North Korea: The Struggle Against American Power: Tim Beal
North Korea: The Struggle Against American Power Paperback – October 20, 2005
by Tim Beal (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars 4 customer reviews
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Product Details
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Pluto Press (October 20, 2005)
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George W. Bush's infamous remark about the 'Axis of Evil' brought North Korea dramatically back into the international spotlight. During the late 1990s relations between North Korea and the US and its allies were on the mend. However, the election of George W. Bush resulted in renewed crisis. The nuclear accord between the two countries was torn up, dashing North Korean hopes for establishing normal diplomatic and economic relations. Though malnutrition has eased and the economy is growing, the outlook is bleak.
This book cuts through the propaganda to unearth the complex and contradictory realities of this much-demonised country and its geopolitical context.
The North is not a 'workers' paradise' but, like Iraq, neither is it a threat to its neighbours and the region in the way usually portrayed. Tim Beal reveals a country overburdened by military spending that sees itself under constant threat.
However, he also shows that North Korea is pragmatic about negotiating with the United States. Attempts at economic reform and export expansion are shackled by US and Japanese hostility. Exploring a broad range of subjects including the historical and political framework of North Korea, the development of the nuclear crisis, human rights issues, drug trading, as well as its shifting relationship with South Korea, this is an ideal book for anyone who wants a
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Timely, important, and provocative. A useful corrective to the stereotypes and misinformation that pervade 'conventional wisdom' about North Korea. -- Professor Charles Armstrong, Director, The Center for Korean Research, Columbia University. Author of The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950
As with other official enemies of the United States, there has been a steady campaign of demonization against North Korea by US officials that has all too eagerly been lapped up by the US media, obscuring the real issues of US North Korean disputes and peaceful means of getting beyond them. In this corrective, Beal (Victoria U. of Wellington, New Zealand) provides a short history of Korea and US - Korean relations - up to the genesis of the current nuclear impasse sparked by the George W. Bush administration - in a treatment is significantly more even handed than the vast majority of what Americans read or her. He then turns to key themes and topics, including human rights and international aid, charges of involvement with illegal drugs trafficking and terrorism, and, finally, the nuclear issue. The work concludes with recommendations for US policy, suggesting that good faith negotiations are likely to be successful because North Korea desperately hopes to normalize relations and can't pose much of a threat to the United States in the first place. -- Reference & Research Book News, May 2006
Beal takes aim at historians in the first part; in part two he challenges sloppy journalists, conservative activists with hidden agendas, and politicians eager to score points. On the issue of human rights, Beal does an excellent job tracking down the 2004 claim that North Korea practices chemical warfare on political prisoners. -- John Feffer, Korean Quarterly
North Korea is both one of the last two communist countries (the other being Cuba) and a member of George Bush's Axis of Evil. Tim Beal's book is both a study of how North Korea survived the fall of soviet communism and a detailed study of the nuclear confrontation with America. Beal, a New Zealand business studies lecturer writes a blow by blow account of the nuclear negotiations over the last ten years. It is a contemporay study and the history of the first 50 years development of the state. The purpose of the book appears to be to demonstrate that North Korea is not a threat to the region and that its isolation and dependence on military spending, with the consequential shortage in material goods is in fact a consequence of American and Japanese hostility, both in terms of military threat and economic sanctions. -- Duncan Bowie, Chartist
The subtitles of these books reveal the sharply differing points of departure on North Korea for writers Tim Beal and Paul French. For Beal, North Korea is a product as much of American ill will as it is of its own internal ideology. Beal takes on the despairingly bad press it gets by challenging Western-accepted wisdom across the board. North Korea may spend the highest level of gross domestic product in the world on its military, but that's still less than 0.4 percent of the spending by the U.S.-Japan-South Korea axis combined. With respect to arms sales, North Korea is outsold every year by those famous military powers Australia, Canada and Sweden; it sells 250 times less military hardware than the United States.
As for its nuclear-weapons program, first of all, whether one really exists is doubtful. Charles Kartman, the former head of the U.S.-led Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO), is quoted as saying "the number of proven weapons is zero."
