Calling North Korea ‘crazy’ won’t help with anything

Trump’s North Korea policy will reportedly focus more on pressuring Beijing to constrain North Korea, and on additional sanctions.

Two things to keep in mind: don’t underestimate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and don’t forget South Korea. …

Kim’s desire for deterrence – to not end up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi – helps explain the existence of its weapons program. Someone who has participated in more than a decade of Track 2 dialogues with the North Koreans once recounted to me how North Koreans asked them: “Would the Americans have gone in and done what they did to Gaddaffi, and to Syria, if they had what we have?’ Continue reading

South Korea: Basic Income

Lots of political and social issues have risen as the general election in April is coming, among which the most important one is how to give all people the economic stability. Junghoon Park, president of Alba Union said “today unemployment is normal and employment is exception for part time workers, so they should be given stable income, basic income guarantee to protect their rights as workers.” And Namhoon Kang insisted “basic income guarantee is a sole way which we, human beings could live and survive as humans under the economic system Al would change.” Under these circumstances, Green Party and Labor Party, small and extra-parliament parties in Korea, promise basic income scheme their major policies, and some politicians in office interest in it.

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Japan’s ‘nuclear deterrence without building a bomb’

Robert Windrem, “Japan Has Nuclear ‘Bomb in the Basement,’ and China Isn’t Happy,” 12 March 2014, NBC News

… But government officials and proliferation experts say Japan is happy to let neighbors like China and North Korea believe it is part of the nuclear club, because it has a “bomb in the basement” -– the material and the means to produce nuclear weapons within six months, according to some estimates. And with tensions rising in the region, China’s belief in the “bomb in the basement” is strong enough that it has demanded Japan get rid of its massive stockpile of plutonium and drop plans to open a new breeder reactor this fall. …
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