North Korea
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani is former Special envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea and the U.S. Representative to the Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO), as well as former CIA director of East Asia Operations. He later served as the Associate Director of National Intelligence and Mission Manager for North ...
The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un made headlines over the weekend as she threatened military action against South Korea, and deemed the inter-Korean liaison office "useless". What do we know about Kim Yo-jong and the role she is playing among North Korea's leadership elite? Dr. Kenneth Dekleva served as ...
Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was the former Special Envoy for Negotiations with North Korea. He is currently a Fellow at the Institute of Korean-American Studies. The views are the author’s and not any government agency or department. OPINION -- On April 27, 2018, South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, ...
At the recent December 2019 plenum, Chairman Kim, rather than giving his traditional New Year’s speech, outlined a different strategy toward the US moving forward in 2020. In doing so, he highlighted the dignity of the country, a return to a combination of military and economic development, and the requirement ...
OPINION -- The Trump administration’s new attempt to open strategic nuclear talks with China “ASAP,” as mentioned in a State Department tweet last Friday, focuses on the wrong subject. Any talks about strategic deterrence among nations should be dealing first with the future of cyber warfare and weaponry rather than ...
EXPERT OPINION -- Kim Jong-un is a desperate man. He has long believed that Donald Trump’s unpredictability and their quirky friendship offers him the best, and possibly only, chance of a deal with the United States whereby he could keep some of his nuclear capability and gain a substantial measure ...
Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph R. DeTrani was the former Special Envoy for Negotiations with North Korea. OPINION -- North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is getting bad advice from his senior advisers. Rather than pursuing closer relations with the United States, North Korea is in the process of unraveling a close ...
China and South Korea quietly agreed this week to engage in a joint effort to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. The announcement came on the sidelines of the Xiangshan Forum, a conference focused on Asia-Pacific security. The two countries have resumed bilateral defense talks that were suspended in 2014, signaling a ...
Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani offers his seasoned perspective on negotiating with North Korea. This piece was first published by our friends at 38 North, a project of the Henry L. Stimson Center. COMMENTARY - The thirteen years (2003-2016) I invested in negotiations with North Korea in different capacities—Special ...
During 2018 and part of 2019, the DPRK’s Chairman Kim Jong-un, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, and U.S. President Donald Trump collectively made diplomatic history in a series of summits, which gave profound hope to the notion that the Korean Peninsula might finally – after 70 years of war – ...
North Korean leader Kim Jung Un’s recent actions were disturbing – and potentially dangerous. After two summits with President Donald Trump and an historic June 30th meeting at the DMZ, during which both leaders agreed that working level negotiations would commence soonest, we’ve witnessed, in the span of one month, ...
Tim Willasey-Wilsey is a former senior member of the British Foreign Office and a Cipher Brief expert. He is currently a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Kings College London’s Department of War Studies. President Trump’s short walk inside North Korea on 30th June was great theatre; perfect for a politician ...
OPINION -- While two former U.S. Presidents – Jimmy Carter in 1994 and Bill Clinton in 2009 – had made historic visits to Pyongyang, meeting with Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il respectively, last weekend President Donald Trump made history. By meeting with North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong-Un in an impromptu, ...
The significant weekend visit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un started with a Tweet last Thursday as President Trump was getting ready to depart the G20 conference in Osaka, Japan. “After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I ...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week in Russia. The talks are expected to focus on the situation in Venezuela as opposition leaders Juan Guaido continues efforts to oust Nicolas Maduro. State Department officials said ...
South Korea says that North Korea launched what appeared to be two short-range missiles on Thursday, which would constitute the second round of missile tests in the past five days. Meanwhile, the U.S. announced it has seized a North Korean shipping vessel that it says was in violation of international ...
Thursday’s expected summit between DPRK Chairman Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, Russia follows on the heels of President Donald Trump’s second summit with the North Korean leader in Vietnam that ended without an agreement between the two leaders on denuclearization. Kim may have achieved a ...
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the testing of as a new ‘tactical guided weapon’ on Wednesday in the country’s first weapons test since talks between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump broke down in late February. The weapons test was followed by a statement from the North ...
Former State Department Regional Medical Officer and Psychiatrist, Kenneth Dekleva pieces together recent news from the Hanoi Summit with a focus on Kim Jong-un’s behavior and what he might do next. The results of the recent Hanoi summit between Chairman Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump have led to a ...
OPINION -- One result from the Hanoi Summit: North Korea continues to be a member of the elite nuclear weapons club, and probably will remain so for years to come. National Security Advisor John Bolton, on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, acknowledged that North Korea kept producing weapons grade ...
After much anticipation of a signing ceremony between the U.S. and North Korea, President Donald Trump and North Leader Kim Jong-un left Hanoi with no deal. It was a move applauded even by President Trump’s harshest critics, as it became clear that the U.S. and North Korea, despite two high-profile ...
Expectations are high for the second summit of President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jung-Un. Most people assume that there wouldn’t be a second summit if the principals weren’t confident that the summit would be a success. So, how do we define a successful summit? The first summit was historic, ...
The world is watching Hanoi this week as President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un hold their second summit meeting in less than a year. Critics worry that any declaration of 'success' out of the Hanoi meeting will fall short of full denuclearization, something western leaders say is ...
OPINION -- Two senior U.S. military commanders in the Indo-Pacific area this week questioned whether North Korea would ever denuclearize, just 12 days before the next scheduled summit in Hanoi between President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un. While Trump has repeatedly said that "things are going very well ...
Bottom Line Up Front At the end of February, U.S. President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will meet in Vietnam following up last June’s Singapore summit. The second meeting occurs amidst both positive and negative developments between the countries. Tensions between North Korea and the U.S. ...