Second, if it is developing one, it was forced to do so by the U.S. and South Korea, primarily the threat of American use of such weapons.
Third, nuclear weapons are the cheap option that could enable North Korea to release hundreds of thousands of conscripts into civilian life to kick-start its failing economy. For Beal, the current nuclear crisis was deliberately engineered by the Bush administration to enable it to renege on Clinton's 1994 Framework Agreement to use KEDO to build two light-water reactors in exchange for North Korea's freezing and dismantling graphite-moderated reactors capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.
Now the U.S. wants it all for free, a freeze without the benefits of "blackmail" with regime change to follow, if North Korea is foolish enough to disarm.
Yet from time to time, Beal ventures an opinion too far. Not everyone with a persecution complex is in error; nor are all the stories of North Korean ill-doing. Few would agree, for example, that the assassination attempt on South Korea's President Park Chung Hee was led by Southern partisans rather than by North Korean commandos. That would include Park Geun Hye, the late president's daughter who lost her mother in the attack and who, as leader of the Conservative opposition Grand National Party, is still prepared to engage in a constructive dialogue with the North's leadership. -- The Japan Times
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About the Author
Tim Beal studied Chinese and Business Administration at Edinburgh University, where he also wrote a PhD on Chinese foreign trade. He has researched and taught widely on Asian politics and business and is currently focused on North Korea. He is senior lecturer in the School of Marketing and International Business at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
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Top Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 starsA Good Book to Help Balance a DPRK Collection
By Puppetkon on April 27, 2009
This book does a decent job at portraying the DPRK in a light that might help create some form of deeper understanding in that it does provide insight into the many accusations against the DPRK. The most powerful piece of this book is its job at reminding the reader not to trust only one source of information. Tim Beal brings to question the many criticisms of the DPRK by outsiders, and while not necessarily saying that their accusations are wrong, it does reveal that some of the more heavily biased accusations only serve to further alienate the DPRK from the global community. In all, this book does provide some interesting perspectives on the DPRK in general, and the different perspective provided by Beal that is different from the typical bias in the Western sources does help in providing a fairer balance to the view of the DPRK.
That being said, I also recommend that other sources are combined with this one to provide a more balanced look at the situation. The only other criticism I have is that some of the statistics are a bit misleading, but I have never seen a fair and balanced presentation of the DPRK by anyone. The best thing to do is to actually go there and see it with your own eyes if you can, but even then it is difficult to understand. However, this book is definately a decent book to add to your collection of DPRK information.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Good for conversation or debate, poor for objectivity
By Mike D! on February 26, 2007
As a holder of a BA in American studies, and someone who is pursuing an MA in Korean studies, a former resident of the ROK and a visitor to the DPRK, this book caught my interest. This book is a great way to start a conversation or a debate, but alone it is a very poor way to try and cut through all the complexities surrounding North Korean and American relations over the last decade.
The primary thesis of the author is that the view of North Korea as a threat is largely a creation of the United States government, who benefits from conflict in the world. The US needs to appease its military industrial complex, it gains influence because the ROK will allow it to have 37,000 troops on its soil, and as a way for the US elected officials to "out-do" each other on creating external threats to look patriotic appease voters and get re-elected. In addition, it promotes the view that North Korea always works in good faith, and wants an honest deal, while the United States always acts in its own selfish interest.
Tim's claim that the threat from North Korea is overstated is one I can believe. As a long-time Pyongyang watcher, and one who went hiking with the communists in North Korea, and one who is working on an MA in Korean studies, I hardly see North Korea as a threat. True, North Korea has a military first policy, and its internal propaganda demonizes the United States, but defector testimony from a variety of sources has shown that the North wants to survive more than it wants to commit suicide in a war it will lose. The fact that the North has an atomic bomb (at the time of the writing of this review), still doesn't worry me about its offensive intentions. Still, I am not an apologist for Pyongyang and truly look forward to the day that North Koreans are free from their oppressive and terrible government.
Still the rest is highly biased. Bemoaning the fact that Americans demonize North Korea, one must wonder what the author really believes about the fact that North Korea teaches its school children to add and subtract with dying American soldiers, or why internal propaganda in North Korea goes to great lengths to teach its school children patriotic songs about its military killing Americans.
