Thanksgiving 2010 will be another U.S. holiday peppered with news from North Korea.  This is a pattern – July 4, 2006, missiles; Memorial Day 2009, nuclear test. With the latest news about cross-border firing on the Korean Peninsula, I asked Evans Revere, a former senior U.S. diplomat, a Senior Director at the Albright Stonebridge Group, and Diplomat-in-Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School, for his insight.  He kindly provided these answers via email.

Q: How do you interpret the most recent provocations on the Korean Peninsula and the revelation of centrifuges to Dr. Hecker? Some suggest this most recent round of belligerence is related to leadership succession issues. What is your take?

A: My own sense is that the leadership/succession issues have long since been decided. The course that North Korea is on has been set for some time, and the recent Korean Workers’ Party meeting that anointed Kim Jong Un as the next leader when his father passes brought to a conclusion a long, complicated, and secretive process that was set in motion when Kim Jong Il took ill in the summer of 2008.  Now that the course has been set, the North Koreans are moving on several fronts. If anything, recent developments in the military and nuclear arenas probably have the blessing of both the older and the younger Kim. There are credible reports that the two visited…    Click here to read more.

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