Introduction

The foreign policy behaviour of North Korea is one of the most intriguing, captivating and sometimes frustrating aspects of global politics in general and of the international relations of East Asia in particular. Much has already been written about North Korea. In the 1990s, one of the most prominent debates revolved around the possibility of a North Korean collapse. Communist regimes were crumbling around the world, leading to an assumption by some that Pyongyang would follow suit. Kim Jong Un replaced his father Kim Jong Il upon the latter’s decease in 2011. The foreign policy of North Korea towards the USA can be interpreted in terms of bargaining between a weak power, North Korea, and a superpower, the USA. Certainly, the foreign policy of any particular country towards another does not occur in a vacuum. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.