Strategies of Survival

The North Korean nuclear issue has been one of the most significant challenges to international peace and security in the 21st century. The failure to peacefully resolve the issue could trigger regional instability or even nuclear warfare in the worst scenario. Since its first successful nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has repeatedly defied the international community regarding its nuclear program despite the effort and resources that the international community has put in. Many consider North Korean decision-makers irrational or simply crazy. Nonetheless, since early 2018, North Korea has drastically changed its foreign policy and actively pursued rapprochement.

How to understand North Korean foreign policy, its past, and future? How will the nuclear issue develop under a possibly new paradigm of North Korean foreign policy? This book seeks to provide readers with a comprehensive analysis of North Korean foreign relations. As the existing analysis and literature on North Korean foreign relations focus primarily on China, the United States, South Korea, and Japan, we argue that such analysis ignores the DPRK’s relations with many other states and organizations that not only interact with North Korea but also play important roles in its strategy of surviving in the international systems.