The author also draws some sketchy conclusions without proving them. The fact that America's misadventure in Iraq has hurt our credibility is something the author takes advantage of. Before going into a paragraph about the lack of transparency in US foreign policy - the author claims that the US went into Iraq for oil. Following the footnote and finding the article that "proves" this leads us to a newspaper article that simply proves the US uses a lots of foreign oil, something that people know anyway but proves little. Nothing in the senate bill authorizing the use of force against Iraq is mentioned (a document that includes many more reasons than the often mentioned WMDs argument). The claim that politicians try to out do each other's patriotism by fabricating threats is also unproven, as many politicians get elected by questioning their opponent's overly hawkish views. The military industrial complex, as an aspect of American life is not developed much, except for the claims that because we have a big defense industry (the largest in the world), that it must dictate our foreign policy for us. A general audience that hasn't studied US foreign policy in depth (which I see as mostly successful, with the exceptions of Iraq version 2.0 and Vietnam) will be easily taken advantage of by this book. On the flip side, a general audience that doesn't know much about North Korea can be forgiven for believing Tim's accusations that North Korea always works in good faith. Sadly, Tim shouldn't be forgiven for taking North Korea at its word, given the complete lack of transparency in North Korea's politics and its wiggly way of dealing with the outside world.
Statistics on North Korea can also be questioned. When different studies come to different conclusions about North Korea's weapons exports, counterfeiting, or gulag population exist, Tim Beal selects the study that put the North in the best possible light. Instead, an objective observer should point out that the lack of transparency in North Korea means that all statistics are highly questionable. Yes - statistics should be used, but not those that provide evidence for one's thesis.
North Korea doesn't worry me as much as it worries most - but Tim worries me. Sadly, some people will take his book as gospel, and use it as an excuse to engage in American bashing. US policy hasn't been perfect in all realms, but on this topic I will heartily disagree with Mr. Beal's assessment as biased, one-sided America bashing.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
North Korea Explained
By Peter Wilson on May 8, 2013
When it comes to the Korean situation, it is hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. This book provides sufficient background to provide an understanding of the context in which current day events on the Korean peninsula are taking place. Everybody who seeks to comprehend what is going on in Korea should read this book.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting argument, but hard reading
By Jared M on February 3, 2007
An interesting book, which discusses North Korea's relationship with the outside world, particularly the United States. The main thrust of the book is the various diplomatic agreements and negotiations of the past 10 years or so concerning the use and development of nuclear technology. In particular, the events surrounding the withdrawal of NK from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are under considerable spotlight.
Tim Beal argues that the wide spread view of North Korea as a belligerent nation, actively pursuing nuclear technology for manufacture of weapons is in fact largely based on myth. The myth is encouraged and perpetuated by the US, which benefits in a number of ways from maintaining the NK state in isolation, not the least of which is maintaining a strong US influence on the Korean penisula. The US is particularly aggressive in discussions with the state, posturing when it considers the North Koreans has broken an agreement or acted in bad faith. In fact, according to Beal, the United States have broken a number of negotiated agreements relating to nuclear agreements, much more than NK. NK wants to develop a more constructive relationship with the outside world, but finds itself hamstrung on the image front, with the US convincing the world at large of NK's misintentions. However, at times Beal makes hard work of his arguments, as the text is quite dry and academic particularly as he recounts the various agreements and treaties relating to nuclear technology. Nonetheless, he makes some very convincing arguments, and given the way the US has conducted much of its foreign policy recently, I'm very receptive to his case.
Of course, arguing that NK don't have the capability to make weapons grade uranium is now a moot point, with the news that NK had detonated a nuclear weapon late last year. Therefore in some respects, this book is now out of date. However, some interesting points are made, particularly with respect to the hypocritical manner in which United States conducts itself in talks with NK, insisting the reclusive state must give an arm and a leg without the US conceding a inch. One could consider there are interesting parallels in the way the US deals with Iran over the development of nuclear technology in the Islamic state.
