How has North Korea developed and managed its military readiness to achieve its strategic ends? Hinata-Yamaguchi analyzes North Korea’s defense planning by looking at how political, economic, and societal factors affect the Korean People’s Army’s (KPA) readiness and strategies. He answers four key questions: How have the internal and external factors shaped North Korea’s security strategy? How do the political, economic, societal, and environmental factors impact North Korea’s defense planning? What are North Korea’s defense planning dilemmas and how do they impact the KPA’s readiness? What are the key implications for regional security and the strategies against North Korea? This analysis, drawing on various Korean, English, Japanese, and Chinese sources on North Korea and military affairs, will be of great value to strategists and policy analysts as well as scholars of East Asian security issues.

The Korean Peninsula was and is in a state of flux.More than 60 years after the war that left the country divided, the policies and unpredictability of the North Korean regime, in conjunction with the U.S. alliance with South Korea and the involvement of China in the area, leave the situation there one of the most capricious on the globe. Confronting Security Challenges on the Korean Peninsula presents the opinions from experts on the subject matter from the policy, military, and academic communities. Drawn from talks at a conference in September 2010 at Marine Corps University, the papers explore the enduring security challenges, the state of existing political and military relationships, the economic implications of unification, and the human rights concerns within North and South Korea. They also reiterate the importance for the broader East Asia region of peaceful resolution of the Korean issues.

NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price This edition of North Korea: A Country Study replaces the previous edition, published in 1994. Like its predecessor, this study attempts to review the history and treat in a concise manner the dominant social, political, economic, and military aspects of contemporary North Korea. Sources of information included books, scholarly journals, foreign and domestic newspapers, official reports of governments and international organizations, and numerous periodicals and Web sites on Korean and East Asian affairs. A word of caution is necessary, however. Even though more information is forthcoming from and about North Korea since it became a member of the United Nations in 1991, the government of a closed society such as that of North Korea controls information for internal and external consumption, limiting both the scope of coverage and its dissemination. A chronology of major historical events is provided at the front of the book (see table A). Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book, and brief comments on some of the more valuable and enduring sources recommended for further reading appear at the end of each chapter. A glossary also is included. Spellings of place-names in the book are in most cases those approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN); spellings of some of the names, however, cannot be verified, as the BGN itself notes. Readers of this book are alerted that because the BGN recognizes the Sea of Japan as the formal name of the body of water to the east of the Korean Peninsula, this book also uses that term.. Similarly, the Yellow Sea is identified as the West Sea. The McCune–Reischauer system of transliteration has been employed except for the names of some prominent national and historical figures. Thus, Kim Il-song is rendered as Kim Il Sung, and Kim Chong-il is rendered as Kim Jong Il. The names of Korean authors writing in English are spelled as given in the original publication. Measurements are given in the metric system. A conversion table (see table B) is provided to assist readers who are unfamiliar with metric measurements. Other related items: Foreign Countries collection can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/international-foreign-affairs/foreign-country-studies The body of the text reflects information available as of August 1, 2007. Certain other parts of the text, however, have been updated: the Chronology and Introduction discuss significant events that have occurred since the completion of research, and the Country Profile and portions of some chapters include updated information as available.

North Korea is a country of paradoxes and contradictions. Although it remains an economic basket case that cannot feed and clothe its own people, it nevertheless possesses one of the world's largest armed forces. Whether measured in terms of the total number of personnel in uniform, numbers of special operations soldiers, the size of its submarine fleet, quantity of ballistic missiles in its arsenal, or its substantial weapons of mass destruction programs, Pyongyang is a major military power. North Korea's latest act to demonstrate its might was the seismic event on October 9, 2006. The authors of this monograph set out to assess the capabilities and discern the intentions of North Korea's People's Army.

Since its founding in 2011, the Research Center on the Commons and Sustainable Society has been at the forefront of Commons Research in South Korea. This book brings together the discoveries and insights the Center has produced in its first decade, as a contribution to international commons research and to the understanding of the commons in South Korea particularly. Divided into five main parts, the book charts the course of commons research in South Korea. Part I surveys the historical background to commons thinking through the course of its foundation as a dictator-led developmental state through to its current democratic and neoliberal status quo. Following on from this, Part II looks at how diverse commons perspectives have taken root during this period. Part III then analyses the various specific fields through which commons research in Korea has grown. After this, Part IV presents the fruits of this commons research—the alternative policies and social actions that have been proposed for Korean society. Lastly, Part V addresses the remaining challenges which ongoing commons research in Korea is seeking to address. An insightful resource for scholars of both Korean political economy and commons studies more broadly.

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON AWARD FOR NAVAL LITERATURE “I devoured Act of War the way I did Flyboys, Flags of Our Fathers and Lost in Shangri-la.”—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author In 1968, the small, dilapidated American spy ship USS Pueblo set out to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Though packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, its crew, led by ex–submarine officer Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested young sailors. On a frigid January morning, the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded by more boats, shelled and machine-gunned, forced to surrender, and taken prisoner. Less than forty-eight hours before the Pueblo’s capture, North Korean commandos had nearly succeeded in assassinating South Korea’s president. The two explosive incidents pushed Cold War tensions toward a flashpoint. Based on extensive interviews and numerous government documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, Act of War tells the riveting saga of Bucher and his men as they struggled to survive merciless torture and horrendous living conditions set against the backdrop of an international powder keg.

North Korea has presented one of the most vexing and persistent problems in U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War period. The United States has never had formal diplomatic relations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the official name for North Korea), although contact at a lower level has ebbed and flowed over the years. Negotiations over North Korea's nuclear weapons program have occupied the past three U.S. administrations, even as some analysts anticipated a collapse of the isolated authoritarian regime. North Korea has been the recipient of over $1 billion in U.S. aid (though none since 2009) and the target of dozens of U.S. sanctions.