OPINION -- The “tremendous progress” with North Korea that President Trump has repeatedly claimed does not approach the success that Kim Jong Un has achieved, based on the status of negotiations as described by Trump’s own Special Representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun. Biegun said his meeting this week with ...
President Donald Trump will hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February. The White House made the announcement following an Oval Office meeting between President Trump and North Korean envoy, Kim Yong Chol. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the United ...
Bottom Line Up Front: Six months after the historic June 11, 2018 Summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jung Un, the American public is losing patience with a North Korea that continues to make nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. Many now doubt that North Korea will ever ...
Bill Evanina is the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) - a part of the U.S. Intelligence Community that leads and supports the government’s counterintelligence and security efforts. The NCSC tackles that mission in a number of ways, but a large part of their task is ...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is touting his recent trip to Pyongyang as a success, saying that he was able to make ‘real progress’ toward denuclearization, and that a second summit between North Korean President Kim Jung Un and President Donald Trump, will be announced soon. Cipher Brief Expert and ...
While much of the focus on North Korea has been on efforts by the U.S. to negotiate a denuclearization deal, the cyber threat posed by Pyongyang remains a real threat, just out of view of the headlines. Bottom Line: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) foreign doctrine in cyberspace is ...
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with North Korea's foreign minister on Wednesday and says he will visit Pyongyang next month to pave the way for a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean President Kim Jong Un. The announcement follows a bilateral agreement signed by President ...
In part two of The Cipher Brief's Expert Briefing on North Korea, Ambassador Joseph DeTrani focuses on the critical relationships with allies and partners and how sometimes competing agendas need to come together in order to realize full North Korean denuclearization. Ambassador DeTrani is former Director of the National Counter ...
Experts cited the lack of intercontinental ballistic missiles in North Korea’s 70th anniversary parade celebrations over the weekend as a sign that the nuclear nation remains committed to denuclearization talks with the U.S. But in the weeks before the anniversary celebration, President Donald Trump cancelled a high-level meeting meant to ...
Cipher Brief Update: On August 23, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a Special Representative for North Korea. Steve Biegun will "direct all U.S. policy on North Korea, lead negotiations, and spearhead our diplomatic efforts with our allies and partners," according to the State Department. Progress in nuclear dismantlement following ...
The world’s malicious cyber actors -- Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – have spoiled cyber’s original, idealistic vision and instead use cyberspace to advance competitive interests to undermine Western laws and norms and pursue a clandestine means (cyber theft) to catch up with the West in technology, political influence, ...
We know from twenty-five years of negotiations that patience and persistence are required if we hope to resolve nuclear and other issues with North Korea. We also know that North Korea wants a normal relationship with the U.S., ideally they’d like to retain nuclear weapons and have access to international ...
OPINION -- President Trump’s repeated message that Russia’s possession of nuclear weapons requires him to have better relations with Vladimir Putin, should encourage China to sharply increase the size of its strategic nuclear forces. That’s the message in an article entitled, “China can learn from Trump’s Russia stance,” carried in ...
OPINION -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried Sunday to use current U.S. relations with an old wartime enemy, the Communist government in Vietnam, as a prod for Kim Jong-un to move forward on the June 12 Singapore Agreement that is supposed to lead to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. ...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is resetting expectations for a denuclearization timeline for North Korea, saying Monday that it will take 'decades' to get North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program. In a Tweet on Monday, President Donald Trump reaffirmed his confidence in the North Korean leader, saying that he ...
As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heads to North Korea seeking signs of progress after the recent Singapore summit, some of his colleagues in the U.S. Intelligence community are doubting whether actions will meet up to words when it comes to North Korea's promise to denuclearize. Ambassador Joe DeTrani has ...
Journalists need to find a way to pin down President Trump, and his June 10 press conference in Singapore provided a clear example of one way to do it. The subject was whether Trump had brought up human rights in his meeting with North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un. When first asked about ...
Much initial reaction to the North Korean - American Singapore Summit has been negative, with critics targeting the concessions made by President Trump including; a dramatic, public endorsement of Kim Jong-un’s status and a halt to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises in exchange for North Korea’s commitment to “nuclear disarmament”, ...
The historic June 12th summit in Singapore between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jung Un has moved us closer to a peaceful resolution of issues with North Korea. Compared to where we were eight months ago, when the possibility of stumbling into kinetic conflict on the Korean Peninsula was ...
China, North Korea and the U.S.-South Korea security alliance are the big winners from the short, joint declaration out of Singapore this week. The United States made important symbolic (and reversible) concessions, but at this point, has not advanced the core objective of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula any more ...
OPINION: The eyes of an intelligence officer are trained to look for what a person’s behavior uncovers about his or her motivations and aspirations, which can then help predict future behavior. Watching the president’s recent actions regarding North Korea—his desperation to meet in person with Kim Jong Un, his fulsome ...
Shortly after he was sworn in as Director CIA in January of 2017, now-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made some bold moves that put renewed focus on the North Korea threat. First, he oversaw the establishment of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center, meant to better bring together the resources available ...
During the height of the Cold War, North Korean defectors were celebrated as symbols of freedom and a direct indictment of a brutal North Korean regime. Yet over time, the meaning endowed upon North Korean defectors steadily changed. They became living monuments to the complex facets of the frozen conflict: ...
The June 12th summit with North Korea will be an important beginning of a process that eventually results in the Complete, Verifiable and Irreversible Dismantlement (CVID) of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons facilities. This is the goal, but there’s justified skepticism that this objective can be achieved, especially ...
As the U.S. President prepares to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, sources tell The Cipher Brief that U.S. Special Operations Forces have been preparing for potential action against the North Korean regime for more than a year. This, as the Pentagon recently completed a sweeping review ...