Pyongyang's recent rocket launch has placed North Korea in the cross-hairs of the international community. The current standoff with the "Hermit Kingdom" threatens to stifle very real reforms already underway, as well as peace in the region.
The world’s attention has once again focused on North Korea following its controversial missile launch on December 12th, 2012 that successfully put a satellite into orbit to study crops and weather patterns. While Pyongyang maintains its right to develop a peaceful civilian space program, the launch has wrought condemnation from the international community and its biggest ally, China, for defying UN resolutions that ban it from operating ballistic missile technology. While the launch coincides with upcoming elections in both Japan and South Korea, it is domestically perceived as the centerpiece of the North’s efforts to commemorate the year 2012 as the one-hundredth- anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth, the deceased nation’s founder who holds the title of “Eternal President.”
Over the past year, North Korea’s third generation of leadership under the 29-year-old Kim Jong-un has focused on building “a thriving socialist nation” to coincide with the anniversary of his grandfather’s birth by issuing a series of incremental agricultural and economic reforms. The skyline of Pyongyang is slowly changing as renovated apartment complexes rise and Chinese-financed building projects become more prominent. Perhaps the most commendable accomplishment of Kim Jong-un is the construction of a new wing in Pyongyang’s maternity hospital, outfitted with modern medical equipment likely supplied by China. Agricultural reforms have allowed farmers to keep up to half their yields for private sale, mirroring the climate of China prior to its industrial reforms in the 1980s.......
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