AEI Scholar Michael Mazza offers his insight on North Korea's failure to launch a missile.

Japanese like to think their aesthetic sensibility is shaped in no small part by the cherry blossom: its vibrant beauty, celebrated in art and literature for centuries, is all too quickly blown away by the wind and rain. People ...

There are three things to keep in mind about Kim Jong Il’s death.

Kim Jong Il was nothing less than an economic catastrophe for North Korea. His political ascent, in fact, tracks almost precisely with that ill-fated nation's shift to economic stagnation and then its frightening free-fall into abject mass misery.

“What happens next?” is not really the question we should be asking. More important is to ask what the United States wants to happen next, and what it can do to bring about that outcome.

With the death of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, understanding the country's succession process is central to divining the future of this anachronistic, frustratingly cryptic, and often deliberately menacing government.

Kim Jong-il's death perforce marks a turning point in modern Korean history. Not since Douglas MacArthur’s push toward the Yalu has the future of the North Korean regime been as uncertain as it is today.