North Korea poses difficult challenges for U.S. foreign policy. It possesses nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, and despite some progress, it is by no means clear that the ongoing six-party talks will be able to reveal the full extent of the country’s nuclear activities, much less persuade Pyongyang to give them up.

The United States maintains tens of thousands of forces on the Korean peninsula in support of its commitments to the Republic of Korea (South Korea), a country with which the North is still technically at war. And the peninsula sits in a strategically vital region, where the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea all have important interests at stake.

All of this puts a premium on close attention to and knowledge of developments in North Korea. Unfortunately, Kim Jong-Il’s government is perhaps the world’s most difficult to read or even see. This Council Special Report, commissioned by CFR’s Center for Preventive Action and authored by Paul B. Stares and Joel S. Wit, focuses on how to manage one of the central unknowns: the prospect of a change in North Korea’s leadership. The report examines three scenarios: managed succession, in which the top post transitions smoothly; contested succession, in which government officials or factions fight for power after Kim’s demise; and failed succession, in which a new government cannot cement its legitimacy, possibly leading to North Korea’s collapse. The authors consider the challenges that these scenarios would pose—ranging from securing Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal to providing humanitarian assistance—and analyze the interests of the United States and others. They then provide recommendations for U.S. policy. In particular, they urge Washington to bolster its contingency planning and capabilities in cooperation with South Korea, Japan, and others, and to build a dialogue with China that could address each side’s concerns.

With Kim Jong-Il’s health uncertain and with a new president in the United States, this report could not be more timely. And with all the issues at stake on the Korean peninsula, the subject could not be more important. Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea is a thoughtful work that provides valuable insights for managing a scenario sure to arise in the coming months or years.

Read/listen to the NPR story.

Read Paul B. Stares' Los Angeles Times op-ed.

Paul B. Stares is the General John W. Vessey senior fellow for conflict prevention and director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. Besides overseeing a series of Council Special Reports on potential sources of instability and strife, he is currently working on a study assessing long-term conflict trends. Stares recently led an expert working group on preventive diplomacy for the genocide prevention task force co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and William Cohen. He is also a member of the East-West Institute’s international task force on preventive diplomacy.

Prior to joining CFR, Stares was the vice president and director of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace. Stares worked as an associate director and senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation from 2000 to 2002, was a senior research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and director of studies at the Japan Center for International Exchange from 1996 to 2000, and was a senior fellow and research associate in the foreign policy studies program at the Brookings Institution from 1984 to 1996. He has also been a NATO fellow and a scholar-in-residence at the MacArthur Foundation’s Moscow office. Stares is the author of numerous books and articles including: Rethinking the ‘War on Terror:’ New Approaches to Conflict Prevention and Management in the Post-9/11 World; The New Security Agenda: A Global Survey; and Global Habit: The Drug Problem in a Borderless World. He received his MA and PhD from the University of Lancaster, England.

Joel S. Wit is an adjunct senior research fellow at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University, and a visiting fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Wit is a former State Department official who worked on U.S. policy toward North Korea from 1993 to 2002, first as a senior adviser to Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci and then as the coordinator for implementation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. After leaving the State Department, he was a visiting scholar at the Brookings from 2000 to 2002 and subsequently senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies until 2005. Wit is the coauthor of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis.