that any direct criticism of the top leader is something that North Koreans will compete among each other to reject. From this standpoint, it seems very likely that they would feel they had to prevent the showing of a movie that features an assassination of Kim Jong-un. And, the hackers had plenty of time to prepare for and implement the attack because everyone knew well ahead of when the movie would be released.

The United States placed new financial sanctions on North Korea. What impact will the sanctions have?

President Obama made it clear that the U.S. government would respond at a time, in a place, and in a manner of its own choosing. Not all measures taken would be made public. So far, the first publically announced measure was the President’s Executive Order on Jan. 2 imposing additional sanctions on a number of North Korean agencies and officials. This in itself is unlikely to have major consequences because most of those entities were already sanctioned. But, the Executive Order states that the sanctions are being implemented not only because of the cyberattack against Sony, but more generally because of North Korea’s actions and policies, including its serious human rights abuses. So in a sense, the North Koreans got the United States to expand its reasons for sanctioning them.

President Obama addresses the Sony hacking, saying the United States will "respond proportionally," at his year-end press briefing on Dec. 19.

President Obama addresses the Sony hacking at his year-end press briefing on Dec. 19. Photo credit: WhiteHouse.gov

What other steps will the United States likely take?

President Obama left open the possibility that North Korea might be returned to the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which the nation was removed in 2008. I think it was a mistake to remove North Korea from that list in the first place. It was done to promote progress on the nuclear talks, which eventually failed, and ignored a number of terroristic actions that North Korea has committed in recent years. Another possibility, which is being pushed by Republicans in Congress, is to increase financial sanctions that mirror the type that were successfully implemented in Iran.

How will the U.S. response influence cybersecurity policy going forward?

The attack on Sony is a huge wakeup call to American businesses, and even to the U.S. government. It’s the first attack of this size on a company located in the United States. It got tremendous profile in the media and the President has been personally engaged in responding. Nearly everyone has heard about it, so U.S. companies are now going to be focused much more on cybersecurity because it has exposed some potential vulnerabilities – a “if North Korea can do it, presumably others can too” mentality. Moreover, if an attack can be executed on a film company, it could also be done to other businesses and even to elements of U.S. critical infrastructure.

How do you view North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s possible offer to meet with South Korean leadership this year?

Kim Jong-un said that he was open to the possibility of a summit with South Korea in his annual New Year’s address, although he made no specific proposal. He made clear that the summit would be conditional on actions to be taken in advance by South Korea. Among these, Kim demanded ending U.S.-South Korean military exercises and halting the flow of propaganda-filled balloons sent over the border into the North by non-governmental activist groups in the South. Moreover, North Korea has a history of expanding its conditions later, without any warning. So, I think one has to be skeptical. The signal is unfortunately less likely to be a sincere effort toward real, sustained dialogue, and more likely to be a North Korean propaganda effort devised to confuse, divert and divide international public opinion. That said, South Korea has acted entirely appropriately in welcoming the signal and reiterating its own offer of high-level talks. Let’s hope for the best.

David Straub also participated in an interview with Public Radio International on Jan. 1 about the prospect for North-South talks, the audio can be accessed on the PRI website.

SCPKU hosted the International Diplomacy Lecture Series this fall which focused on driving discussions to better understand U.S. and cross-cultural diplomacy between the U.S., Asia, and China.  As part of the series, Karl Eikenberry's talk, "Post-Karzai Afghanistan," addressed how the new president and his administration will face a daunting set of security, governance, and economic challenges, even as the U.S.-led NATO coalition continues the drawdown of its combat forces.  Eikenberry was former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and is currently at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) as a William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Distinguished Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  Terry Lautz's lecture, "Cultural Diplomacy in East Asia and U.S. China Relations," evaluated China's soft power push and compared the practice of cultural diplomacy in East Asia and the United States.  Lautz is a Visiting Professor at Syracuse University and former Henry Luce Foundation Vice President.  Thomas Fingar's talk, "U.S. China Relations and the 'Re-Balance' to Asia," analyzed the origins and objectives of the Obama Administration's "Re-Balance" to Asia as well as questions and concerns raised by the China and others in the region. Fingar is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at FSI at Stanford University.

