North Korea's Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il: New Perspectives 9780754677390, 2009002108

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NORTH KOREA’S FOREIGN POLICY UNDER KIM JONG IL

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il New Perspectives

Edited by TAE-HWAN KWAK Eastern Kentucky University, USA SEUNG-HO JOO University of Minnesota-Morris, USA

First published 2009 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo 2009 Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors ofthis work. All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrievaI system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data North Korea's foreign policy under Kim Jong Il : new perspectives. l. Korea (North )--Foreign relations. 2. Korea (North)--Politics and govemment--1994- 3. Kim, Chong-il, 1942I. Kwak, Tae-Hwan, 1938- 11. Joo, Seung-Ho, 1959327.5' 193-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kwak, Tae-Hwan, 1938North Korea's foreign policy under Kim Jong Il : new perspectives / by Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7739-0 1. Korea (North)--Foreign relations. 2. Kim, Chong-il, 1942- I. Joo, Seung-Ho, 1959- 11. Title. DS935.775.K872009 327.5193--dc22 2009002108

ISBN 9780754677390 (hbk) Transferred to Digital Printing in 2014

Contents

List of Tables Notes on Contributors

vii ix

1

Introduction Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo

1

2

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy C. Kenneth Quinones

15

3

Assessing North Korea’s Strategic Intentions and Motivations Scott Snyder

39

4

North Korea’s Negotiating Position during Fifteen Years of Chronic Crisis: Continuities and Discontinuities Curtis H. Martin

57

5

Kim Jong Il and Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula Ilsu Kim

81

6

DPRK WMD Programs Daniel A. Pinkston

97

7

North Korea and the Korean Peninsula Peace Regime-building Initiative Tae-Hwan Kwak

119

North Korean Policy toward the United States: Pyongyang Copes with an Evolving U.S. Context Edward A. Olsen

137

8

9

North Korea’s China Policy Ming Lee

10 North Korean Policy toward Russia Seung-Ho Joo

161 179

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

11 The DPRK’s Diplomatic Normalization with Japan Yoshinori Kaseda 12 North Korea’s Policy toward the South after the June 15 Joint Declaration: A Strategy of National Cooperation Moo-Jin Yang

209

231

13 Summary and Conclusion Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo

255

Index

263

List of Tables

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 9.1 9.2 12.1

The Demand, 1993-1994 The Offer, 1993-1994 The Threat, 1993-1994 The Demand, 1998-2000 The Offer, 1998-2000 The Threat, 1998-2000 The Demand, 2002-2008 The Offer, 2001-2008 The Threat, 2002-2008 North Korea’s Trade Volume with China, 2001-2005 South Korea’s Trade Volume with China, 2001-2007 Central DPRK Economic Indicators for the 1990s

62 63 65 67 68 69 73 76 78 169 169 237

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Notes on Contributors

The Editors Tae-Hwan Kwak is a specialist on East Asian affairs, international politics, and foreign policy. He taught international relations and East Asian politics in 1969-99 at Eastern Kentucky University. He received a BA in English from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, an MA in International Relations from Clark University, and a PhD in International Relations from Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Kwak is the author of In Search of Peace and Unification on the Korean Peninsula (Seoul Computer Press 1986) and The Korean Peninsula in World Politics (Seoul Press 1999, in Korean). He is editor and co-editor of 28 books, including North Korea’s Second Nuclear Crisis and Northeast Asian Security (Ashgate, 2007); The United States and the Korean Peninsula in the 21st Century (Ashgate, 2006); The Korean Peace Process and the Four Powers (Ashgate, 2003); Korea in the 21st Century (Nova Science, 2001); The Major Powers of Northeast Asia: Seeking Peace and Security (Lynne Rienner, 1996); The Four Powers and Korean Unification Strategies (Kyuugnam University Press, 1997); The U.S.-ROK Alliance in Transition (1996); and The Foreign Relations of North Korea (Westview, 1987). He has authored over 150 book chapters and scholarly journal articles in Korean, Japanese and English. Dr. Kwak was editor-in-chief of International Journal of Korean Unification Studies (in English) 1999-2000 and editor-in-chief of Asian Perspective (in English) 1995-99. He is a columnist and a freelance writer for Korean newspapers and monthly magazines. Seung-Ho Joo is Professor of Political Science, the University of MinnesotaMorris. He has held teachings positions at Norwich University, the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Yonsei University, the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyung Hee University, and Inha University (Korea). He received a BA in Political Science from Yonsei University and a PhD in Political Science from the Pennsylvania State University. His research interest areas include Russian foreign policy, Russo-Korean relations, and Korean foreign relations. Dr. Joo is the author of Gorbachev’s Foreign Policy toward the Korean Peninsula, 1985-1991: Reform and Policy (Edwin Mellen, 2000). He is co-editor of North Korea’s Second Nuclear Crisis and Northeast Asian Security (Ashgate 2007); The United States and the Korean Peninsula in the 21st Century (Ashgate, 2006); The Korean Peace Process and the Four Powers (Ashgate, 2003), and Korea in the 21st Century (Nova, 2001). He has authored over 55 book chapters and journal articles, with the latter appearing in Pacific Affairs, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, American

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Asian Review, Comparative Strategy, Arms Control, Asian Perspective, Pacific Focus, and The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis. He is currently working on a book on Russia and Korea, 1992-2008. He is Associate Editor for North America of Pacific Focus (2003-present) and former President of the Association of Korean Political Studies in North America (2003-2005). He was a Korea Foundation Field Research Fellow (2005) and a Humphrey Institute Policy Fellow (1997-98). The Contributors Yoshinori Kaseda is Associate Professor of Politics, the University of Kitakyushu, Japan. Previously, he taught at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and Miyazaki International Collage (MIC) in Japan. He received his BA in philosophy from the University of Kumamoto in Japan in 1993 and his MA and PhD in political science from NIU in 1996 and 2005. His research areas include Japan’s relations with the two Koreas and Japan’s security policy. He has published articles in journals such as World Affairs, International Journal of Korean Unification Studies, and Journal of Political and Military Sociology. His publications also include the book chapters: “South Korea’s Security Relations with Japan,” Seung-Ho Joo and TaeHwan Kwak, eds., Korea in the 21st Century (Nova Science, 2001) (co-authored with C.S. Eliot Kang); “Japan and the Korean Peace Process,” in Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo, eds., The Korean Peace Process and the Four Powers (Ashgate, 2003), and “Japan and the Second North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” in Seung-Ho Joo and Tae-Hwan Kwak, eds, North Korea’s Second Nuclear Crisis and Northeast Asian Security (Ashgate, 2007). Ilsu Kim is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Chungbuk National University, Korea. He was formerly Assistant Professor at Daegu Hanny University and Associate Dean of the College of the Social Sciences, Chungbuk National University. He received a BA and an MA in Political Science from Eastern Kentucky University and a PhD in International Relations from Miami University. His research interest areas include International Relations Theory, U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-ROK relations, and U.S.-DPRK relations. Dr. Kim is the coauthor of Energy Security in Northeast Asia: Cooperation and Conflict (2008, in Korean), International Relations in the Era of Globalization (2008, in Korean). He has authored over 30 book chapters and journal articles, the latter appearing in World Affairs, Pacific Focus, and Korean Journal of Area Studies. Ming Lee is Senior Professor in the Department of Diplomacy, and co-chairperson of International Exchange and Cooperation at the National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. Professor Lee received his doctoral degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (UVA), majoring in foreign affairs. Before transferring to UVA, he studied at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University. Professor Lee’s interests cover Northeast

