Robert Carlin has been following North Korea since 1974 from both in and out of government. In those forty plus years, he has taken part in countless hours of negotiations and unofficial discussions with DPRK officials.

Since 2022, Carlin has been a Nonresident Scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He served as a senior policy advisor at the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) from 2002-2006, leading delegations to the North for negotiations and observing developments in the country outside of Pyongyang. From 1988-2002, he was Chief of the Northeast Asia Division in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Concurrently he served as senior policy advisor to the U.S. Special Ambassador and participated in all aspects of talks with the North during those busy years. From 1971-1988, Carlin was at the CIA.

Carlin has made more than 30 trips to the DPRK. In 2010, along with Dr. Siegfried Hecker, he was on the American delegation taken to see the North’s uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon. His most recent visit to the North was in April 2017.

In 2013 Carlin updated and revised Don Oberdorfer’s classic history of the Korean Peninsula, “The Two Koreas.” He has a Master’s degree from Harvard in East Asian Studies and a BA in Political Science from Claremont Men’s College (now Claremont McKenna)

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38 North: News and Analysis on North Korea