Thomas Fingar speaks at SCPKU October 27, 2014, as part of the International Diplomacy Lecture Series.

Thomas Fingar speaks at SCPKU as part of the International Diplomacy Lecture Series.
Photo credit: SCPKU

The rise of China as a global and regional power has created areas where the interests of China and the United States overlap in competition, the senior U.S. military commander in the Pacific told a Stanford audience. But Admiral Samuel Locklear III, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), rejected the traditional realpolitik argument, which predicts inevitable confrontation between the United States, a status quo power, and China, a rising power.

“Historians will say this will lead to conflict,” Locklear said, during an address at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center last Friday. “I don’t believe it has to.”

The United States and China have a “mutual skepticism of each other,” the Pacific Commander acknowledged, but he characterized the relationship as “collaborative, generally.”

He said the dangers of direct military confrontation between the two powers is low, but warned against Chinese tendencies to perceive the United States as engaged in an effort to ‘contain’ the expansion of China’s influence. Instead, Locklear urged China to work with the United States to build new security and economic structures in the region.

Economic interdependence between the countries makes it impossible for the two countries to avoid working together, he told the seminar, co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

He said that China has also benefited from the security environment that the United States has helped shape and maintain in the region.

Locklear reminded the audience of the central importance of the vast area under his command, which stretches from the Indian subcontinent across the vast Pacific Ocean. More than nine out of 10 of the largest ports in the world are in the Asia-Pacific region, and over 70 percent of global trade passes through its waters. The U.S. rebalance to Asia, a policy pursued by the Obama administration as early as year 2009, largely happened because of the economic and political importance of that area.

The mutual interest in economic prosperity depends, however, on a stable security environment. Washington has an interest in maintaining the structure of security that has ensured peace for the last few decades. Beijing seeks to change the status quo, to build a regional system that reflects its growth as a power.

Locklear called on China to work with the United States and other nations in the region, such as Japan and Australia, as well as the countries of Southeast Asia, to take the current “patchwork quilt” of bilateral and multilateral alliances and build a basis to maintain economic interdependence and security. He pointed to the U.S.-led effort to form a Trans-Pacific Partnership as a 12-nation economic structure, which could eventually include China.

“We want China to be a net security contributor,” he said, “And my sense is that both the United States and the nations on the periphery of China are willing to allow China to do that – but with circumstances.” He said conditions for the United States included open access to shared domains in sea, air, space and cyberspace.

The Pacific Commander cautioned against the danger, however, of unintended conflict, fueled by territorial disputes and Chinese assertiveness that worries its neighbors. Locklear stressed the need for more dialogue, including among the militaries in the region, an effort that the U.S. Pacific Command is currently carrying out.

“There’s a trust deficit in Asia among the nations, as it relates in particular to China,” he said.

Relations have been so icy that the top political leaders of Japan and China didn’t meet for nearly two years, only breaking the divide for a 20-minute meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit (APEC) in Beijing last month.

Refusing to engage at the highest level has made it difficult for countries to work on solutions to shared problems. The region now sees a confluence of old and new challenges that could threaten global stability if ill-managed, said Locklear, who has led the U.S. military command in the Pacific since 2012.                 

For decades, China and Japan have been at odds about sovereignty claims over islands in the East China Sea. In the past, during the time of Deng Xiaoping’s rule in China, the two countries agreed to, as Deng reportedly put it, ‘kick the issue into the tall grass’ for future generations to deal with it. These disputes have resurfaced in recent years, threatening to trigger armed conflict between the air and naval forces of the two countries.

