North Korea: Country behind a curtain
As the world watches the succession process unfold in North Korea, countries such as China, Japan, and Russia, whose interests diverge on many important global fronts, are unified in hoping the process goes smoothly for the perennially troubled, nuclear-armed nation. “Everyone wants stability,” said Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Director Andrew Gordon, summing up views from the neighboring states. Harvard authorities on China and Russia said during a panel discussion Monday that although those nations’ relations with North Korea are better than the West’s are, even Beijing and Moscow are left confused when trying to figure out North Korea. And when Russians — who know something about running a country that keeps outsiders guessing — describe a country as opaque, you know that clues are hard to come by, said Mark Kramer, program director of the Project on Cold War Studies at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The situation isn’t much...