Report on Google Chairman's Trip to North Korea

John Delury, a historian from Yonsei University, Seoul, accompanied Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, to North Korea.

The report on his trip in The New Yorker is insightful.

Here are a few highlights:

"The city of Pyongyang shows more signs of coming to life in commercial and economic terms..."

"Kim Jong-un is putting a major stress on economic development and on building a “knowledge-based economy.”"

"One problem we have in the U.S. is that we’ve gotten stuck in a sanctions cul-de-sac. You don’t open up a closed economy and closed society by relying on sanctions as your primary policy mechanism."

"Sanctions might make sense if they were achieving the goal of stopping North Korea’s nuclear-weapons and missile programs. But that’s not happening."

"... if the goal is to encourage a more open society, then our universities, NGOs, and businesses could create opportunities for North Koreans to visit the United States and vice versa."

"I’m more worried about North Korea’s new leader legitimating himself purely on the basis of “military-first” defiance of “American imperialist aggression.”"