The author, an expert in Asian history, reveals the tragic history of Korea that does not fit American stereotypes of the country, including Japan's historical and unrepentant role in creating and perpetuating a hostile North Korea.

Despite sanctions, various actors continue to buy arms from North Korea – and provide funds that could fund its further nuclear and missile development. Target Markets comprehensively analyses the available data on these procurement decisions. It concludes, contrary to conventional wisdom, that the reasons that customers buy weapons and related goods and services from North Korea vary, often greatly. But without more modern goods to sell, North Korea may find its client list start to dwindle.

Far from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in the Third World shaped the worldview of many North Koreans and helped them imagine a unified anti-imperialist front that stretched from the boulevards of Pyongyang to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the beaches of Cuba. This book tells the story of North Korea's transformation in the Third World from model developmental state to reckless terrorist nation, and how Pyongyang's actions, both in the Third World and on the Korean peninsula, ultimately backfired against the Kim family regime's foreign policy goals. Based on multinational and multi-archival research, this book examines the intersection of North Korea's domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea's developmental model appealed to the decolonizing world.

Kim Jong Un and the Bomb tells the story of how North Korea-once derided in the 1970s as a "fourth-rate pipsqueak" of a country by President Richard Nixon-came to credibly threaten the American homeland with a thermonuclear bomb atop an intercontinental-range ballistic missile by November 2017.

North Korea is perilously close to developing strategic nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States and its East Asian allies. Since their first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has struggled to perfect the required delivery systems. Kim Jong-un’s regime now appears to be close, however. Sung Chull Kim, Michael D. Cohen, and the volume contributors contend that the time to prevent North Korea from achieving this capability is virtually over; scholars and policymakers must turn their attention to how to deter a nuclear North Korea. The United States, South Korea, and Japan must also come to terms with the fact that North Korea will be able to deter them with its nuclear arsenal. How will the erratic Kim Jong-un behave when North Korea develops the capability to hit medium- and long-range targets with nuclear weapons? How will and should the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China respond, and what will this mean for regional stability in the short term and long term? The international group of authors in this volume address these questions and offer a timely analysis of the consequences of an operational North Korean nuclear capability for international security.

On March 17, 2009, while filming a documentary on the Chinese–North Korean border, Laura Ling and her colleague Euna Lee were violently apprehended by North Korean soldiers, charged with trespassing and "hostile acts," and imprisoned by Kim Jong Il's notoriously secretive Communist state. Kept totally apart, they endured months of interrogations and a trial before North Korea's highest court that led to a sentence of twelve years of hard labor in a North Korean prison camp. When news of the arrest reached Laura's sister, journalist Lisa Ling, she immediately began a campaign to get Laura released. Her efforts led her from the State Department to the higher echelons of the media world and eventually to the White House. Lisa takes us deep into the drama between people in the highest levels of government, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, and eventually former President Bill Clinton, who arrived in North Korea in mid-August for a suspenseful rescue. Somewhere Inside is a timely, inspiring, and page-turning tale of survival set against the canvas of international politics. Writing with their strong, poignant voices, both sisters go beyond the headlines to reveal the unique bond that has sustained them throughout the most horrifying ordeal of their lives.

North Korea's leaders have sought to dominate the Korean Peninsula since then failure to conquer the Republic of Korea (ROK) in tine Korean War. However, they have lacked the economic, political, and conventional military means to achieve that dominance, having instead come to rely on their nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the ROK, and they might soon pose a serious threat to the United States; even a few of them could cause millions of fatalities and serious casualties if detonated on ROK or U.S. cities. The major ROK and U.S. strategy to moderate this threat has been negotiating with North Korea to achieve denuclearization, but this effort has failed and seems likely to continue tailing. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, despite committing to denuclearization, has continued his nuclear weapon buildup. The authors of this Perspective argue that there is a growing gap between North Korea's nuclear weapon threat and ROK and U.S. capabilities to defeat it. Because these capabilities will take years to develop, the allies must turn their attention to where the threat could be in the mid to late 2020s and identify strategies to counter it. Doing this will help establish a firm deterrent against North Korean nuclear weapon use. The authors conclude that North Korea will be most deterred if it knows that any nuclear weapon use will be disastrous for the regime-that these weapons are a liability, not an asset. Book jacket.