North Korea: The Case for Strategic Entanglement

North Korea is a state shrouded in secrecy, yet it receives an enormous amount of media attention. Its reclusive nature makes analysis difficult and speculative. What is certain is that a dangerous stalemate regarding nuclear weapons has persisted for far too long and is an obstacle to any real change in the political system. History, culture, and ideology all rule the state's actions; it is therefore a mistake to assume North Korean negotiators can act with autonomy. A new and dynamic means to deal with this dilemma should be developed, for the past has demonstrated that threats and demands will not coerce Pyongyang into submitting, in fact, that approach will only exacerbate the problem. An effective means to move beyond the stalemate is needed.     

Asking the Right Questions: Utilizing a Judicial Checklist to Track the Educational Success of Youth in Foster Care

Asking about the educational objectives for children in foster care has not been a priority in most juvenile and family courts. Research has shown that compared to the general school population, children in foster care have lower grade point averages, change schools more frequently, earn fewer credits toward graduation, and are more likely to be placed in special education programs. In response, Casey Family Programs, in collaboration with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges' Permanency Planning for Children Department, developed a Judicial Checklist with key educational questions to be asked from the bench. The Checklist has become a useful tool for juvenile and family court judges when assessing the effectiveness of current educational placements of the children who come before their courts, tracking their performance, and in making a positive future impact on their educational outcomes.     

Changing security cultures in Europe and Southeast Asia: Implications for inter-regionalism

Recent development in Southeast Asia demonstrates a slowly but steadily changing security culture from, first, an informal, consensus-based and often hidden way of managing security to a more open and explicit discourse and, second, from a statist realist definition of security as hard or military security to a broader, liberal understanding that covers the whole spectrum of human, economic and environmental security. This security culture in the making also touches upon formerly tabooed issues such as sovereignty and humanitarian intervention. The paper argues that the new approach has removed obstacles in relations between Europe and East Asia and contributed to the emergence of security as a cornerstone of the co-operation agenda since 1998. At the same time, however, a rapid translation of the inter-regional discourse on security into a working programme or even specific policies is hindered by the prevalence of diverging views on the nature, scope and degree of institutionalisation in Europe-East Asia relations.