This is multi-faceted, multi-year research initiative that explores both domestic politics in the Democratic Republic of Korea and relations between the DPRK and the outside world. The initiative, which dates from 2002 combines track II direct contact with the DPRK with academic collaboration with colleagues in the United States, Europe, South Korea and Japan.
Thanks in part to past support from scholarly foundations in Japan and the active assistance of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the initiative has involved two direct Cambridge University-led field-trips to the DPRK (in 2004 and 2012), academic exchange between Cambridge and DPRK institutions (including the direct training of four Chevening-sponsored DPRK students), and a series of academic publications, including Rudiger Frank and John Swenson-Wright, eds. Korea and East Asia: The Stony Road to Collective Security (Leiden: Brill, 2012) and a co-edited volume on the legacy of Kim Dae-jung's policy of engagement with the DPRK, published by Yonsei University Press in 2014: Chung-in Moon and John Swenson-Wright, eds. Crisis of Peace and Leadership in Korea: Lessons of Kim Dae-jung's Legacies (Seoul, ROK: Yonsei University Press, 2013).
Currently, the project, via a research initiative at Chatham House and support from partners in the ROK, involves news plans for further track 1.5 dialogue between the ROK, the UK, the DPRK and other European countries in exploring options for managing and reducing the tensions associated with the current nuclear crisis in Northeast Asia.