Locklear said he believed that China and Japan would avoid inadvertent escalation, thanks to improved communications and tight command and control over their forces. But he also warned  that at least seven nations have conflicting claims in the South China Sea, which could easily escalate into direct conflict.

These situations, paired with an upsurge in Chinese military spending and the growing belief that the United States is a declining power, raise doubts about China’s intentions in the region. China’s Asian neighbors increasingly question the intensions of the world’s most populous nation, and second largest economy.

“Is it a return to the old days where you had basic tributary states? Is that the model that China is looking for? Or is it a 21^st century model?”

Locklear said China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific, as well as the United States, need to work harder to form shared views and consensus, particularly among those who “own the guns.”

Dialogue and interactions among the militaries are crucial, especially those who are called upon to make quick decisions during a possible flashpoint, for instance an accidental clash of boats or planes.

“Trust really does fall in many ways to military leaders to get it right and to lead, to some degree, the politicians and the diplomats,” he said. Locklear spoke of a tangible example of collaboration in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, also known as RIMPAC, hosted by USPACOM. Twenty-two countries participate in the world’s largest maritime warfare exercise in Hawaii, which this year included naval forces from China.

“Does it fix those friction points? No, it doesn’t.” But, Locklear concluded, “We hope that this kind of thing opens the door for future interaction.”

The audio file and transcript from the event can be accessed by clicking here. 

Recently, North Korea suddenly released the two remaining Americans it was holding – Kennth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller. The news made headlines internationally, and the drama of it was heightened because the United States’ top spy flew into Pyongyang and secured their release. Not surprisingly, the event raised many questions and is prompting a great deal speculation. Why did North Korea release the Americans? Why choose the U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper to receive the handover? And, especially, what are the implications for the troubling situation on the Korean Peninsula?

David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, has had direct experience with similar situations. In 2009, he accompanied former U.S. President Bill Clinton on a mission to Pyongyang to bring home two incarcerated American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee. As the State Department’s Korean affairs deputy director (1996-98) and director (2002-04), he was involved in efforts to obtain the release of a number of other Americans held in North Korea. Here, Straub offers his analysis of the recent event.

Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 15 years in prison and had already been held nearly two years when he was released on Saturday, while Matthew Todd Miller was arrested in April of this year and subsequently sentenced to six years in prison. Why did you think North Korea suddenly returned them?

The surprise is not that they were released. The North Koreans have returned every American they have held during the past few decades. While some Americans have been arrested for reasons that the North Koreans themselves might have thought valid, such as the charge that Bae was seeking to bring down the regime by his Christian proselytization, in every case the North Koreans treated the Americans as pawns. In fact, in the case of these two Americans and of Jeffrey Fowle, the third incarcerated American who was released last month, the U.S. government actually publicly used the word “pawns” for the first time to describe the way Pyongyang was using them. While that risked angering the North Koreans and delaying the releases, it reflected increasing American frustration at the North Korean practice of holding American citizens hostage to force the U.S. government to send senior figures to be seen as pleading for their release. North Korea intended to release Bae all along—after it got as much as it could of what it wanted.

But why did Pyongyang release the Americans at this particular time?

The reasons for that remain unclear. Many observers have speculated that the North Koreans wanted to ease U.S. and U.N. criticism of their human rights situation. The U.N. General Assembly will soon consider a measure, based on a damning U.N. investigative report, to hold top North Korean officials accountable for crimes against humanity due to the way they treat their own people. Others have speculated that the North Koreans wanted to release the Americans before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this week in Beijing, to make it easier for Chinese President Xi Jinping to press President Obama to agree to return to the Chinese-led Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. Both of these are plausible but they are speculation –only North Korean leaders really know.