Notes on Contributors

xi

Asian international relations, U.S. foreign policy, Chinese affairs, international conflict, and crisis management. Professor Lee was President of the Chinese Association for Korean Studies (1998-2002), a nation-wide non-profit academic organization. Professor Lee’s first book, Eco-Political Development of North and South Korea and Security of Northeast Asia (in Chinese) was published in 1998. Other publications include “Military Confidence-Building Measures in Northeast Asia: Experience and Prospect,” in National Strategic Studies Institute, ed., Security and Conflict Prevention Across the Taiwan Strait in the Early 21st Century (2002), and “Security Development in Korean Peninsula,” in Taiwan Research Institute, ed., White Paper of Taiwan Security Outlook in 2001 (2001). He has published numerous articles, both in Chinese and English. Curtis H. Martin is Professor of Political Science at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts. He holds a PhD from Tufts Fletcher School. His teaching areas are international politics, comparative politics and foreign policy, and United States foreign policy. His primary research interests are nonproliferation diplomacy, positive and negative sanctions, and case writing. Publications include: “‘Good Cop/Bad Cop’ as a Model for Nonproliferation Diplomacy toward North Korea and Iran,” Nonproliferation Review, vol. 14, no. 9 (2007); “Going to the United Nations: George W. Bush and Iraq,” Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University; “The Sinking of the Ehime Maru: Interaction of Culture, Interests and Domestic Politics in an Alliance Crisis.” Japanese Journal of Political Science, vol. 5, no. 2 (2005); “Rewarding North Korea: Theoretical Perspectives on the 1994 Agreed Framework.” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39, no. 1 (2002); “Negotiating with Adversaries after the Cold War: Incentives-Based Diplomacy in United States-North Korean Relations,” in A. Cooper Drury and Steve Chan, eds, Sanctions as Economic Statecraft (Macmillan 2001); “Lessons of the Agreed Framework for Using Engagement as a Nonproliferation Tool,” Nonproliferation Review, vol. 6, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 35-51, and C.H. Martin and B. Stronach, Politics East and West: Political Culture in Japan and Britain (M.E. Sharpe, 1991). Edward A. Olsen is Professor of National Security Affairs and Asian Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He has been on the NPS faculty since 1980. Prior to that (1975-1980) he was a political analyst on Japan and Korea at the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Office of East Asian Affairs. He has a BA in History (UCLA, 1968), an MA in East Asian Studies (UC Berkeley, 1970), a Certificate in Japanese language (Stanford University Inter-University Center in Tokyo, 1969-1970), and a PhD in International Studies (The American University, School of International Service, 1974). He has numerous publications in Asian politics, security, and U.S. foreign/ defense policy. He is the author of eight books, seven monographs, and was an editor for four books. His most recent books are: U.S. National Defense for the Twenty First Century: The Grand Exit Strategy (Frank Cass/Taylor & Francis, 2002); Toward Normalizing U.S.-Korea Relations: In Due Course? (Lynne

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Rienner, 2002); and Korea: A Nation Divided (Praeger Security International, 2005). The Rienner book was also published in Korean as Hanmi kwangae ui sae jipyung (New Horizons of U.S.-Korea Relations) (Ingan Sarang, 2003). His latest monograph is Homeland Security: Learning from Japan (The Independent Institute, 2005). He has authored 68 book chapters, 142 journal articles, and 93 op-ed columns in major U.S. and Asian media. He currently is working on another book, Reforming U.S. Foreign Policy (forthcoming). Daniel A. Pinkston is a senior analyst and the Deputy Project Director for North East Asia at the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Seoul. Prior to joining ICG, he was director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He has also held teaching positions at the Monterey Institute, the Naval Postgraduate School, and was a visiting professor at Korea University. Pinkston recently published a monograph on the North Korean ballistic missile program and has published articles in The Journal of East Asian Studies, Korea Journal of Defense Analysis, Astropolitics, The KNDU Review, The Nonproliferation Review, Survival, Asian Perspective, WMD Insights, and Strategic Insights, in addition to several book chapters. He holds a PhD in International Affairs from the University of California in San Diego, an MA in Korean Studies from Yonsei University and a BS from Excelsior College. Dr. Pinkston also served as a Korean linguist in the United States Air Force. C. Kenneth Quinones is currently the Director of Global Studies and Professor of Korean Studies at Akita International University in Japan. He has been involved with Northeast Asia since 1962 as a soldier, scholar, and diplomat. He has lived and worked in South and North Korea, plus Japan and visits China often. As a U.S. diplomat, he witnessed South Korea’s democratization during the 1980s and was directly involved in North Korea’s opening to the outside world during the 1990s. He was the first U.S. diplomat to visit North Korea, was a member of the U.S. negotiating team that resolved the first Korean nuclear crisis, and served as the State Department’s liaison officer while living at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center and in Pyongyang for nine months in 1995 and 1996. After retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1997, he arranged U.S.-North Korea educational and agricultural exchanges for the Asia Foundation and Mercy Corps. Between 2001 and 2005, he concentrated on writing and commenting about U.S. relations with Northeast Asia, particularly the Korean peninsula. Since 2000, he has published three books: The North Korea Nuclear Crisis: Off the Record Memories (translated into Korean and Japanese in 2000); Beyond Diplomacy: Implementation of the Agreed Framework (published in Japanese in 2003), and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding North Korea (published in English by Penguin Publishers’ Alpha Books in 2004). His monthly columns appear in Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun and Sanyo Shimbun. He has contributed numerous scholarly studies and articles to academic journals, edited books, and newspapers in the U.S., South Korea, and

