Sung-Yoon Lee

“ U.S. sanctions on North Korea still remain lukewarm in degree and too few in kind. Above all, the U.S. and South Korea must not loosen sanctions at North Korea’s next fake proposal for mutual disarmament talks, which is what Pyongyang has always meant by the phrase, “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
V. Long-Term Public Diplomacy The convergence of North Korea human rights priorities on the part of the Biden and Yoon administrations is a welcome development. President Yoon has vowed to call North Korea out on its manifold crimes against humanity. ”

“ III. South Korea under President Yoon Seok-Yul The U.S.-ROK alliance and the U.S. Forces in Korea have kept the peace in the Korean peninsula since the 1953 Korean War Armistice. During the past 69 years of de facto peace—unstable but actual peace, one without war—South Korea has developed into the world’s tenth largest economy and a free democracy. The alliance has been repeatedly affirmed by combined military exercises and the credible commitment by the U.S. to defend South Korea against North Korea’s persisting aggression. ”

“ The United States must eschew such ploys and pursue proactive coercive diplomacy—one that employs unremitting financial sanctions and multi-faceted information dissemination operations into the North. The Pax Americana that has made possible the past seven decades of peace and prosperity in South Korea and much of Pacific Asia must not be compromised by an unworthy Korean state, the despotic and deceitful Kim dynasty. ”

“ The Kim siblings appear to be taking a page out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook in trying to routinize threats of nuclear attack as a new fact of life. Through repeated threats of nuclear annihilation supported by tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and nuclear devices the Kims’ threats may in time come to be normalized. To the North’s leader, his own repeated threats may even become a tempting option. ”