Purpose: The goal of this site is to promote North Korean Studies by facilitating awareness of North Korean security, political, social, and historical issues. This is attempted by providing commentary and analysis on related events, and by acting as a portal to some of the most pertinent news, research, opinion, and organizations covering North Korea. Domains that will get you here; dprkstudies.org, northkoreanstudies.org, and nkstudies.org.

Primary Author: I (Richardson) am the primary author of DPRK Studies, which has been around in one form or another since 2000, though as a blog only since May 2005.

My experience in Korea now spans over a decade and has been both as a student and through government employment as a Presidential Management Fellow and follow-on positions, where I focused on East Asian and Korean issues. As an undergraduate in the 1990s I spent a year studying language, international relations, and oriental philosophy at a university in Korea.

Since then I have returned for several multi-month stays for business, as well as another semester while a graduate student of Korean Studies, where my focus was North Korea’s nuclear program. During a stay in 2005 I had the unique and rewarding experience of interviewing North Korean defectors. I don’t normally publish anywhere outside the relatively anonymous confines of this blog, but did on one occasion on a topic I consider to be critical to U.S. policy in East Asia. Currently - and unfortunately - in the DC metro area.

Since mid-2007 the pace of posts has slowed substantially due to both the birth of my son (!) and my decision to go back into the military (this time as a reserve officer). Although I am still immersed in the study of North Korea, I have less time to blog. Rather than the multiple posts that used to appear each day, multiple posts per week is a realistic expectation for the future, generally. As always, there will be exceptions to the rule when I have the time and inclination to post at the old rate.

Guest Author: James Na is a guest blogger at DPRK Studies. We were co-founders of the late Korea Liberator blog with Joshua Stanton.

James was formerly a senior foreign policy fellow at Discovery Institute and a recurring guest columnist at The Seattle Times and RealClearPolitics. Before he went on a sabbatical to tend his enlarged family, he served as an advisor to the president of the Leadership Institute.

Comments: Currently comments are not held in moderation and registration is not required. They should relate to the post and should not simply point to another website or blog (which will be treated as spam). Being off-topic (remember, the main focus here is North Korea), being disrespectful, engaging in ad hominem, or vulgarity may result in the offending comments being edited, deleted, and the author’s following comments being moderated or banned.

Copyright: Links to the blog and posts are always welcomed, as are extensive use of quotes from DPRK Studies – as long as they are sourced with a link to this site. However, using text from DPRK Studies posts without sourcing is not permitted. Likewise, posting the entire content of individual posts or pages from this site at other blogs or sites (including sites like archive.org) is not permitted.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed by us on this blog are ours respectively and do not necessarily represent the views of our employers or any organizations we are affiliated with. Although we share a common interest in Korea, we do not represent each other and are only responsible for the specific posts we write individually.