Notes on Contributors

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Japan. He has given numerous interviews to North American, East Asian, and European radio and television stations. Dr. Quinones holds a PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. Scott Snyder is a Senior Associate in the International Relations program of The Asia Foundation and Pacific Forum CSIS, and is based in Washington, DC. He spent four years in Seoul as Korea Representative of The Asia Foundation during 2000-2004. Previously, he has served as a Program Officer in the Research and Studies Program of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and as Acting Director of the Asia Society’s Contemporary Affairs Program. His publications include Paved with Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea (2003) (co-edited with L. Gordon Flake) and Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (1999). Snyder received his BA from Rice University and an MA from the Regional Studies East Asia Program at Harvard University. During 2005-2006, he was a Pantech Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (APARC). He was the recipient of an Abe Fellowship during 1998-1999, and was a Thomas G. Watson Fellow at Yonsei University in South Korea in 1987-1988. Moo-Jin Yang is Professor at the University of North Korean Studies and a policy advisor to the Ministry of Unification, the Republic of Korea. His research interests include North Korea’s negotiation tactics, U.S.-DPRK relations and North Korea’s strategies toward South Korea. He has authored numerous articles, including “The June 15 Joint Declaration Paves the Way for Peaceful Inter-Korean Ties,” Korea Policy Review vol. 2, no.7 (2007); “Strategies of the United States and North Korea Toward the 2nd Nuclear Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: Washington’s Repressive Policies vs. Pyongyang’s Countermoves,” Contemporary North Korea Studies, vol. 10, no.1 (2007); “Negotiating Strategies of the Two Koreas,” Inter-Korean Relations Theories (Hanul Academy, 2005), and “North Korea’s Negotiating Behavior toward South Korea: Continuity and Change,” Korea and World Politics.

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Chapter 1

Introduction Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) joined the ranks of nuclear powers in October 2006 when it exploded its first nuclear device. The test, which was partially successful, unequivocally demonstrated the DPRK’s nuclear weapons capability. The DPRK wants to be recognized as a nuclear power, but the four major powers (the U.S., Russia, China, and Japan) surrounding the Korean peninsula are reluctant to accept the fact, and seek to bring about North Korea’s denuclearization. North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons had far-reaching repercussions for peace and security in Northeast Asia and nuclear proliferation worldwide. The six-party talks, which first began in summer 2003 to resolve North Korea’s second nuclear crisis, have convened intermittently. Despite some setbacks, the talks for North Korea’s denuclearization continue moving forward. Foreign Policy Objectives, Principles, and Ideology The DPRK’s key foreign policy objectives include regime survival, national security, and economic development. International cooperation is the key to achieving these objectives, but Washington’s intransigence with Pyongyang has made North Korean leaders frustrated and distrustful. The DPRK seeks the capability to deter U.S. aggression and simultaneously attempts to normalize its relations with the U.S. and Japan. DPRK’s foreign policy is shaped and circumscribed by its political leaders’ idiosyncrasies, domestic needs, Juche (selfreliance) ideology, and external environment. North Korea’s foreign relations under Kim Jong Il reflect the two crucial concepts, that is, Seongun Jeongchi (“military first” policy) and Gangseong Daeguk (“strong and prosperous great power”). Seongun is intended to ensure national security against external threats, retain the military’s loyalty by elevating it to a privileged position in society, and tighten domestic control through the use of force and indoctrination. North Korea treats Seongun as the “new higher stage” of the Juche idea, and presents Kim Jong Il as its founder. Seongun is now elevated to the position of North Korea’s official ruling ideology, and Kim Jong Il’s North Korea and Seongun have become inseparable. By the same token, the goal of achieving Gangseong Daeguk has become permanent fixture of Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. The North Korean leadership appears to believe that Pyongyang

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has successfully created a strong state through the Juche indoctrination, Seongun jeongchi, and the successful development of nuclear weapons. After attaining the goal of a strong state, North Korea needs to double its efforts for the second goal of establishing a prosperous state. To create a prosperous country is a more elusive goal, however. Now, economic interests take precedence over ideological interests. Economic reforms along the road to marketization and concomitant liberalization and opening-up are full of pitfalls and may easily overthrow the Kim Jong Il regime. He is fully aware of this danger, but he also knows that without economic reforms and tangible improvements in North Korea’s economic conditions, his rule cannot last for long. Thus, Kim set 2012 as the target year for achieving the goal of an economic Gangseong daeguk. Nuclear Diplomacy The DPRK is small, poor, and isolated. The stakes on the Stalinist regime’s future are still high due to its nuclear capability and geostrategic importance. Ever since Kim Jong Il ascended to the throne upon his father’s death in 1994, he has pursued a two-pronged policy toward the outside world. On the one hand, Kim continued efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capability for deterrence and prestige and as a bargaining tool. On the other hand, he has sought to normalize relations with the U.S. and Japan, while reaping economic benefits by cooperating with the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) in economic, cultural, sports, and humanitarian realms. The second crisis over North Korea’s nuclear issue that began in late 2002 has consumed most of Kim Jong Il’s diplomatic energy and has been at the center of U.S.-DPRK diplomatic maneuvering. Given its importance in North Korea’s foreign relations, some detailed discussion of the six-nation negotiations over DPRK’s nuclear problem is worthwhile. The six-party nuclear talks convened in 2003 in an effort to resolve North Korea’s nuclear crisis in a peaceful manner. Since then, the talks have produced three significant international agreements—the September 19, 2005, the February 13, 2007, and the October 3, 2007 agreements—for denuclearizing North Korea. Although the September 19 agreement included only general terms of principles for designing a detailed roadmap for denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, it marked the first specific agreement among the six parties involving the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas. The February 13 and October 3 agreements, however, contained specific steps toward implementing the September 19 agreement in a phased manner in line with the principle of “action for action.” The September 19 agreement served as the basis for North Korea’s denuclearization in exchange for economic and political incentives. The joint statement said, “The DPRK committed abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning at an early date to the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) and to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.” It did not, however, mention a verification mechanism. The