But there is also an American angle to the timing. All along, the North Koreans have been demanding that the United States send a very senior current U.S. official to receive the release of incarcerated Americans. In the past, these roles have been performed by both very senior former U.S. officials, such as Presidents Carter and Clinton, and current but relatively low-ranking American officials, such as Ambassador Robert King, the United States’ special envoy for North Korean human rights issues. Almost from the start in this case, the U.S. was prepared to send Ambassador King but the North Koreans rejected him as being too junior. Instead, the North Koreans demanded a very senior sitting U.S. official come; they stuck with that demand and ultimately were successful. After a long process of negotiations and signaling, the two sides very recently agreed that National Intelligence Director Clapper would be appropriate. U.S. officials have publicly suggested that they were the ones who nominated Clapper. They say that the choice of this non-diplomat was intended to underline to all concerned that the sole purpose was to obtain the release of the remaining Americans. I am convinced that that was in fact the case. The U.S. government is naturally loath to talk substance with the North Koreans in a situation such as this when it is in fact acting under duress.

Then why didn’t the United States send Director Clapper sooner?

The United States does not want to encourage the North Korean leaders to think that they can coerce the United States by taking American citizens hostages. That might only result in more such hostage-taking. U.S. officials thus held firm for a long time and decided to send Mr. Clapper only when they concluded there was no better way to obtain the release of our citizens. U.S. officials have suggested that the North Koreans sent a signal a few weeks ago that triggered this particular decision, but exactly what was behind this exact timing remains to be disclosed.

Does the dispatch of someone as senior as Clapper increase the likelihood of more hostage-taking?

Unfortunately, it may. From a North Korean perspective, they got their basic demand—for a very senior sitting official—and it was the Americans who blinked. They also got a letter from President Obama to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even if it was only “brief” and just certified that Clapper was his envoy for the purpose of retrieving the Americans. The North Koreans claim that President Obama “earnestly apologized”; the U.S. government has flatly denied making any apology. I’m sure U.S. officials weighed the concern about encouraging the North Koreans in further misbehavior against their desire to return Bae and Miller. Bae in particular had been held longer than any other American so far and he has a number of health issues. In response to the recent spate of hostage-taking, last year the State Department, for the first time, strongly warned Americans against all travel to North Korea. After the release of Bae and Miller, U.S. officials reiterated that warning.

You said that the North Koreans do this to force senior Americans to be seen as pleading for the release of incarcerated Americans. Do the North Koreans really go to so much trouble only for that?

Some observers say that the North Koreans do this because the United States refuses to talk and negotiate with them and that this is their desperate effort to try to negotiate and seek better relations with the United States. I’m afraid that is very much wishful thinking. The United States and North Korea actually communicate directly through North Korean diplomats assigned to U.N. headquarters in New York, as a North Korean ambassador there recently confirmed in an interview with Voice of America. The United States is also prepared to negotiate with North Korea, but only if it credibly signals that it is willing to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program. North Korea’s current stated position is that it is ready to return “unconditionally” to the Six Party Talks, but that is transparently cynical. The North Koreans have already created conditions, by using the Six Party Talks as a cover to achieve a nuclear weapons breakthrough. The North Korean now seriously say that they will not give up nuclear weapons until the United States gives up its own. Under such conditions, it would be a farce for the United States to agree to a resumption of Six Party Talks.

After accompanying President Clinton to North Korea in 2009, including sitting in on his meeting with its previous ruler, Kim Jong Il, I was even more puzzled as to why the North Koreans would go to so much trouble to force senior Americans to come to retrieve incarcerated American citizens. After much reflection, my working hypothesis is that the North Koreans must get great psychological satisfaction from forcing the U.S. government to bend to their will, even if they get nothing substantive in return—even if, in fact, they only increase the American disinclination to deal with them otherwise. In some cases, such as President Clinton’s visit, they also propagandize the event to their own people. So far, they have not yet reported to their people on Clapper’s visit. It will be interesting to see if they do.

A couple of quick final questions: do you think, as some media have suggested, that the Chinese government or private citizens played a role as intermediaries in the release of the Americans? And do you give any credence to some South Korean commentators’ belief that the timing of the release was related to the American mid-term elections?

