This study is one of the very first to analyze North Korea and the challenges that it presents to international security and community, by looking through the prism of the first two years of the Kim Jong-un regime.

In Red Rogue, Bruce Bechtol analyzes the changing nature of North Korea’s national defense, foreign policy, and illicit economic activities in the post–9/11 era. He describes how North Korea has adapted to a changing global and regional environment to ensure regime survival and has often dictated the agenda in East Asia. Bechtol explains why North Korea frequently resorts to brinkmanship and provocations as foreign policy tools and why North Korea remains a threat to the United States and South Korea. After a detailed discussion of North Korea’s internal politics and foreign policy, Red Rogue examines the diverging U.S. and South Korean assessments of security on the peninsula, the health of the rapidly changing South Korea–U.S. alliance, and the badly deteriorated South Korean civil-military relationship. Using a framework that focuses on diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power, the author reveals the dynamic and complicated challenges for security and stability on the Korean Peninsula. The reader will gain a clear perspective of the paradigm shifts in U.S., South Korean, and North Korean policies in recent years. The book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, military strategists, and anyone who has an interest in East Asian affairs.

This monograph examines North Korea's Office Number 39: its origins, organizational structure, and activities. The authors focus on Office Number 39's key illicit activities- to include manufacture and distribution of illegal drugs, the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, and the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit cigarettes. Finally, as Kim Jong-Il grows frailer, assessing how his successor may continue or alter Office Number 39's activities is also examined. (Originally published by the Strategic Studies Institute)

Since the 1990s, the American government has under prioritized the North Korean threat to global security, according to Bruce Bechtol, an associate professor of political science at Angelo State University. Because North Korea appears economically weak and politically unstable, it is therefore often categorized as a state on the brink of collapse, or a failed state. But Bechtol makes a convincing case that North Korea is more complex and menacing than it how it has often been characterized. Defiant Failed State shows how the North Korean government has adapted to the post-Cold War environment and poses a multifaceted danger to U.S. national security and that of its allies. Bechtol analyzes North Korea's military capabilities, nuclear program, proliferation, and leadership succession to mine the answers to important questions such as, is North Korea a failing or failed state? Is it capable of surviving indefinitely? Why and how does it present such risk to Asia and the United States and its allies? This book sheds new light on the nature of the North Korean threat and the key foreign policy issues that remain unresolved between the United States and South Korea. It is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, military strategists, functional and regional specialists, and anyone who is interested in East Asian affairs.

North Korea has remained a thorn in the side of the United States ever since its creation in the aftermath of the Korean conflict of 1950-1953. Crafting a foreign policy that effectively deals with North Korea, while still ensuring stability and security on the Korean Peninsula-and in Northeast Asia as a whole-has proved very challenging for successive American administrations. In the wake of ruler Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, analysts and policymakers continue to speculate about the effect his last years as leader will have on the future of North Korea. Bruce Bechtol Jr. contends that Kim Jong-il's regime (1994-2011) exacerbated the threats that North Korea posed, and still poses, to the world. Bechtol explains how North Korea presents important challenges on five key fronts: its evolving conventional military threat, its strategy in the Northern Limit Line (NLL) area, its nuclear capabilities, its support for terrorism, and its handling of the succession process. Bechtol's analysis clears up the persistent mystery of how Kim Jong-il's dysfunctional government in its final years was able to persist in power while both presenting a grave danger to its neighbors and setting the stage for the current government. This work addresses issues important for policymakers and academics who must deal with those in power in North Korea.