Preparing for future threats and regional challenges

행사명 : Academic Symposiu

North Korean Illicit Activities and Sanctions: A National Security Dilemma

North Korea is a nation-state that for many years (including the years following the Cold War) has been off of the main radar for American foreign policy. Whether it was because the United States was worried about other issues such as problems in the Balkans in the 1990s, or fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the new millennium, challenges from the DPRK never seemed to be at the top of the priorities list with American foreign policy makers. This has now changed. It has become obvious to the world that North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program, and that Pyongyang has not been shy about threatening to use it. It is also obvious that North Korea has long and short range ballistic missiles that can not only threaten the region but potentially the United States, and through proliferation, areas as far away as the Middle East. Since North Korea is now not only acknowledged as a threat to the international order but, in a very potentially violent way, to the American homeland, one wonders, how does this highly threatening and possibly the most sanctioned regime-continue to survive? The answer is largely through North Korea’s illicit activities— activities that support and enable the Kim family regime

North Korean Illicit Activities and Sanctions: A National Security Dilemma

North Korea is a nation-state that for many years (including the years following the Cold War) has been off of the main radar for American foreign policy. Whether it was because the United States was worried about other issues such as problems in the Balkans in the 1990s, or fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the new millennium, challenges from the DPRK never seemed to be at the top of the priorities list with American foreign policy makers. This has now changed. It has become obvious to the world that North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program, and that Pyongyang has not been shy about threatening to use it. It is also obvious that North Korea has long and short range ballistic missiles that can not only threaten the region but potentially the United States, and through proliferation, areas as far away as the Middle East. Since North Korea is now not only acknowledged as a threat to the international order but, in a very potentially violent way, to the American homeland, one wonders, how does this highly threatening and possibly the most sanctioned regime-continue to survive? The answer is largely through North Korea’s illicit activities— activities that support and enable the Kim family regime

North Korea and Support to Terrorism: An Evolving History

The DPRK\u27s (Democratic People\u27s Republic of Korea or North Korea) support for terrorism began as an ideologically-based policy financed by the Soviet Union that eventually led to a policy designed to put money into the coffers of the elite in Pyongyang—in short, a proliferation for hire policy. This article articulates a brief history of the North Korean regime, the rise to power of Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il, and North Korea\u27s persistent support to terrorist groups around the globe

Gravitational probes of ultra-light axions

The axion is a hypothetical, well-motivated dark-matter particle whose existence would explain the lack of charge-parity violation in the strong interaction. In addition to this original motivation, an `axiverse' of ultra-light axions (ULAs) with masses $10^{-33}\,{\rm eV}\lesssim m_{\rm a}\lesssim 10^{-10}\,{\rm eV}$ also emerges from string theory. Depending on the mass, such a ULA contributes to the dark-matter density, or alternatively, behaves like dark energy. At these masses, ULAs' classical wave-like properties are astronomically manifested, potentially mitigating observational tensions within the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm on local-group scales. ULAs also provide signatures on small scales such as suppression of structure, interference patterns and solitons to distinguish them from heavier dark matter candidates. Through their gravitational imprint, ULAs in the presently allowed parameter space furnish a host of observational tests to target in the next decade, altering standard predictions for microwave background anisotropies, galaxy clustering, Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption by neutral hydrogen along quasar sightlines, pulsar timing, and the black-hole mass spectrum