HONG KONG, August 4, 2016 — In this informative lecture, John Park, an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and researcher at MIT, assessed the efficacy of sanctions against North Korea, especially as they relate to Pyongyang’s ongoing nuclear and missile programs. He noted that the international community was facing a "sanction paradox," in which the nuclear and missile programs had gotten better in the face of increasing sanctions.

Park argued that the North Korean government had become smarter in evading sanctions by leveraging "North Korea, Inc.," a network of state-owned trading companies that kept the flow of cash and supplies ready, as well as employing capable Chinese middlemen to facilitate the procurement activities.

To make the sanctions more effective, he suggested that North Korea, Inc. must be dismantled, and that China should be engaged on this as it is in China's national interest to reduce corruption and sanitize trade. (1 hr. 28 min.)