It’s amazing to see all the people who come out of the woodwork after such an event, claiming to have played a role. Even Dennis Rodman is now saying he helped by sending a letter to Kim Jong Un. I know that many private citizens talked with North Korea officials about these cases and I would imagine that the Chinese government also urged Pyongyang to do the right thing, but I am confident that it was talks American and North Korean officials held that resulted in the release. As for speculation about the timing being connected to the American elections, that’s a common misperception in South Korea and probably North Korea as well. As any American knows, the idea that obtaining the release of these Americans from North Korea would somehow help the Democrats in the election is of course ludicrous.

David Straub also spoke with Radio Free Asia about the release of the American prisoners from North Korea. He says the release has nothing to do with North Korea's nuclear initiative, saying that issue must be addressed on its own merits. The article is in the Korean language and can be accessed by clicking here.

The Michigan War Studies Review (MiWSR), an online scholarly journal affiliated with the Michigan War Studies Group, reviewed Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, a seminal book co-edited by Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) scholars Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel Sneider, and University of Washington’s Daniel Chirot.

“Confronting Memories of World War II is a forceful and timely warning about the dangers of leaving problematic memory legacies unresolved,” says Albert J. Schmidt from The George Washington University, writing for MiWSR.

Organized in four major parts, the book examines the consequences of historical memory of World War II and contemporary nationalistic rhetoric, looking at cases across Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) and Western and Eastern Europe, including Germany, Austria and France, among others.

Confronting Memories of World War II is part of an ongoing research project at Shorentein APARC that comparatively analyzes how wartime historical memory lives on through present-day national myths, and is furthered through educational material, media and popular culture.

The full review is attached below and may be also viewed on the MiWSR website.

Two weeks ago, North Korea surprised the world by sending three of its top leaders to the South to attend the closing ceremony of the 17th Asian Games in Incheon. The visit occurred in the midst of growing speculation that North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, was seriously ill, or even that he had been removed from power. That dramatic and unprecedented visit gave renewed hope for improved inter-Korean relations, which have been frozen since the sinking of a South Korean vessel in 2010.

The strategic situation on the Korean Peninsula has continued to worsen over the past several years. To produce material for more nuclear devices, Pyongyang has proceeded with a large-scale uranium enrichment program. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently expressed concern that North Korea may also have reactivated its plutonium production facilities, another means of making fissile material for nuclear bombs. Meanwhile, having rocketed its first satellite into orbit in December 2012, the North is busily developing longer-range missiles to target not only the South but also Japan and the United States.

Unfortunately, there is no initiative on the horizon likely to change this dangerous trajectory. The United States was willing to negotiate with Pyongyang when there was a chance of preventing it from developing nuclear weapons. With that goal now deemed unachievable, Washington is instead intent on containing the threat through increased sanctions and counterproliferation efforts, missile defense, and heightened defense cooperation, with South Korea and Japan. U.S. engagement with North Korea, much less negotiation, is off the table and likely to stay that way.

China's buffer     

Earlier hopes that China would prove to be a deus ex machina have also foundered. While Beijing does not want Pyongyang to have nuclear weapons, it has always been more concerned about preventing instability in the North that might spill across their shared border. More recently, deepening suspicions among Beijing's leaders about U.S. strategic intentions have made North Korea even more important to China as a strategic buffer. China remains by far Pyongyang's most important foreign supporter, as reflected in the burgeoning trade across their border.

That leaves South Korea as the only country that could play a larger and more positive role in tackling the North Korea problem. South Korea is no longer a "shrimp among whales," as it used to think of itself, but a major "middle power." Strategically, Seoul is increasingly important not only to Washington but also to Beijing.

South Korea, however, has been a house divided when it comes to how to deal with the North. Conservative administrations, fearing that a North Korean nuclear arsenal would change the long-term balance of power on the peninsula, have made the North's denuclearization a condition for virtually all engagement with it. Progressive governments, on the other hand, have glossed over the nuclear issue, believing that increased contact will eventually promote change for the better in Pyongyang. The result has been South Korean policies that, whether from the left or the right, have proved unsustainable and ineffective.