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North Korea: The Struggle Against American Power Paperback – October 20, 2005
by Tim Beal (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars 4 customer reviews
--------
Product Details
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Pluto Press (October 20, 2005)
--------
George W. Bush's infamous remark about the 'Axis of Evil' brought North Korea dramatically back into the international spotlight. During the late 1990s relations between North Korea and the US and its allies were on the mend. However, the election of George W. Bush resulted in renewed crisis. The nuclear accord between the two countries was torn up, dashing North Korean hopes for establishing normal diplomatic and economic relations. Though malnutrition has eased and the economy is growing, the outlook is bleak.
This book cuts through the propaganda to unearth the complex and contradictory realities of this much-demonised country and its geopolitical context.
The North is not a 'workers' paradise' but, like Iraq, neither is it a threat to its neighbours and the region in the way usually portrayed. Tim Beal reveals a country overburdened by military spending that sees itself under constant threat.
However, he also shows that North Korea is pragmatic about negotiating with the United States. Attempts at economic reform and export expansion are shackled by US and Japanese hostility. Exploring a broad range of subjects including the historical and political framework of North Korea, the development of the nuclear crisis, human rights issues, drug trading, as well as its shifting relationship with South Korea, this is an ideal book for anyone who wants a
-----
Editorial Reviews
Review
Timely, important, and provocative. A useful corrective to the stereotypes and misinformation that pervade 'conventional wisdom' about North Korea. -- Professor Charles Armstrong, Director, The Center for Korean Research, Columbia University. Author of The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950
As with other official enemies of the United States, there has been a steady campaign of demonization against North Korea by US officials that has all too eagerly been lapped up by the US media, obscuring the real issues of US North Korean disputes and peaceful means of getting beyond them. In this corrective, Beal (Victoria U. of Wellington, New Zealand) provides a short history of Korea and US - Korean relations - up to the genesis of the current nuclear impasse sparked by the George W. Bush administration - in a treatment is significantly more even handed than the vast majority of what Americans read or her. He then turns to key themes and topics, including human rights and international aid, charges of involvement with illegal drugs trafficking and terrorism, and, finally, the nuclear issue. The work concludes with recommendations for US policy, suggesting that good faith negotiations are likely to be successful because North Korea desperately hopes to normalize relations and can't pose much of a threat to the United States in the first place. -- Reference & Research Book News, May 2006
Beal takes aim at historians in the first part; in part two he challenges sloppy journalists, conservative activists with hidden agendas, and politicians eager to score points. On the issue of human rights, Beal does an excellent job tracking down the 2004 claim that North Korea practices chemical warfare on political prisoners. -- John Feffer, Korean Quarterly
North Korea is both one of the last two communist countries (the other being Cuba) and a member of George Bush's Axis of Evil. Tim Beal's book is both a study of how North Korea survived the fall of soviet communism and a detailed study of the nuclear confrontation with America. Beal, a New Zealand business studies lecturer writes a blow by blow account of the nuclear negotiations over the last ten years. It is a contemporay study and the history of the first 50 years development of the state. The purpose of the book appears to be to demonstrate that North Korea is not a threat to the region and that its isolation and dependence on military spending, with the consequential shortage in material goods is in fact a consequence of American and Japanese hostility, both in terms of military threat and economic sanctions. -- Duncan Bowie, Chartist
The subtitles of these books reveal the sharply differing points of departure on North Korea for writers Tim Beal and Paul French. For Beal, North Korea is a product as much of American ill will as it is of its own internal ideology. Beal takes on the despairingly bad press it gets by challenging Western-accepted wisdom across the board. North Korea may spend the highest level of gross domestic product in the world on its military, but that's still less than 0.4 percent of the spending by the U.S.-Japan-South Korea axis combined. With respect to arms sales, North Korea is outsold every year by those famous military powers Australia, Canada and Sweden; it sells 250 times less military hardware than the United States.
As for its nuclear-weapons program, first of all, whether one really exists is doubtful. Charles Kartman, the former head of the U.S.-led Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO), is quoted as saying "the number of proven weapons is zero."
