North Korea

In a federal indictment unsealed Thursday, May 28, the Justice Department has charged 28 North Korean and 5 Chinese citizens with acting as agents of North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank and facilitating over $2.5 billion in illegal payments for the country’s nuclear weapons program. Working for the Foreign Trade Bank, the agents allegedly established more than 250 front companies to mask payments which transited through the U.S. financial system.

On Jan. 28, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on U.S. defense policy in the Korean peninsula that examined the administration’s efforts to strengthen the U.S. alliance with South Korea while deterring and securing the denuclearization of the countries’ shared foe in the north.

Editor’s Note: The Trump administration has made North Korea one of its strategic priorities, but the Pyongyang regime is inscrutable, making it difficult to determine the best approach. Brookings senior fellow Jung Pak dissects Kim Jong Un's annual New Year's speech and argues that the North Korean leader is confident and trying to set the United States up for responsibility should relations go further awry.

Daniel Byman

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Editor’s Note: North Korea may be both the world's most dangerous and most despotic regime. Understandably, most U.S. administrations have focused on the nuclear danger, but the Trump administration has also stepped up pressure on the human rights front. Andrew Yeo of Catholic University argues this focus makes sense and that confronting North Korea requires calling the regime out on human rights.

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