Introduction

3

Banco Delta Asia (BDA) issue was a key obstacle to the progress of the six-party talks for implementing the September 19 agreement.1 North Korea’s ballistic missile tests in July 2006 and nuclear test on October 9, 2006 further complicated the situation. The DPRK finally decided to return to the six-party talks after a 13month hiatus, partly because the U.S. agreed to discuss the BDA issue at bilateral talks. The six nations reached a dramatic breakthrough agreement on February 13, 2007, which paved the road to implementing the September 19 joint agreement. The 2.13 action plan has two phases. In the initial phase, the DPRK must shut down and seal its main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon within 60 days. IAEA inspectors should be allowed to monitor and verify the process. In return, Pyongyang will receive energy, food, and other aid worth 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. At the disablement phase, the DPRK must provide a complete list of its nuclear programs and disable all existing nuclear facilities. In return, the DPRK would receive aid worth 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or the equivalent in the form of economic or humanitarian aid, from the U.S., China, Russia, and South Korea. Subsequently, Washington and Pyongyang agreed to begin talks to normalize bilateral relations and Washington agreed to initiate the process of removing North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list and ending its trade sanctions against the DPRK. But no deadline was set. At the same time, Tokyo and Pyongyang agreed to resume talks to normalize bilateral relations in accordance with the Pyongyang Declaration. The six parties also agreed that after 60 days, foreign ministers of the six nations would discuss security cooperation in Northeast Asia. The directly related parties would hold a separate forum for a permanent Korean peace regime. Finally, five working groups would be established to implement the joint statement in the following issue areas: (1) denuclearization of the Korean peninsula (chaired by China), (2) normalization of U.S.-DPRK relations, (3) normalization of JapanDPRK relations, (4) economic and energy cooperation (chaired by the ROK), and (5) Northeast Asia peace and security cooperation (chaired by Russia). After four years of intermittent negotiations, the DPRK finally shut down its main nuclear reactor on July 15, 2007, shortly after receiving an initial shipment of fuel oil. The IAEA inspectors confirmed all five nuclear facilities were closed. The shutdown marked the first concrete step toward denuclearization. The October 3, 2007 agreement set the deadline for completing the disablement of nuclear facilities at the second phase. The agreement did not resolve the contentious issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, but it included important provisions. First, the DPRK agreed to disable all existing nuclear facilities, including the five megawatt experimental reactor, the reprocessing plant, and the nuclear fuel rod fabrication facility at Yongbyon by December 31, 2007. Second, the DPRK agreed to provide “a complete and correct” declaration of all its nuclear programs by December 31. The DPRK reaffirmed its commitment not to “transfer nuclear 1 For the BDA issue, see Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo, “The U.S. Financial Sanctions against North Korea,” Pacific Focus, vol. 22, no. 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 73-110.

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materials, technology, or know-how.” Third, the U.S. reaffirmed its commitments to “begin the process of removing” the DPRK from the U.S. terrorism list and end the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act against North Korea “in parallel with the DPRK’s actions.” Fourth, the six nations reaffirmed that economic, energy, and humanitarian aid up to the equivalent of one million tons of heavy fuel oil would be provided to the DPRK. If implemented sincerely, the agreement would effectively end the DPRK’s production of plutonium. This agreement was made possible because the U.S. significantly moderated its hard-line stance after North Korea’s first nuclear test in October 2006. The DPRK, however, failed to declare all its nuclear programs by the end of 2007 as stipulated by the October 3 agreement. The six-party nuclear talks were stalled for months because of a disagreement over North Korea’s data declaration. The U.S. maintained that the DPRK missed the December 31 deadline to provide a complete inventory of its nuclear activities and facilities. Pyongyang provided a list to the U. S. in November 2007, but the U.S. announced it incomplete and insisted North Korea include in the declaration its highly enriched uranium (HEU) program and nuclear proliferating activities. In response, the DPRK stated that the U.S. allegations about its HEU program and its provision of nuclear technology to Syria were groundless. On April 8, 2008, the U.S. and the DPRK found a formula to break the deadlock by agreeing to a face-saving compromise under which the DPRK would “acknowledge” the U.S. assertions in a confidential document separate from its nuclear programs declaration. This formula proved face-saving to both sides, particularly to North Korea, because it did not have to directly admit that it had done something wrong. The DPRK finally submitted on June 26, 2008 a long-overdue 60-page document to China, chair of the six-party talks. The North Korean declaration was part of a hard-won deal between Washington and Pyongyang after several months of painful negotiations. The declaration included: (1) North Korea’s disclosure of its plutonium stockpile, which Pyongyang estimated at 66 pounds (30 kilograms), as well as records that would allow the United States to verify this figure; and (2) U.S. concerns about North Korea’s suspected uranium enrichment program (UEP) as well as its suspected nuclear proliferation activities. North Korea acknowledged the U.S. concerns in a confidential document. North Korean acknowledgment of U.S. concerns, however, hardly translated into North Korea’s “complete and correct” declaration of its past activities under the February 13 deal. North Korea gave the U.S. over 18,000 pages of records from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor dating back to 1990 to complement the declaration of its nuclear programs. The U.S. still demanded access to those records and to the site where North Korea conducted its 2006 nuclear test, as well as samples from toxic waste and the destruction of the “cooling tower” at the North’s main nuclear complex. In return for complying with these demands, the U.S. promised to remove North Korea from its terrorism list and lift its trading restrictions on North Korea. After a nine-month hiatus, the six-party talks were held in Beijing in July 2008 to negotiate the completion of the disablement phase of the February 13 agreement.

Introduction

5

On July 12, the DPRK agreed on a timetable for completing the ongoing disabling by the end of October 2008, and also agreed to general principles for a verification mechanism. In accordance with the July agreement, the DPRK would complete disabling its nuclear facilities and the five nations would complete shipments of promised energy aid by the end of October. The six nations agreed to establish two sets of mechanisms—one on verifying plutonium-based programs and the other on monitoring the uranium enrichment program and proliferation of its nuclear activities. But the six nations failed to produce a concrete plan for verification. The DPRK received from the U.S. a four-page draft verification protocol on July 11, 2008, calling for interviews, on-site visits, and materials sampling. The DPRK could not accept some of the proposed terms. The DPRK thus threatened on August 26, 2008 to restart its nuclear weapons program, arguing that the U.S. did not keep its promise to remove North Korea from the U.S. terrorism list, and announced that it “suspended disabling” its nuclear facilities on August 14, 2008. This move had a profound impact on the denuclearization process. The announcement appeared to be Pyongyang’s rejection of the U.S. proposal made during the bilateral talks in August 2008 in New York on establishing a “complete and accurate” verification mechanism. Since the June 27 demolition of the “cooling tower” in Yongbyon, the U.S. has maintained that it will not remove North Korea from the terrorism sponsor list until North Korea puts forward a verification protocol. The U.S. wanted full access by IAEA inspectors to all locations it suspected of being nuclear sites to ensure that there were no hidden nuclear assets. In response, the DPRK has stated that extra inspections would be a violation of its sovereignty. When the August 11 deadline for dropping North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list passed, the DPRK on August 14 informed the five parties to the six-party talks of its decision to suspend its disabling efforts. The U.S. reaffirmed its decision to keep North Korea on the terrorism list until North Korea agreed on terms of a verification mechanism. After announcing the restoration the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, the DPRK expelled IAEA monitors from the plutonium-producing nuclear plant and threatened to start reactivating the reprocessing plant. Pyongyang’s action obviously undermined the six-party process and violated the February 13, 2007 agreement. This move resulted from the Washington’s demand for an intrusive verification system as a precondition for delisting North Korea. Pyongyang argued that the U.S. precondition for delisting was unacceptable. Once again, the DPRK’s brinkmanship effectively persuaded the United States to soften its harsh demand for a strict verification regime. Chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill proposed a face-saving compromise to the DPRK in Pyongyang on October 1-3, 2008, in a last-ditch effort to revive the crumbling disarmament-for-aid deal. Hill’s goal was to offer a compromise plan for a verification system so as to dissuade North Korea from restarting its reprocessing plant. The U.S. became flexible in the contents and format of verification. The key points of the new agreement were as follows. First, both agreed to a twostep verification package that separated a verification plan of the DPRK’s June