Second, if it is developing one, it was forced to do so by the U.S. and South Korea, primarily the threat of American use of such weapons.
Third, nuclear weapons are the cheap option that could enable North Korea to release hundreds of thousands of conscripts into civilian life to kick-start its failing economy. For Beal, the current nuclear crisis was deliberately engineered by the Bush administration to enable it to renege on Clinton's 1994 Framework Agreement to use KEDO to build two light-water reactors in exchange for North Korea's freezing and dismantling graphite-moderated reactors capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.
Now the U.S. wants it all for free, a freeze without the benefits of "blackmail" with regime change to follow, if North Korea is foolish enough to disarm.
Yet from time to time, Beal ventures an opinion too far. Not everyone with a persecution complex is in error; nor are all the stories of North Korean ill-doing. Few would agree, for example, that the assassination attempt on South Korea's President Park Chung Hee was led by Southern partisans rather than by North Korean commandos. That would include Park Geun Hye, the late president's daughter who lost her mother in the attack and who, as leader of the Conservative opposition Grand National Party, is still prepared to engage in a constructive dialogue with the North's leadership. -- The Japan Times
----
About the Author
Tim Beal studied Chinese and Business Administration at Edinburgh University, where he also wrote a PhD on Chinese foreign trade. He has researched and taught widely on Asian politics and business and is currently focused on North Korea. He is senior lecturer in the School of Marketing and International Business at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
-----
Top Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 starsA Good Book to Help Balance a DPRK Collection
By Puppetkon on April 27, 2009
This book does a decent job at portraying the DPRK in a light that might help create some form of deeper understanding in that it does provide insight into the many accusations against the DPRK. The most powerful piece of this book is its job at reminding the reader not to trust only one source of information. Tim Beal brings to question the many criticisms of the DPRK by outsiders, and while not necessarily saying that their accusations are wrong, it does reveal that some of the more heavily biased accusations only serve to further alienate the DPRK from the global community. In all, this book does provide some interesting perspectives on the DPRK in general, and the different perspective provided by Beal that is different from the typical bias in the Western sources does help in providing a fairer balance to the view of the DPRK.
That being said, I also recommend that other sources are combined with this one to provide a more balanced look at the situation. The only other criticism I have is that some of the statistics are a bit misleading, but I have never seen a fair and balanced presentation of the DPRK by anyone. The best thing to do is to actually go there and see it with your own eyes if you can, but even then it is difficult to understand. However, this book is definately a decent book to add to your collection of DPRK information.
------
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good for conversation or debate, poor for objectivity
By Mike D! on February 26, 2007
As a holder of a BA in American studies, and someone who is pursuing an MA in Korean studies, a former resident of the ROK and a visitor to the DPRK, this book caught my interest. This book is a great way to start a conversation or a debate, but alone it is a very poor way to try and cut through all the complexities surrounding North Korean and American relations over the last decade.
The primary thesis of the author is that the view of North Korea as a threat is largely a creation of the United States government, who benefits from conflict in the world. The US needs to appease its military industrial complex, it gains influence because the ROK will allow it to have 37,000 troops on its soil, and as a way for the US elected officials to "out-do" each other on creating external threats to look patriotic appease voters and get re-elected. In addition, it promotes the view that North Korea always works in good faith, and wants an honest deal, while the United States always acts in its own selfish interest.
Tim's claim that the threat from North Korea is overstated is one I can believe. As a long-time Pyongyang watcher, and one who went hiking with the communists in North Korea, and one who is working on an MA in Korean studies, I hardly see North Korea as a threat. True, North Korea has a military first policy, and its internal propaganda demonizes the United States, but defector testimony from a variety of sources has shown that the North wants to survive more than it wants to commit suicide in a war it will lose. The fact that the North has an atomic bomb (at the time of the writing of this review), still doesn't worry me about its offensive intentions. Still, I am not an apologist for Pyongyang and truly look forward to the day that North Koreans are free from their oppressive and terrible government.
Still the rest is highly biased. Bemoaning the fact that Americans demonize North Korea, one must wonder what the author really believes about the fact that North Korea teaches its school children to add and subtract with dying American soldiers, or why internal propaganda in North Korea goes to great lengths to teach its school children patriotic songs about its military killing Americans.
