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  The 2015 US National Security Strategy, recently released, “sets out the principles and priorities that describe how America will lead the world toward greater peace and a new prosperity.” 

   While expected to be more assertive in establishing leadership in the regional security and economic cooperation in Northeast Asia, the US does not seem to be harsh on North Korea, the most repressive and despotic country in the world. However, it emphasized that North Korea should show respect for universal values such as democracy, human rights, equality, and peace. 

  North Korea has stepped up its typically ill-tempered rhetoric even further in violation of international regimes, arguing it will soon torpedo all non-aggression treaties with South Korea. A peace pact on the Korean peninsula was never signed and the two countries have remained technically at war ever since. 

  Recently, North Korea saturated international headlines by threatening to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against both South Korea and the United States. Furthermore, it does not mince words in demonstrating its intention of contravening international rules and regulations. 

  People in the North are forced to work six days and volunteer on the seventh day. Unbelievably, they seem to view their founder-leader as almost a God born under the Rainbow. Children are indoctrinated to memorize and focus on virtually all aspects of their current leader, Kim Jong-un. 

  A UN-mandated investigation released a blistering report in February 2014, portraying an appalling litany of rights abuses in North Korea, including the abductions of an estimated 200,000 foreign nationals from at least 12 countries. 

  Although North Korea denies the existence of the clandestine prison camps, the international NGOs estimate that around 200,000 political prisoners are being languished in sprawling gulags across the country, based on satellite imageries and testimonies from defectors, former wardens and other witnesses accounts. They reported systematic torture, forced labor, summary executions, rape, and deliberate starvation. 

  Many in the South beg to wonder why China does not only turn a blind eye on, but even condone and finance this horrendous dictatorship country with dismal track record. Rather, China is bent on launching Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road strategies with a view to meeting the global demand for infrastructure spending. It seems that China does not have the will to drive the North into the open-door with the economy or people-first policy, as opposed to the military-first. 

  Therefore, it is the time that the US must try to change the repressive regime, North Korea. With Kim Jong-un, presumed new leader and heir of the late Kim and party military leaders, the US must accomplish “big deal” that resolves the problems of nuclear proliferation, socioeconomic hardship, and political transition, prior to the beginning of the end in terms of de-stabilizing structural implosion. 

  A new window of opportunity has brought a new horizon for “the blossom of Pyongyang’s Spring.” Through “envoy politics,” as early as possible, the US must initiate and guide an about-face toward “a new thinking” to the North Korean leaders. The US is the only country for the unified Korea to re-direct the whole trajectory of peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula. 

  That Kim Jong-un can be a North Korean style of Deng Xiaoping is only possible through the guidance of open-door policy by the US. It is because no one can possibly lead the North Korean ship without the map. Otherwise, it will stay with Kim Jong-il style of dictatorship with single-minded military-first policy and unfettered nuclear ambition. 

  Currently, most countries in Northeast Asia seem to have shared interests in a peaceful and stable political transition absent from the sudden collapse of the North. Primary causes of such reasoning are stemmed from the worries about uncertainties in the ruthless regime, possible flood of refugees from the impoverishment, and fears over the future course of self-declared nuclear-armed country. 

  However, the most important thing that the Northeast Asian countries are forgetting is the North Korean people. They are the ones who suffer from the hunger, starvation, malnutrition, and harsh oppression, not the regime. 

  As insisted, liberal democracy which is for, of and by the people, can equally be applicable to the North Korean people. It is also for their rights of liberty, equality and pursuit of happiness. The US can not be the world leader by forgetting and neglecting the innocent people in North Korea, and eagerly waiting for the new horizon to come with “new waves of democracy.” 

  There are some unanswered questions to them. Who is responsible for the wrong-doings and all kinds of crimes from the dictatorship? Who can say future hopes for the refugees who cross the North Korea-China border risking their lives and political prisoners in the secretive prison camps? Why can’t the North Korean people have their own rights as humans? 

  To answer these questions, the US including South Korea and China must choose and coordinate policy alternatives designing the future course of North Korea, and encouraging Pyongyang’s Spring. In order to avoid the apocalypse to the North Korean people, the US must act now. Does she have the will to do? And can she do that?