"Tailored engagement"     

Based on a yearlong study, my colleagues and I have called for more active South Korean leadership to ameliorate the situation on the Korean Peninsula. We call the concept "tailored engagement." It is based on the conviction that engagement is only one means of dealing with North Korea, but an essential one, and it must be carefully "tailored" or fitted to changing political and security realities on and around the peninsula. It eschews an "appeasement" approach to Pyongyang as well as the notion that inter-Korean engagement under the current circumstances would be tantamount to accepting the North's misbehavior, especially its nuclear weapons program.

Such engagement would not immediately change the nuclear situation, but, if carefully considered and implemented, it need not encourage Pyongyang in that regard, either. Meanwhile, it could help to reduce bilateral tensions, improve the lives of ordinary North Koreans and bring the two societies closer together. It could reduce the risk of conflict now while fostering inter-Korean reconciliation and effecting positive change in the North.

South Koreans must first, however, develop a broader domestic consensus in areas and in ways that do not undermine the international effort to press Pyongyang to give up nuclear weapons. That is possible because many forms of engagement are in fact largely irrelevant to the nuclear program. For example, South Korea could provide much more humanitarian assistance to ordinary North Koreans; it could also engage in more educational and cultural programs, including sports exchanges. Concrete offers of expanded economic exchanges and support for the development of the North's infrastructure could become part of an incentive package in renewed six-party talks on ending the North's nuclear program.

Speculation about the state of Kim Jong Un's health and the North Korean leaders' visit to the South underline the fact that North Korean politics and society are experiencing great flux. For the outside world, this creates uncertainty, but also offers the possibility of positive change. Tailored engagement can at least test, and perhaps also influence, a changing North Korea.

Even a carefully "tailored" engagement strategy is no panacea. It is only one tool for dealing with the North -- military deterrence, counterproliferation and human rights efforts are among the others that are essential -- but why not try all available means when the situation is so worrisome? Japan should support such an approach because its interests, too, are threatened by the increasingly precarious situation on the peninsula.

This article was originally carried by Nikkei Asian Review on Oct. 16 and reposted with permission.

Perception can often trump facts in politics, and the topic of security in East Asia isn’t exempt from this reality, exemplified by the dominance of China’s “rise” and Japan’s  “ramped up” defense posture in current policy debates. Yet, those dynamics create a need as well as an opportunity for increased multilateral engagement, says Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

“Developments in China and Japan should be viewed as creating new opportunities and imperatives to deepen multilateral co-operation,” Fingar writes in a Global Asia essay.

“It would be a mistake to view them only as the cause of eroding confidence in the co-operative mechanisms that remain critical to peace and prosperity in the region.”

China’s rise has actually been a result of policies supported by the United States and other countries, despite prevailing commentary that they are intended to “contain” China, he says. In fact, Beijing’s rise was achieved by working within the rules-based international system, not outside of it.

China’s actions and growing power, especially military power, are compelling other regional actors, notably Japan, to reconsider their strategic situation. The reinterpretation of defense policy guidelines proposed by the Abe government is a long-delayed response to China’s military buildup, not an effort to remilitarize as a popular narrative holds. Fingar says the proposed relaxation of self-imposed policy constraints on Japan’s military forces could help pave the way for a future collective security arrangement in Northeast Asia.

So, where does this leave the U.S.-South Korea relationship?

He says the two countries can maintain their bilateral commitments while also deepening partnerships with, and between China and Japan. Both the United States and South Korea can help push for improved ties on trade and regional security issues. 

“We need continued bilateral – and increased multilateral – co-operation,” he says, particularly, “to mange the challenges of a nuclear-armed North Korea.”

The full article can be viewed on the FSI website.