ABSTRACT
It should be noted that there are the difficulties outside analysts face when analyzing North Korea and its policy-making processes. Furthermore, there is the often overlooked difficulty that North Korean analysts and policy-makers must experience when assessing the United States and other countries. North Koreans look at the United States through a lens that has been tainted by decades of extreme ideological indoctrination, which certainly creates extreme suspicions of U.S. intentions. After the Cold War, North Korea’s most significant policy has been its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which has brought major efforts by the United States to end Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. Ed Olsen writes in Chapter 8 that “North Korea’s most predictable attention will be to its ongoing major concerns over the U.S.’s evolving policies toward North Korea’s nuclear option.” He also notes that Pyongyang must be paying attention to how the United States is dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, as well as to the 2008 U.S. presidential election and what U.S. foreign policy will look like under the administration. Olsen speculates about the possible foreign policies of the various U.S. presidential candidates and the machinations of U.S. domestic sources of Washington’s foreign policy, and how they could impact North Korea. He also mentions the importance of ROK policy toward the North and how it affects Washington’s policy toward Pyongyang.
