Grover floats an idea: Now assuming that the incident was the product of centralized decision making rather than an unintended one ordered lower down the food chain (something I discussed earlier here), Kim Jong Il may simply be engaging in a tit-for-tat retaliatory strike for...
north korea
Cheonan was likely sunk by a mine or torpedo. I would be betting very heavily on "torpedo" at this point; no mine from the first Korean War has been discovered.
South Korea has reportedly ruled out a North Korean attack as the cause of the sinking of the Cheonan. Initial speculation that North Korea might have sunk the ship had.
I have a piece at Guardian: Comment is Free on the sinking of the South Korean patrol corvette Cheonan. Long story short, I'm betting that there are a lot of people right now hoping that Cheonan blew up accidentally and not as the result of...
Details are extremely sketchy, but it looks as if a skirmish in the Yellow Sea may have resulted in the sinking of a South Korean patrol boat with 104 aboard..
Well, this is something:North Korea has revised its constitution to give even more power to leader Kim Jong-il, ditch communism and elevate his "military first" ideology, South Korea's Unification Ministry.
Guardian:Russia has placed an anti-missile defence system close to its border with North Korea, in an apparent sign of growing alarm in Moscow at Pyongyang's nuclear programme.Russia's chief of army staff, General Nikolai Makarov, told reporters on a trip with President Dmitry Medvedev to Mongolia...
I have a short column up at Guardian:CIF on the Clinton to North Korea visit.
Kessler, via Drezner:The war of words between North Korea and the United States escalated Thursday, with North Korea's Foreign Ministry lashing out at Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in.
Geoffrey Forden is no longer convinced that North Korea detonated a nuclear device:Let us suppose, for the moment, that the DPRK actually did explode 2,500 tons of TNT instead of a nuclear device. How could they load a tunnel with so much conventional explosive and...
Amitai Etzioni:North Korean ships are carrying missiles and materials from which chemical and nuclear weapons can be made -- to other tyrannies, such as the oppressive regimes in Myanmar and.
Almost certainly yes, but Joshua Pollack lays out some reasons for skepticism....Dan Nexon has more.