This paper addresses the complex relationship between security and development,with particular emphasis on regional governance concerns, and engagement with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Security, human security,and governance conversations are reformulated and portrayed as a continuum, with entitlement rights and an overlapping normative consensus placed at the heart of the discourse, and Asian exceptionalism challenged. Essentially, internal insecurity considerations are presented as both a normative and rational concern for external actors. The implications of such reformulation for dealing with North Korea are that universal entitlement rights impose obligations on all those who govern, even in East Asia; and that internal human insecurity in North Korea should be as great a concern for regional international security governance as North Korean nuclear weapons and brinksmanship. Indeed, underdevelopment and insecurity in the DPRK constitute major drivers for Pyongyang’s hostile foreign and security policies.