The last years of the Kim Jong-il regime in North Korea will likely continue to have a profound effect on both the future of the country under his son Kim Jong-un, as well as on the security and stability of the Korean Peninsula and ultimately all of Northeast Asia, argues Bechtol (political science, Angelo State U.). Writing from the perspective of US establishment foreign policy concerns, he aims to detail the nature of the threat to the region and to the alliance between the US and South Korea by focusing on a number of key issues: the conventional military threat; North Korea's strategy in the Northern Limit Line area (the disputed maritime demarcation line in the Yellow Sea) and its relation to foreign and domestic policy; North Korea's nuclear capabilities and intentions and how the US would respond to a nuclear attack; North Korea's alleged support for terrorism (here Bechtol differs from even the US government, which removed North Korea from its state sponsors of terrorism list in 2008); and the North Korean succession process. An imprint of University of Nebraska Press. Annotation ⓒ2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)