Diplomacy NK Diplomatic Relations with North Korea

North Korea has a centralized government under the rigid control of the communist Korean Workers' Party (KWP), to which all government officials belong (U.S. Department of State, 2012). There are a couple other parties that are in existence in North Korea, however these parties have virtually no power or membership. Given the tight reign of control the government keeps on its population, much of the countries activities are elusive. North Korea and the United States have a long history of conflict that has stifled many diplomatic efforts. Furthermore, the United States has backed South Korea since the Second World War and recent military actions by North Korea have also heightened tensions (Yang, Hall, & Vanden, 2010).

There are no official diplomatic relations between the U.S. And North Korea and the unofficial ones are strained from many sources. First of all North Korea has a substantial army, one of the...

Their military forces are estimated to contain roughly one point two million active duty members; nearly double the force of their South Korean neighbors (U.S. Department of State, 2012). Some analysts had believed that the Pentagon has inflated the North Korean threat in order to rationalize a missile defense system that would allow the U.S. To fight two wars simultaneously (Feffer, 1999). However, more recently North Korea has emerged as a potential nuclear threat that makes the adversarial relationship more credible.
North Korea just announced a series of economic reforms under its new leader Kim Jong-un. However, analyses are still speculating about the status of North Korea's nuclear program even though news of this has largely been dropped from the major headlines (Snyder, 2012). North Korea did agree to a moratorium on its nuclear development in exchange for "food aid." However, recently the country has blocked inspectors form visiting…