Korea: A Historic Primer

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010 -- The Atlantic Wire rounded up stories on succession in North Korea.

MAY 21, 2010 – Lisa Camner explained why North Korea would sink a South Korean war ship.

MAY 2009 – Robert Kaplan wrote about "the hazards of overreacting to Kim Jong Il's nuclear tests."

NOVEMBER 2008 – B.R. Meyers wrote that "To hope that a new administration in Washington can build trust with the North Koreans where their most sympathetic blood-brethren have so abjectly failed would be to take American exceptionalism to a new extreme."

SEPTEMBER 2008 – B.R. Meyers wrote that "We should be thinking less about the transition of North Korean power, and more about the worldview that Kim and his potential successors have in common."

JANUARY 2008 – The Atlantic asked a group of foreign policy experts, "What is the likelihood that North and South Korea will continue to reconcile and normalize relations over the next five years?" 54 percent said "somewhat likely." And 41 percent said "highly likely."

OCTOBER 2006 – Robert Kaplan wrote that "the furor over Kim Jong Il’s missile tests and nuclear brinksmanship obscures the real threat: the prospect of North Korea’s catastrophic collapse. How the regime ends could determine the balance of power in Asia for decades."

JULY 2005 – The magazine conducted a Pentagon style war game for a conflict on the Korean peninsula.

JANUARY 2004 – Kenji Fujimoto wrote about his experiences as Kim Jong Il's personal chef.

DECEMBER 1998 – Paul Bracken wrote that "our bases in Asia are becoming more vulnerable to attack by ballistic missiles. Defending them will be very expensive and might provoke even larger missile deployments. At stake is the United States' reputation as the world's lone superpower."

FEBRUARY 1997 – Bruce Cumings wrote: "For more than forty years what little we have known about North Korea has come largely from reporters and policy experts whose views of that country's intentions and capabilities may well be misleading or false. The time has come, one student of Korean affairs argues, to let North and South settle their differences directly, and bring U.S. soldiers home."

OCTOBER 1987 – James Fallows wrote that "dependence on the United States has led the South Koreans to magnify our power over their domestic affairs."

DECEMBER 1983 – Sanford J. Ungar wrote that "Now, when South Korea's economic success is costing the jobs of Americans, South Koreans wonder if we would fight for them again."

SEPTEMBER 1953 – Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall wrote about America's mistakes in Korea.