In conjunction with the Atlantic Council of the United States, KEI hosted a discussion of the impact of North Korea – China ties on the prospects for the Six Party Talks. Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies discussed how, despite a recent uptick in relations, ties between China and North Korea have actually been on a downward trajectory over the last decade and a half, and how China has come to realize that both dialogue and pressure are needed in dealing with North Korea on the nuclear crisis, while neither approach will on its own be sufficient. John Park of the United States Institute for Peace discussed why the notion of China’s having leverage over North Korea in the Six Party Talks is a myth. He noted that China has higher priorities in its relations with North Korea related to maintaining stability for its own economic growth and concerns related to refugees should North Korea collapse.

Bonnie Glaser is a resident senior associate with the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies, where she works on issues related to Chinese foreign and security policy. She is concomitantly a senior associate with CSIS Pacific Forum and a consultant for the U.S. government on East Asia. From 2003 to mid-2008, Ms. Glaser was a senior associate in the CSIS International Security Program. Prior to joining CSIS, she served as a consultant for various U.S. government offices, including the Departments of Defense and State. Ms. Glaser has written extensively on Chinese threat perceptions and views of the strategic environment, China’s foreign policy, Sino-U.S. relations, U.S.-China military ties, cross-strait relations, Chinese assessments of the Korean peninsula, and Chinese perspectives on missile defense and multilateral security in Asia. Her writings have been published in the Washington Quarterly, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, International Security, Problems of Communism, Contemporary Southeast Asia, American Foreign Policy Interests, Far Eastern Economic Review, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, New York Times, and International Herald Tribune, as well as various edited volumes on Asian security. Ms. Glaser is a regular contributor to the Pacific Forum quarterly Web journal Comparative Connections. She is currently a board member of the U.S. Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she served as a member of the Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board China Panel in 1997. Ms. Glaser received her B.A. in political science from Boston University and her M.A. with concentrations in international economics and Chinese studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Park, John is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), where he focuses on Northeast Asian security, economic, and energy issues. He is Director of USIP’s Korea Working Group, co-director of the U.S.-China Project on Crisis Avoidance & Cooperation, and co-director of the Trilateral Dialogue in Northeast Asia (U.S., ROK, Japan). He is also a research associate with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Managing the Atom Project, which examines the military and civilian applications of nuclear energy. Prior to joining USIP, Dr. Park worked on military privatization financing projects at Goldman Sachs. He received his M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University. He completed his predoctoral and postdoctoral training at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.