The Golden Gate

An extremely kind (and apparently well-read) reader sent over some MUST READ links that I give you below. Be sure to read them ALL.

Read through the latest edition of the The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, published by the Defense Ministry-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA). Featured in this month’s edition are pieces by Marcus Noland, Nicholas Eberstadt and a load of other folk who know a lot more than I do. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the link.

Speaking of Nick Eberstadt, check out his essay on North Korea’s weapons quest over at the now non-Korea Foundation-funded AEI .

And while your over at AEI, Dr. Norbert Vollertsen contributed a piece on the “depraved society we can’t ignore” in the June-July edition of American Enterprise. Nicholas Eberstadt, James R. Lilley, Daniel Kennelly, Gordon Cucullu and Victor Davis Hanson also ran a piece in the magazine on the North Korean nuclear issue that, given the names involved, I might consider selling my left nut to get a hold of.

Be sure to check out “A Cold Peace: The Changing Security Equation in Northeast Asia,” (.pdf) by the Brookings Institute’s Tomohiko Taniguchi.

Check out this report from the International Crisis Group via The Marmot’s Hole:

Relations between Japan and North Korea continue to deteriorate due to concerns over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and past abductions of Japanese citizens. Nearly a decade and a half of efforts at normalising relations between the countries have faltered due to Pyongyang’s unwillingness to give up that program or come clean over the abductions. For Japan, normalisation would help preserve regional stability and represent one more step toward closure on its wartime history; for North Korea, it would potentially produce the single greatest economic infusion for reviving its moribund economy. Indeed, the prospect of normalisation with Japan is one of the leading incentives that can be offered to North Korea in a deal to end the North’s nuclear programs.