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

26 nuclear declaration from that of its undeclared nuclear-related activities and facilities, such as the status of its uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons programs and nuclear proliferation activities. Second, the DPRK would submit an approved verification protocol to China, chair of the six-party talks, and would agree to cooperate with the comprehensive verification of its nuclear weapons programs and other undeclared nuclear facilities and programs by IAEA inspectors. Meanwhile, the DPRK increased pressures on the Bush administration on October 9 by barring IAEA inspectors from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor complex. The U.S. officially announced on October 11, 2008 its new verification agreement with the DPRK. The most significant part of the accord was North Korea’s agreement to a verification plan that would allow inspectors access to its declared nuclear site at Yongbyon. The deal, however, put off decisions on the thorniest verification issues regarding undeclared nuclear sites and the uranium enrichment program. Under the new agreement, international inspectors would be allowed to access suspected undeclared sites “based on mutual consent.” Verification would thus require long, painful negotiations between the U.S. and the DPRK. In this deal, the DPRK made a concession by dropping its objections to international inspectors’ access to undeclared nuclear facilities and their right to take samples. North Korea also conceded to Japanese and South Korean participation in inspections. Ambiguities still remain in the new agreement. Access to undeclared sites would be possible only with “mutual consent,” and North Korea’s uranium enrichment activities and its proliferation connections with Syria would be covered in the agreement. Needless to say, this was not the best deal, but the U.S. made concessions in the last-ditch effort to revive the six-party process. The DPRK agreed in principle to give up all its nuclear materials and nuclear weapons, but the next U.S. administration would have to negotiate these issues. The new agreement was reached after weeks of intense negotiations in Pyongyang. In Washington, the State Department’s proponents of the deal, including Secretary Rice and Assistant Secretary Hill, faced stiff criticism from conservatives inside and outside the administration. Despite objections from critics in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and some members of the State Department’s verification and compliance office, Secretary Rice convinced President Bush that this was the best deal the administration could get. The U.S. decision to remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list was made after the DPRK agreed on international inspectors’ access to all declared nuclear facilities and undeclared sites (based on “mutual consent”). The U.S. decided to delist the DPRK from its terrorism list on October 11, 2008, in an effort to salvage the crumbling nuclear dismantlement-for-aid deal that seemed on the verge of collapse. The DPRK, which was first placed on the blacklist after the bombing of a South Korean jetliner in 1987, was finally removed from the list after 21 years. Secretary of State Rice signed the document officially deleting North Korea from the terrorism list, and the DPRK agreed not to reactivate its partially disabled reprocessing plant. Bush’s decision reflected a more pragmatic

Introduction

7

effort to get the six-party process to move forward despite conservatives’ criticism at home and abroad, hoping to complete the disablement stage during his term of presidency. The growing concern about the possibility of North Korea’s second nuclear weapon test reportedly played an important role in his decision. The four other members (China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea) of the sixparty talks must endorse the verification agreement reached between the U.S. and the DPRK at the next six-party talks. The DPRK Foreign Ministry said in a statement on October 12, 2008 that it would resume the disablement of its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and “allow the inspectors of the United States and the IAEA to perform their duties on the principle of ‘action for action,’” in response to the U.S. decision to remove North Korea from the terrorism list. The ROK welcomed the deal as an opportunity to speed up the six-party process, which in turn could reduce tensions in inter-Korean relations. Japan, however, expressed extreme anger at the U.S. decision. Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, a hard-liner on North Korea, expressed extreme regret at the U.S. decision since it left unresolved the abduction issue. Japan on October 10 extended for another six months its economic sanctions on North Korea. Bush’s decision to delist North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list brought about criticisms from conservatives in the United States. Some said the U.S. had succumbed to North Korean brinkmanship. Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, issued a notably skeptical statement about North Korea’s commitment to a verification protocol. In contrast, Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, called the deal a “modest step” forward in dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Some conservatives in the U.S. wanted a tough verification system and felt the Bush administration gave away too much for a verification deal. The former U.S. Representative to the UN John Bolton, calling the verification measures “pathetic,” stated that “North Korea has won about a 95 percent victory here and achieved an enormous political objective in exchange for which the United States has got nothing.”2 Two days after the U.S. delisting, the DPRK restored IAEA monitors’ access to its Yongbyon nuclear complex, reinstating IAEA monitoring of the five-megawatt reactor, the nuclear fuel fabrication facility, and a reprocessing plant, and resumed core discharge activities at the reactor. IAEA inspectors were also allowed to re-apply containment and surveillance measures at the reprocessing facility. There will be a long and bumpy road ahead to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The U.S. and the DPRK need to continue building mutual confidence through cooperation and concessions to achieve North Korea’s denuclearization. The U.S. and the DPRK need to make all efforts to fulfill their commitments to the six-party agreements. The new agreement between the U.S. and the DPRK has yet to be adopted at the next six-party talks, and its implementation certainly remains a hazardous challenge. Accurate accounting of North Korea’s plutonium 2 Sue Pleming, “U.S. takes North Korea off terrorism blacklist,” Reuters, October 11, 2008.

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

production, HEU program, and nuclear proliferation activities will be major issues to be resolved. The six-party talks will most likely collapse without faithful implementation of their international agreements. It appears that the DPRK is unlikely to abandon the six-party framework. Chairman Kim Jong Il is likely to take a pragmatic approach to the verification regime for the survival and prosperity of his regime. The delisting of North Korea as a terrorism-sponsor state would result in economic benefits, such as access to international financing and lifting of trade sanctions. Contributions to the Book Despite the gravity of the DPRK’s security threat, available information of the country is sparse and studies on its foreign policy are sorely lacking. Especially, Pyongyang’s foreign policymaking process remains a “black box.” The DPRK under the leadership of Kim Jong Il remains as unpredictable, mysterious, and impervious as ever. This volume is designed to shed new lights on the institutions, processes, the goals and motivations, and the patterns of behavior of North Korea’s foreign policy under Kim Jong Il. This collection of original studies on North Korea’s foreign relations is unique and valuable in numerous ways. First, it offers updated, timely discussion and analysis of North Korea’s foreign relations. Currently available books on the topic3 are outdated and thus do not provide meaningful guidance to understanding North Korea’s current foreign relations. Second, it provides valuable information and insights into North Korea’s foreign policy. In-depth, meaningful studies on North Korea’s foreign policy are rare. This edited volume will help fill the gap in understanding Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. Third, it is comprehensive in scope. Most books on North Korea’s foreign relations focus on specific aspects of it. In contrast, the book will examine a wide range of topics on Kim Jong Il’s foreign policy. Fourth, it discusses North Korea’s foreign relations from North Korean perspectives. The book examines North Korea’s foreign policy goals, strategies, motivations, and ideology, as well as its policies toward the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. The earlier chapters of this book discuss the determining factors and key issues in the DPRK’s foreign policy, including ideology, strategic goals, negotiation style, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, Korean peninsula peace regime3 Byung Chul Koh, North Korea and the World: Explaining Pyongyang’s Foreign Policy (Seoul: Kyungnam University Press, 2004); Samuel S. Kim, ed., North Korean Foreign Relations in the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Doug Joong Kim, ed., Foreign Relations of North Korea during Kim Il Sung’s Last Days (The Sejong Institute, 1994); Jae Kyu Park, B.C. Koh, and Tae-Hwan Kwak, eds., The Foreign Relations of North Korea (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), and Byung Chul Koh, The Foreign Policy Systems of North and South Korea (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).

