The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) and AEI will be launching a new HRNK report entitled, “Marked For Life: Songbun, North Korea’s Social Classification System,” which will be discussed at this event. The panel will also examine the extent to which the growing reliance on money and bribery is eroding the songbun system’s influence.

Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

For America and her allies, dealing with the North Korean regime (to borrow a phrase from the current administration’s own Samantha Power) is a “problem from hell.”

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.

At this AEI event, expert panelists will discuss how the U.S. can enhance its alliances and maintain stability in the South China Sea.

Panelists discussed the Koreas and Nick Eberstadt's upcoming book, Policy and Economic Performance in Divided Korea during the Cold War Era: 1945-91.

Despite a decade and a half of charitable assistance, North Korea remains on the verge of another eruption of mass hunger. So is effective international humanitarian aid to the DPRK conceivable?

The prevailing economic development narrative--that centrally planned economies are doomed to fail against market-oriented alternatives--may require re-examination in light of the experience of the two Koreas during the Cold War.