North Korea today is a very different proposition from the North Korea of five years ago. The shift is prompting a reassessment in U.S. policy circles of how to deal with the maverick state. This reevaluation is marked by several recent articles on the new face of North Korea and how to handle it.
The most original proposal is contained in a policy paper by a group of experts sponsored by the Global Peace Foundation and published by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP). It tears up most of the old diplomatic playbook to offer a comprehensive, long-term approach, within which all the more immediate issues can be accommodated.
The fortunes of the country that is prompting these new approaches have changed dramatically. Five years ago, North Korea was in the midst of the most drastic COVID shutdown of any country in the world. The total closing of its borders reduced economic activity, leading to food shortages. Diplomatically, North Korea was isolated.
Today, North Korea is solidly embedded in a quartet of nations that are statist dictatorships, committed to undermining and replacing Western democracy. In 2022, North Korea started providing military support for the war Russia launched against Ukraine, first in the form of ammunition and equipment and then with thousands of troops. In exchange, North Korea got military technology and a mutual defense treaty.
Russia and China have both helped to undermine the U.N. sanctions regime against North Korea. Trade with China, an important economic lifeline for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has grown to pre-pandemic levels and continues to expand.
North Korea also has a well-established defense relationship with Iran, providing it with critical missile technology and building deep bunkers there to protect Iran’s missiles and nuclear sites.
At the same time, Kim Jong-un has expanded and diversified North Korea’s nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The country is thought to currently have 50 to 60 nuclear warheads. Delivery systems now range from intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Hawaii, if not the continental U.S., to short-range missiles that could deliver so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons.
The country now has solid fuel missiles, which drastically reduce the launch time from the hours needed to prepare a liquid fueled missile for launch to just a few minutes. It is also developing the capacity to launch missiles from submarines.
It is now written into their constitution that it is a nuclear-armed state. A recent addition declares that the decision to use nuclear weapons lies solely with Kim, and that any attack against him — such as the strike that killed Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Khamenei — will be met with an automatic nuclear response.
Nuclear weapons are therefore seen as essential to the regime’s survival. They are not and have never been viewed by North Korea as a bargaining chip to achieve a peace settlement or gain economic benefits.
It is the recognition of this reality, and the futility of some thirty years of diplomacy aimed at North Korean denuclearization, that has led to a rethink in US policy circles.
The distinguished North Korean expert Victor Cha addresses this in a Foreign Affairs article, “North Korea as It Is: The Case for a Cold Peace.” His starting point is the recognition that North Korean denuclearization is not an achievable goal in any short- to mid-term framework.
He proposes handling the reality of the North Korean nuclear threat through a policy focused on containment and deterrence. The focus is on managing North Korea “as it is.”
The authors of the NIPP policy paper, “Toward a Free and Unified Korea – Resolving the Korea Challenge at Its Source,” take the matter a step further. They have long recognized that denuclearization has been a failed policy. The result has been a more formidable nuclear-armed North Korea.
They also recognize that current circumstances call for a robust policy of containment and deterrence. This is a U.S. national interest because of the growing threat North Korea represents for regional and global security.
However, they also recognize that containment and deterrence merely manages an inherently unstable situation. It leaves Kim in the driver’s seat while U.S. policy reacts to his initiatives. This has been the case with North Korea throughout the history of denuclearization talks.
The paper proposes that the U.S. and its allies, particularly South Korea and Japan, take the moral initiative by making it their stated policy to work towards a free and unified Korea as the ultimate solution to the “Korea Question,” left unresolved at the end of the Korean War.
This long-term policy would be advanced through a focus on the human rights of the 26.6 million North Koreans and the provision of information about their government and the world at large that they are currently denied.
North Korea is a member of the U.N. but systematically ignores UN principles such as freedoms of speech, information, religion and travel. The brutal repression of any dissent is documented in the 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights in the DPRK.
The paper also highlights the role to be played by civil society organizations, both in South Korea and globally, in bringing attention to the systematic denial of human rights to North Koreans, and in getting information to them.
More immediate issues, such as nuclear containment and contingency planning for possible crises in the North, would be addressed within this broader framework, working towards a clear end goal.
By seeking to do more than simply manage the current situation, this proposal takes into account the ultimate unsustainability of the Kim project. He wants to develop a degree of prosperity in his country, under nuclear protection, while keeping tight control over the North Korean people. The two goals cannot coexist indefinitely. Something will eventually have to give.
Michael Marshall is a former editor-in-chief of UPI and a board member of the Global Peace Foundation. He is a contributor to the paper discussed in this article. The views expressed are his own.