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.

A UN arms embargo has been in place against North Korea for nearly a decade, as part of a broader sanctions regime designed to deny it the goods and funds needed to fuel its nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile programmes. Yet despite these sanctions, a host of state and non-state actors continue to buy arms, material and services from Pyongyang – and inject funds into the same coffers that drive North Korea’s nuclear and missile development. While some of North Korea’s military customers in the sanctions era since 2006 are well known – such as Iran, Syria and Burma – Pyongyang’s wider client base receives little international attention. North Korea has continued to enjoy access to other defence markets across Africa and the Middle East. The drivers of these clients’ decisions to buy weapons and related goods from North Korea are rarely discussed. This gap in analysis is essential to fill. If tailored and effective approaches are to be developed to convince North Korea’s customers to buy elsewhere, they must be based on a sound understanding of the considerations that motivated the client to turn to Pyongyang in the first place. Target Markets comprehensively analyses the available information 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. This study also concludes that one of the greatest achievements of the UN sanctions regime to date has been to deny North Korea access to modern conventional weapons technology that it can learn to manufacture at home and sell on to its clients around the world. Without more contemporary wares to tempt foreign buyers, North Korea will likely continue to see its client list for weapons and related goods and services shrinking.

Because authoritarian regimes like North Korea can impose the costs of sanctions on their citizens, these regimes constitute "hard targets." Yet authoritarian regimes may also be immune—and even hostile—to economic inducements if such inducements imply reform and opening. This book captures the effects of sanctions and inducements on North Korea and provides a detailed reconstruction of the role of economic incentives in the bargaining around the country's nuclear program. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland draw on an array of evidence to show the reluctance of the North Korean leadership to weaken its grip on foreign economic activity. They argue that inducements have limited effect on the regime, and instead urge policymakers to think in terms of gradual strategies. Hard Target connects economic statecraft to the marketization process to understand North Korea and addresses a larger debate over the merits and demerits of "engagement" with adversaries.

It is no surprise that North Korea's population effectively lives under an information blockade, while the leadership in Pyongyang maintains an isolationist policy that prevents any non-curated, internal data from leaking to the outside world. North Korean citizens have no access to the Internet and cannot use social media, while there are no North Korean databases--such as company, business, or shipping registries--that can be easily accessed from outside the country. While this makes collecting data on North Korean targets extremely challenging, the country's institutions and operatives do leave traces in open sources. Despite its self-professed autarkic philosophy of Jucheism, North Korea is heavily reliant on the external world for its survival.

North Korea has posed a threat to stability in Northeast Asia for decades. Since Kim Jong-un assumed power, this threat has both increased and broadened. Since 2011, the small, isolated nation has detonated nuclear weapons multiple times, tested a wide variety of ballistic missiles, expanded naval and ground systems that threaten South Korea, and routinely employs hostile rhetoric. Another threat it poses has been less recognized: North Korea presents a potentially greater risk to American interests by exporting its weapons systems to other volatile regions worldwide. In North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa, Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. analyzes relevant North Korean military capabilities, what arms the nation provides, and to whom, how it skirts its sanctions, and how North Korea's activities can best be contained. He traces illicit networks that lead to state and nonstate actors in the Middle East, including Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and throughout Africa, including at least a dozen nations. The potential proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons technology and the vehicles that carry it, including ballistic missiles and artillery, represent a broader threat than the leadership in Pyongyang. Including training and infrastructure support, North Korea's profits may range into the billions of dollars, all concealed in illicit networks and front companies so complex that the nation struggles to track and control them. Bechtol not only presents an accurate picture of the current North Korean threat—he also outlines methodologies that Washington and the international community must embrace in order to contain it.

In September 2017, North Korea shocked the world by exploding the most powerful nuclear device tested anywhere in 25 years. Months earlier, it had conducted the first test flight of a missile capable of ranging much of the United States. By the end of that year, Kim Jong Un, the reclusive state's ruler, declared that his nuclear deterrent was complete. Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile and ballistic missile arsenal continues to grow, presenting one of the most serious challenges to international security to date. Internal regime propaganda has called North Korea's nuclear forces the country's "treasured sword," underscoring the cherished place of these weapons in national strategy. Fiercely committed to self-reliance, Kim remains determined to avoid unilateral disarmament. 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 by November 2017. Ankit Panda explores the contours of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the developmental history of its weapons programs, and the prospects for disarming or constraining Kim's arsenal. With no signs that North Korea's total disarmament is imminent over the next years or even decade, Panda explores the consequences of a nuclear-armed North Korea for the United States, South Korea, and the world.

United States economic sanctions against North Korea began on June 28, 1950, three days after the outbreak of the Korean War. Since then, the United States, its allies, and the United Nations have increasingly imposed economic sanctions against North Korea in an attempt to destabilize and manipulate the North Korean regime. This book first provides a thorough historical overview of U.S. and U.N. sanctions against North Korea since 1950. Then, several essays propose ways to make such sanctions more politically effective while limiting their harmful humanitarian consequences. Finally, the book discusses the impact of the newest, six-nation agreement signed in February 2007 which would shut down North Korea's nuclear facility in return for economic aid and a security guarantee. Several appendices provide brief guides to the history of North Korea and the country's nuclear weapons program.