The author also draws some sketchy conclusions without proving them. The fact that America's misadventure in Iraq has hurt our credibility is something the author takes advantage of. Before going into a paragraph about the lack of transparency in US foreign policy - the author claims that the US went into Iraq for oil. Following the footnote and finding the article that "proves" this leads us to a newspaper article that simply proves the US uses a lots of foreign oil, something that people know anyway but proves little. Nothing in the senate bill authorizing the use of force against Iraq is mentioned (a document that includes many more reasons than the often mentioned WMDs argument). The claim that politicians try to out do each other's patriotism by fabricating threats is also unproven, as many politicians get elected by questioning their opponent's overly hawkish views. The military industrial complex, as an aspect of American life is not developed much, except for the claims that because we have a big defense industry (the largest in the world), that it must dictate our foreign policy for us. A general audience that hasn't studied US foreign policy in depth (which I see as mostly successful, with the exceptions of Iraq version 2.0 and Vietnam) will be easily taken advantage of by this book. On the flip side, a general audience that doesn't know much about North Korea can be forgiven for believing Tim's accusations that North Korea always works in good faith. Sadly, Tim shouldn't be forgiven for taking North Korea at its word, given the complete lack of transparency in North Korea's politics and its wiggly way of dealing with the outside world.
Statistics on North Korea can also be questioned. When different studies come to different conclusions about North Korea's weapons exports, counterfeiting, or gulag population exist, Tim Beal selects the study that put the North in the best possible light. Instead, an objective observer should point out that the lack of transparency in North Korea means that all statistics are highly questionable. Yes - statistics should be used, but not those that provide evidence for one's thesis.
North Korea doesn't worry me as much as it worries most - but Tim worries me. Sadly, some people will take his book as gospel, and use it as an excuse to engage in American bashing. US policy hasn't been perfect in all realms, but on this topic I will heartily disagree with Mr. Beal's assessment as biased, one-sided America bashing.
------
5.0 out of 5 stars
North Korea Explained
By Peter Wilson on May 8, 2013
When it comes to the Korean situation, it is hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. This book provides sufficient background to provide an understanding of the context in which current day events on the Korean peninsula are taking place. Everybody who seeks to comprehend what is going on in Korea should read this book.
-----
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting argument, but hard reading
By Jared M on February 3, 2007
An interesting book, which discusses North Korea's relationship with the outside world, particularly the United States. The main thrust of the book is the various diplomatic agreements and negotiations of the past 10 years or so concerning the use and development of nuclear technology. In particular, the events surrounding the withdrawal of NK from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are under considerable spotlight.
Tim Beal argues that the wide spread view of North Korea as a belligerent nation, actively pursuing nuclear technology for manufacture of weapons is in fact largely based on myth. The myth is encouraged and perpetuated by the US, which benefits in a number of ways from maintaining the NK state in isolation, not the least of which is maintaining a strong US influence on the Korean penisula. The US is particularly aggressive in discussions with the state, posturing when it considers the North Koreans has broken an agreement or acted in bad faith. In fact, according to Beal, the United States have broken a number of negotiated agreements relating to nuclear agreements, much more than NK. NK wants to develop a more constructive relationship with the outside world, but finds itself hamstrung on the image front, with the US convincing the world at large of NK's misintentions. However, at times Beal makes hard work of his arguments, as the text is quite dry and academic particularly as he recounts the various agreements and treaties relating to nuclear technology. Nonetheless, he makes some very convincing arguments, and given the way the US has conducted much of its foreign policy recently, I'm very receptive to his case.
Of course, arguing that NK don't have the capability to make weapons grade uranium is now a moot point, with the news that NK had detonated a nuclear weapon late last year. Therefore in some respects, this book is now out of date. However, some interesting points are made, particularly with respect to the hypocritical manner in which United States conducts itself in talks with NK, insisting the reclusive state must give an arm and a leg without the US conceding a inch. One could consider there are interesting parallels in the way the US deals with Iran over the development of nuclear technology in the Islamic state.
-----
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