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On eve of threatened rocket launch, American Academy forum to examine North Korea’s nuclear program

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North Korea has vowed to launch a long-range rocket it says is intended to carry an Earth observation satellite into space. The launch, planned for between April 12 and 16, would defy the international community.

What would this mean for relations between North Korea and the United States, which seemed to be improving after a Feb. 29 food-aid agreement? And what effect might the launch have on enduring tensions on the Korean Peninsula?

On April 12, two leading North Korea experts will examine these developments and the broader geopolitical and nonproliferation implications of Pyongyang’s nuclear program at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The event (invitation required) begins at 6 p.m. at the Academy’s Cambridge, Mass., headquarters.

The participants are: Stephen W. Bosworth, former U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy, former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of North Korea, and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; Siegfried S. Hecker, senior fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and one of the few westerners to visit North Korea’s nuclear facilities; and (moderator) Steven E. Miller, director of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-chair of the American Academy’s Committee on International Security Studies.

The American Academy has focused on arms control matters for more than 50 years. Publications from its Global Nuclear Future initiative, available on the Academy’s website at http://www.amacad.org/content/Research/research.aspx?d=289, include:

  • Nuclear Collisions: Discord, Reform & the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime, Steven E. Miller (2012)

  • The Back-End of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: An Innovative Storage Concept, Stephen M. Goldberg, Robert Rosner, and James P. Malone (2012)

  • Game Changers for Nuclear Energy, Kate Marvel and Michael May (2011)

  • Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament: A Global Debate, Scott D. Sagan, James M. Acton, Jayantha Dhanapala, Mustafa Kibaroglu, Harald Müller, Yukio Satoh, Mohamed I. Shaker, and Achilles Zaluar (2010)

  • On the Global Nuclear Future, vols. 1–2, Dædalus, journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (MIT Press, 2009–2010)

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