The U.S. and international community face new and evolving challenges on the Korean Peninsula, but it’s within reason to imagine this threat landscape would look different — and perhaps less severe — if the U.S. had implemented policy recommendations from a now-forgotten North Korea policy review.

In Nov. 1998, President Bill Clinton and his national security advisors tasked former defense secretary William Perry to lead a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward the DPRK. At the time, the administration was facing a new security crisis on the Korean Peninsula: There were serious concerns about North Korea