POWER INDICATORS AND STRATEGIC INTENTIONS OF NORTH KOREA
POWER INDICATORS AND STRATEGIC INTENTIONS OF NORTH KOREA

Summary/Abstract: Another country that has a surprising evolution in the Asia-Pacific region is North Korea as it survived to major challenges coming both from interior and from exterior (the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the Soviet Union the end of the Cold War, spreading famine, natural disasters, and the death of Kim Il Sung) and, with its nuclear and missile brinkmanship programme it has drown the attention of the entire international community upon itself. Although the country was confronted with famine during the 90s and although it has faced a constant economic deficit for the last ten years, although its natural resources are diminishing and it has serious agriculture problems, North Korea has managed to contradict all the predictions regarding its dissolution, for now. Using its nuclear policy, it has become a focus of regional and global prime-time coverage, posing security risks to its neighbours. Therefore, no one of these neighbours presumes that, during an intervention, North Korea would surrender quietly without provoking a huge mess, a mess that no outside neighbouring power would be willing to clean up. North Korea survives in a region with powerful neighbours by cultivating an image of power and irrationality at the international level, as a result of its own military power indicator and its own nuclear policy.

• Details
• Contents