After a brief period of hope around the 2018-19 summits between North Korea and South Korea, the United States and China, relations on the peninsula have once again descended into acrimony and tension. In this roundtable, a group of prominent North Korea practitioners and analysts dissect the current state of play around the Korean peninsula, from the opportunities for a return to diplomacy and the status of the US-South Korea alliance, to the state of North Korea’s missile and nuclear program and its ventures into cybertheft.

Moderator:

Stephan Haggard, Krause Distinguished Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy and Director of the Korea-Pacific Program. Haggard’s work on North Korea with Marcus Noland includes Famine in North Korea: Markets Aid and Reform (2007); Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights in North Korea (2011); and Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements and the Case of North Korea (2017).

Panelists:

Allison Hooker, Senior Vice President American Global Strategies, has over 20 years of experience in the U.S. Government working on Asia. She served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Korean Peninsula, where she staffed the President for the U.S.-DPRK Summits in Singapore and Hanoi. She also served for more than six years on the National Security Council staff, including as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asia.

Jeffrey Lewis is Professor and Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He is the founder of ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog and podcast on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation. He is widely known for his detailed analysis of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, including through innovative working using satellite imagery. He is the author of the fictional 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States (2018), which provides one of the more detailed analyses of how a conflict on the peninsula could escalate.

Jean H. Lee, Public Policy Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Lee is an award-winning writer, commentator and expert on North Korea and co-hosts the Peabody-nominated Lazarus Heist podcast for the BBC World Service. In 2011, she became the first American reporter to join the Pyongyang foreign press corps and subsequently opened AP’s Pyongyang bureau. She made dozens of extended reporting trips to North Korea from 2008 to 2017, Lee made dozens of extended reporting trips to North Korea and has since taken a particular interest in the country’s crypto activities.

Scott Snyder is the Senior Fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is one of the leading analysts of the US-Korea alliance, and is widely cited for his commentary on the peninsula. His books on US-Korea relations include South Korea at the Crossroad: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers (2020) and most recently, with Kyung-ae Park, North Korea’s Foreign Policy: the Kim Jong-un Regime in a Hostile World (2023).

This program is made possible by the cooperation of Keith Luse, Executive Director of the National Committee on North Korea.