North Korea remains one of the hot spots in 21st century politics. This is one country still subscribing to the traditional Marxist ideology and unwilling to join China, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries in pursuing an open economy based on trade and capitalist practices. The country remains poor and isolated, but has the fifth largest army in the world, and allegedly a few nuclear weapons and the ability to launch them as far as Japan. In this paper, I will make a brief analysis of North Korea’s military capabilities, including its nuclear program and its security implications in Northern Asia and the world, and discuss the characteristics of the country’s faltering economy, which serves as a limit for North Korea’s military buildup and constraints many of the country’s strategies, but probably will not collapse the regime.

North Korea remains one of the hot spots in 21st century politics. This is one country still subscribing to the traditional Marxist ideology and unwilling to join China, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries in pursuing an open economy based on trade and capitalist practices. The country remains poor and isolated, but has the fifth largest army in the world, and allegedly a few nuclear weapons and the ability to launch them as far as Japan. In this paper, I will make a brief analysis of North Korea’s military capabilities, including its nuclear program and its security implications in Northern Asia and the world, and discuss the characteristics of the country’s faltering economy, which serves as a limit for North Korea’s military buildup and constraints many of the country’s strategies, but probably will not collapse the regime.

North Korea remains one of the hot spots in 21st century politics. This is one country still subscribing to the traditional Marxist ideology and unwilling to join China, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries in pursuing an open economy based on trade and capitalist practices. The country remains poor and isolated, but has the fifth largest army in the world, and allegedly a few nuclear weapons and the ability to launch them as far as Japan. In this paper, I will make a brief analysis of North Korea’s military capabilities, including its nuclear program and its security implications in Northern Asia and the world, and discuss the characteristics of the country’s faltering economy, which serves as a limit for North Korea’s military buildup and constraints many of the country’s strategies, but probably will not collapse the regime.