Recent months have seen a tense time on the Korean peninsula, with unprecedented levels of provocative rhetoric emanating from Pyongyang. As experts scrambled to explain the rising tensions, one prominent theory arising suggested North Korea’s brinkmanship reflected the anxiety of the nations fledgling leader, Kim Jong Un.

But Chung-in Moon thinks the tensions were caused by something else. As the chief architect of North Korea policy during the Roh Moo-hyun administration, Moon told NK News that recent belligerence should be understood as Pyongyang’s cry for survival. He says that in recent years there has been little effort to fundamentally improve