North Korea’s Missile Provocations:
Not just a Gambit but an Imminent Threat

"The Missile that Broke the Calm: What ‘Back to Normal’ Means for South Korea’s North Korea Policy"

North Korea launched a series of missiles on May 4 and May 9, 2019, signaling both a departure from the long-awaited peace narrative and a shift towards its past behavior from 2017. Yet the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) and the United States (U.S.) have largely refrained from defining these missiles as well as from directly stigmatizing North Korea. In this context, Professor Won Gon Park of Handong Global University’s School of International Studies states that in order to sustain the momentum towards denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, both South Korea and the U.S. should explicitly acknowledge the capacity of the North Korean missiles and practice deterrence against the regime. He also adds that "South Korea and the ROK-US alliance should review deterrence strategies and create far more robust and comprehensive measures without excluding the possibility of integrating the missile defense systems of the ROK and the US".  [Read Commentary]