The Sunshine Policy, an effort to engage North Korea initially implemented under South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, appears increasingly ineffective in light of North Korea's continued nuclear threat and oppression of its people.

Even those who have never negotiated with North Korea could have told the Obama administration, “I told you so.”

While DPRK founder Kim Il Sung was powerful enough to impose his son, no guarantees exist that the North's military, the real power, will meekly accept rule by his utterly inexperienced grandson.

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.

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.

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.

Heads of state and foreign ministers from 50-plus countries will gather next week in Seoul, South Korea, to discuss the threat of nuclear terrorism, a follow-up to the first “nuclear-security summit” convened two years ago in Washington by President Obama.

Speaking in 2009 about America’s approach to North Korea, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously remarked, “I’m tired of buying the same horse twice.” President Obama just repurchased that horse — and it’s a scrub.