Description
The recent escalation in North Korean aggression has created complications for the international community that requires a fundamentally different approach to the issues facing the Southeast Asian Peninsula. Since the early 1990s, the United States and its allies have attempted to diffuse matters revolving around North Korean nuclear proliferation and illicit activities through a series of measures involving economic incentives, humanitarian assistance, and economic sanctions, all of which have been ineffective. The reasons for this lack of success are twofold in nature. First of all, the economic sanctions fail to address the political, social, and economic issues that allow North Korean criminal activities to thrive in the first place. Secondly, the economic incentives and humanitarian relief packages that do target social and economic issues are eventually pulled because the North Korean government always fails to take the necessary steps towards denuclearization. This is a complicated matter without any easy answers, but that does not mean that the international community should continue to utilize the same ineffective strategies over and over again. In order to effectively combat the threat presented by North Korea's transnational criminal activities, there needs to be an understanding of social networks and how the social system of organized crime manifests itself uniquely within North Korean society. The need for new adaptable strategies becomes apparent when tracing the scope of the underworld and upperworld connections that make transnational criminal activity like this possible
