In his recent commentary piece “The biggest obstacle to deal with Korea isn’t Kim Jong Un” Clint Work, a doctoral candidate from the Jackson School, argues that the American foreign policy establishment may be the problem in obtaining a deal on the North Korean nuclear issue.
Published by the Washington Post on Feb. 25, the same week President Trump travelled to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam, the article explores how the foreign policy establishment post a threat to Trump’s policy and compares a similar situation with former President Carter, when “he controversially tried to withdraw all remaining U.S. ground combat forces from South Korea in 1977, he faced immediate pushback from establishment defenders…”
Work, an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s Asia Campus in Incheon, South Korea, focuses on South Korea’s foreign and national security policy, Korean political culture, U.S.-Korean relations, and U.S. foreign policy. At the Jackson School, his dissertation research and writing centers on U.S.-Korea relations under President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s and Carter’s abortive withdrawal of U.S. ground combat forces from South Korea.