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building, and Washington-Pyongyang normalization. Later, the focus switches to North Korea’ s foreign policy toward the four powers (the U.S., China, Japan, and Russia) and South Korea The book consists of 13 chapters, and in each chapter the contributing author examines North Korea’s foreign policy from the North Korean perspective. The contributing authors are established experts on North Korea or Northeast Asian regional specialists. As natives of the U.S., Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, they provide unique, diverse, and balanced viewpoints and analyses on North Korea’s foreign policy. To help the reader better understand the gist of the book, a synopsis of each chapter is offered below. Chapter 2, by C. Kenneth Quinones, “Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy,” critically examines the Juche idea in North Korea’s foreign policymaking process. Many foreign observers of North Korea’s behavior interpret its conduct through the idealistic prism of Juche. Their first assumption is that all they need to know about this ideology is the translation of the word into English, that is, “self reliance.” Secondly, they assume that North Korea’s foreign policy priorities are established by its ideology rather than other key concerns. The basic premise of this chapter, however, is that North Korea’s foreign policy is driven more by realistic concerns—national priorities—rather than idealistic ideology. Juche’s basic premises will be defined and compared to the official policy statements of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry to determine the extent to which idealism or realism determine Pyongyang’s foreign policy. Chapter 3, by Scott Snyder, “Assessing North Korea’s Strategic Intentions and Motivations,” takes a closer look at North Korea’s strategic intentions and motivations. In defiance of mounting international pressure, North Korea went ahead with its first nuclear weapons test in October 2006. Still it pledges denuclearization on the Korean peninsula as its goal. There are signs that North Korea is considering limited economic reforms and opening up to the outside world. And yet it continues the “military first” policy. What are North Korea’s strategic goals? What motivates North Korea’s foreign policy behavior? Does North Korea have the intention to dismantle its nuclear weapons in exchange for commensurate compensations? These are the questions the chapter addresses. Chapter 4, by Curtis Martin, “North Korea’s Negotiating Position During Fifteen Years of Chronic Crisis: Continuities and Discontinuities,” examines the variation in the positions taken by the DPRK—from the first “going critical” crisis of 1993-94 to negotiations over the North’s missile program in the late 1990s, to the seven years of the Bush administration’s efforts to force the DPRK to abandon its nuclear ambitions—in an effort to discern what patterns, if any, emerge, and to identify explanatory variables for any continuities or discontinuities. For nearly fifteen years, the United States and shifting combinations of Northeast Asian states have attempted through negotiation to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear state. During that time, the DPRK’s interlocutors have puzzled to decipher its true motives and negotiating position. DPRK demands have fluctuated, sometimes wildly; new demands have appeared and disappeared. This chapter hypothesizes that the DPRK’s core demands were fixed during the

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

negotiation of the Agreed Framework, and despite major changes in the regional and international environment over the ensuing years, the regime has consistently sought to resurrect the basic terms of that agreement. This strategy is reflected in the terms of the 2005 Joint Statement and the 2007 Beijing Agreement. Chapter 5, by Ilsu Kim, “Kim Jong Il and Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” examines North Korea’s foreign policy behavior, focusing on Chairman Kim Jong Il. The author discusses the personality, worldview, and psychological attributes of Kim Jong Il, and examines how his psychological factors impacted on North Korea’s policy toward the U.S. Dr. Kim argues that a re-evaluation of Kim Jong Il is essential in order to diagnose and understand North Korea. Kim Jong Il states that all the military and economic hardships come from U.S. imperialism, and runs his country as a military garrison state. To sustain his version of socialism, Kim Jong Il stresses the importance of leadership in North Korean society and demands absolute obedience from the people. He calls on the people to work and live in the spirit of the “Arduous March” in order to overcome economic hardships and implement economic strategies. Kim Jong Il has adopted the military-first policy to strengthen the country against American threats. This individual-level analysis of Kim Jong Il shows that North Korea’s behavior toward the U.S. is a function of both environmental situations and the psychological predispositions of Kim Jong Il. The chapter concludes that Kim Jong Il’s worldview and perceptions of the U.S. are the key to understanding Pyongyang’s foreign policy. Chapter 6, by Daniel A. Pinkston, “DPRK WMD Programs,” provides an overview of North Korea’s WMD capabilities, with a particular focus on chemical weapons, biological weapons, and ballistic missiles. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has been the focus of policymakers and scholars for almost two decades. Despite considerable efforts by state governments and international organizations, North Korea tested a nuclear explosive device on October 9, 2006. Nevertheless, Pyongyang claims it is committed to achieving a denuclearized Korean peninsula. If North Korea abandons its nuclear ambitions, it will still retain significant stocks of chemical and biological weapons, as well as hundreds of ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons. Chapter 7, by Tae-Hwan Kwak, “North Korea and the Korean Peninsula Peace Regime-building Initiative,” reviews North Korea’s peace regime proposals, looks into the major problems in transforming the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement into a Korean peninsula peace treaty, and makes policy suggestions for establishing a peace system on the Korean peninsula. The chapter examines the North Korean perspective on a peace regime-building on the Korean peninsula. It has been 55 years since the conclusion of the 1953 KAA, but a peace regime on the Korean peninsula replacing the KAA with a peace treaty has not been established yet. In the past, the ROK and the DPRK have attempted to build a peace regime on the Korean peninsula, but their conflicting approaches to building a peace mechanism proved to be a major obstacle to Korean peace regime-building. The DPRK has insisted on concluding a peace treaty with the U.S. to replace the KAA, while the ROK has demanded signing a peace treaty between the two Koreas. The author

Introduction

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argues that Korean peace regime-building should be approached at two different levels—the inter-Korean level and the international level (North and South Korea, the U.S., and China), and focus on inter-Korean confidence-building measures, international cooperation, and the replacement of KAA with a Korean peninsula peace treaty (to be signed by the U.S., China, and the two Koreas). Chapter 8, by Edward A. Olsen, “North Korean Policy toward the United States: Pyongyang Copes with an Evolving U.S. Context,” examines current conditions of North Korea’s evolving foreign policy toward the U.S. and prospects for both Pyongyang and Washington. North Korea’s bitter relations with the United States since the Korean War had a profound role in shaping the DPRK’s overall foreign policy. The U.S. was viewed as a hostile adversary bent on undermining everything Pyongyang perceived as a positive agenda for the entire Korean nation. The U.S. allied ties with South Korea and Japan and rivalries with the Soviet Union and the PRC during the Cold War reinforced Pyongyang’s negative policies toward Washington. Toward the end of the Cold War and in its wake, the U.S. changing relations with China and Russia might have caused Pyongyang to perceive Washington in a more benign manner, but North Korean distrust of American leaders prevented that. North Korea’s instinctive reaction to the U.S.’s evolving policies reflected what many Americans perceived as paranoia. At the root of those North Korean attitudes was a profound fear of what the U.S. could and might do to the DPRK. The Bush administration’s post-9/11 use of the “axis of evil” metaphor to include North Korea reinforced that anxiety. As the twenty-first century evolved, however, the changes in U.S. relations with South Korea, China, and Japan—and complexities between them, when coupled with the problems the U.S. experienced in its Iraq War—collectively caused a growing debate within U.S. foreign policy circles about the virtues of realism and pragmatism which increasingly signified an evolution within U.S. approaches to international affairs. Although North Korea has not responded fully to this contextual evolution, there are growing indications—based on inter-Korean relations, PRCDPRK ties, and DPRK-Japan interactions—that North Korean leaders perceive opportunities to adapt Pyongyang’s foreign policy to changing circumstances to its advantage in ways that are gradually yielding a more pragmatic and flexible approach toward Washington. The nature of that pragmatism and how it has and may well continue to adjust to Washington’s evolution is an important aspect of Pyongyang’s evolving foreign policy. Its background, current conditions, and prospects for both Pyongyang and Washington will be the focus of this chapter. Chapter 9, by Ming Lee, “North Korea’s China Policy,” explores North Korea’s policy toward China in recent decades. The North Korean regime is searching for national security, national prestige, and economic benefits within a complex international setting. In the past, China was the primary source supporting North Korea’s economy. Now, China is North Korea’s largest trading partner and investor. This shows that the relationship between the two countries has exceeded the previously political-military-centered friendship. China’s transition to a quasicapitalist economy has made North Korea feel extremely insecure, for Pyongyang

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

cannot afford to follow China’s steps to change. China’s growing partnership with South Korea since 1992, the year when Beijing and Seoul normalized their diplomatic ties, made North Korea nervous as well as unpleasant. The recent trend where China surpassed the United States as South Korea’s largest trading partner further isolated the North Korean regime. That China’s policy of condemning North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests brought Sino-North Korean relations to a nadir and intensified distrust between them is highly conceivable. That China’s diplomatic initiatives widened its circle of relations and enhanced its stature as a significant regional power, but also increased the gap between itself and North Korea. China will have to become a responsible and disciplined power if China is to co-lead the world, but North Korea may not appreciate this transformation. Chapter 10, by Seung-Ho Joo, “North Korean Policy toward Russia,” examines the dynamics of Pyongyang-Moscow relations since the 1990s, focusing on DPRK’s goals, interests, and perception toward Russia. In the 1990s, the DPRK went through two major systemic crises. The first crisis came in 1989-1991, when the Soviet empire suddenly collapsed, and the second one happened in 1994, when Kim Il Sung, the “great leader” who had ruled the country with an iron fist for five decades, unexpectedly died. These developments had far-reaching repercussions for North Korea’s foreign relations in general and its foreign relations with Russia in particular. Against this backdrop, North Korea’s foreign relations with Russia played out in the 1990s and beyond. Relations with Russia have fluctuated widely over the past two decades. Throughout the 1990s, Russo-DPRK relations remained cool and distant. In 2000, the two neighbors re-established their normal relations, and since then have forged cooperative ties in multiple spheres. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and the Russian President Putin held three summit meetings in 2000-2002. Personal trust and friendship between the two leaders undoubtedly contributed to improved bilateral relations. The author argues that North Korea views Russia as a useful partner in a broad, loose coalition against U.S. hegemony, but remains suspicious of Russia’s intent and motivations. Chapter 11, by Yoshinori Kaseda, “The DPRK’s Diplomatic Normalization with Japan,” discusses changes in the eagerness of Japan and North Korea for normalization, with a focus on recent changes, analyzing the factors that prompted the changes, including domestic, international, historical, economic, and military factors. The chapter examines the future prospects for bilateral normalization and discusses the key obstacles to it. Japan and North Korea began their official talks for diplomatic normalization in 1991. Yet it is uncertain when they can finally reach diplomatic normalization. During their first summit meeting in September 2002, Japan promised to provide a massive economic aid to North Korea after diplomatic normalization, estimated at approximately 1 trillion yen, virtually as compensation for Japan’s colonial rule over Korea. The money would be a great asset to the North Korean economy, and could serve as a major incentive for its denuclearization. Thus, Pyongyang-Tokyo normalization has multiple implications for Northeast Asian security.

Introduction

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Chapter 12, by Moo-Jin Yang, “North Korea’s Policy toward the South after the June 15 Joint Declaration” examines the background and impetus behind North Korea’s “national cooperation strategy” (Minjokgongjo) toward South Korea, as well as its logical structure and implications. This chapter discusses from Pyongyang’s perspective inter-Korean relations from Summer 2000, when the first inter-Korean summit was held, to May 2008. After June 2000, North Korea’s policy toward the South was to achieve national cooperation. Pyongyang consistently promoted the national cooperation strategy and successfully used this policy to break out of international isolation caused by its nuclear standoff. Pyongyang also employed this policy to overcome domestic economic difficulties and prevent unification though absorption by Seoul. However, the “military-first” policy limits the speed and scope of inter-Korean cooperation, and the seriousness of military issues between the United States and North Korea deepens the instability and uncertainty in and around the Korean peninsula. Exchanges between the two Koreas have virtually halted since the inauguration of the conservative Lee Myung-Bak administration in February 2008. It is not yet clear, however, whether the current hiatus signifies the limit of North Korea’s national cooperation strategy, or whether it is just a temporary phenomenon that has frequently been observed when a new president comes to power in South Korea.

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Chapter 2

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy C. Kenneth Quinones

The often heard refrains “Kim Jong Il is irrational” and “North Korea’s conduct is unpredictable” typify many political observers’ frustrations when deciphering North Korea’s responses to the outside world. Also often repeated is the claim that North Korea is “secretive” and information about it lacking. Such expressions reveal more about those who utter them than about North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK). They are admissions of ignorance rooted in the assumption that North Korea’s leaders share the same views and priorities as outside observers. Knowledge about North Korea multiplies daily. North Korea remains a relatively closed society, but since 1992 it has gradually opened up to an unprecedented extent. A trickle of foreign diplomats and humanitarian workers became a rush after the first South-North summit of 2000 with thousands of South Korean, Chinese, and other foreigners visiting and working in North Korea. Their knowledge has created an exploding library of information about North Korea. This chapter aspires to assess Juche’s role in North Korean society, its basic precepts and impact on foreign policy. An understanding of Juche will make North Korea’s dealings with the outside world predictable, rational, and comprehensible. The axiom that national interests drive foreign policy is recognized universally as the cornerstone of international understanding. The same holds true for North Korea, but regarding North Korea, its foreign policy priorities are embedded in its political culture, Juche. This gives Pyongyang’s strategic goals impressive consistency and continuity. Concerns in the United States and elsewhere with North Korea’s authoritarian government have contributed to Juche’s misinterpretation. It is often dismissed as simply meaning “self-reliance,” or functions as a control mechanism to manipulate the minds of North Korea’s people. A typical definition of Juche can be found at the popular website . Here, like numerous other sites, Juche is translated as “self-reliance or self-dependence,” which implies a focus on economic issues. The ideology’s premises are left unexplained. As for its other role as a political control mechanism, this is partially accurate, but only because it has become North Korea’s “political culture.” We will examine Juche’s relationship to Korean “Culture” and role as North Korea’s “political culture.”

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

Culture and Political Culture “Culture” with a capital “C” should be differentiated from “political culture.” An authoritative definition of “Culture” may never be settled upon,1 according to anthropologists, but their definitions fall into three general categories. Culture means: 1. “knowledge, an accumulation of information”;2 2. “learned systems of meaning, communicated by means of natural language and other symbol systems. All of this influences human behavior”;3 3. Less abstract is Richard Barrett’s definition, “Culture is agreed upon meaning that serves as recipes or guidelines for behavior in any particular society,” he explains: “individuals are bound by quite specific rules of conduct even though they do not normally feel the constraint. Indeed the predictability of behavior in any society is dependent on fairly consistent adherence to rules. Conformity as well as deviance are aspects of every society. The most obvious is that culture is just one among many guides for individual conduct.” 4 For our purposes here, we will rely on Barrett’s definition of Culture. As for “political culture,” Alan Kluver in his essay “Political Identity and the National Myth”5 asserts that all political leaders use political culture “to establish legitimacy of the government to justify its authority to rule.” He defines “legitimacy” as “the perceived convergence of legal and moral authority to rule a nation.” Kluver divides “political legitimacy” into internal and external elements, and offers the example that while North Koreans consider their government legitimate (internal), externally many nations reject this and have labeled it a “rogue nation.” Kluver explains that rulers rely on political rhetoric to assert their legitimacy, and this rhetoric forms a major aspect of a nation’s political culture. To be convincing, the leader’s rhetoric must be linked to the nation’s broader traditional “Culture”— society’s norms and values.6 A leader’s rhetoric rallies the nation’s loyalties and confirms the people’s allegiance by pointing to the nation’s destiny and a brighter future. For Kluver, a political system is the symbolic manifestation of the nation’s 1 Richard A. Shweder and Robert A. Levine, eds, Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 114. 2 Ibid., p. 115. 3 Ibid., p. 116. 4 Richard Barrett, Culture Conduct: An Excursion in Anthropology, 2nd edn (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1991), pp. 54-55. 5 Alan Kluver, “Political Identify and the National Myth,” in Alberto Gonzalez and Dolores Tanno, eds, Politics, Communication and Culture (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997), p. 49. 6 Ibid., p. 50.

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“Culture.”7 His analysis closely parallels North Korea’s experience under Kim Il Sung who drew heavily on Korea’s traditional “Culture” to formulate his rhetoric of political legitimacy and shaped it into the ideology of Juche. Kim Il Sung’s effort is not unique in the East Asian tradition. It resembles how China’s dynastic founders established their legitimacy and political culture. Kluver explains that each dynastic founder relied on Confucianism as the sole legitimate ideology and drew upon it to legitimize their rule.8 Confucianism defined China’s political culture for two thousand years, and two of its core elements served to legitimize a ruler’s authority: •

•

The Mandate of Heaven, as formulated by Confucius’ disciple Mencius, linked a ruler’s legitimacy to his demonstrated concern for his subjects’ welfare. If ignored, the ruler would face the wrath of their ancestors in the form of natural calamities which could produce rebellion against the ruler. Virtue—a ruler and his appointed officials had to perform their duties in a virtuous manner as “gentlemen” who put the common good before their own selfish preferences, and who led by example rather than brute force.

Kluver’s views are consistent with those of some East Asian scholars. Dr. Kim U-chang in his essay “The Agony of Cultural Construction: Politics and Culture in Modern Korea” points out that Confucian orthodoxy placed culture above politics.9 The Confucian ruler relied on ritual, example, and education to sway his subjects to follow him rather than coercive methods. The Confucian rulers also drew from the Confucian classics Book of Rites, Book of Songs, and Mencius’ teachings to define their political culture.10 Juche as Political Culture Kim Il Sung and his son have followed the precedent established by the traditional rulers of China and Korea by propagating Juche as their nation’s unique political culture. Their reliance on a monolithic “political culture,” while alien to democratic societies beyond East Asia, recalls the Chinese dynasties’ and Korea’s Joseon (Chosun) Dynasty’s (1492-1910) preference for Neo-Confucianism. They assigned a utilitarian political relevance to Korea’s traditional “Culture” and incorporated some of its key elements into their political culture. Kim Il Sung, like the founders 7 Ibid., p. 52. 8 Ibid., p. 57. 9 Kim U-chang, “The Agony of Cultural Construction: Politics and Culture in Modern Korea,” in Hagen Koo, ed., State and Society in Contemporary Korea (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 163-96. 10 Ibid., pp. 163-5.

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of Joseon Korea and many Chinese dynastic founders, rose to power because of military exploits, but once he held political power, he sought to establish his benevolence and authority by implementing land reform between 1946 and 1950. He also demonstrated respect for the traditional East Asian pursuits of education and scholarship, which he symbolized by including a traditional writing brush between the communist symbols of a hammer and sickle on the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) flag. More concretely, he phased in a universal education system and assigned the KWP the primary role of educating the “masses” in his Juche ideology. Kim’s son has followed his father’s example. Conventional wisdom in North Korea dates Kim Il Sung’s formulation of Juche from 1930 when he was an 18-year-old studying in southern Manchuria (the present-day Yanbian Korean Self-autonomous Region of China). Reliable scholarship suggests that Juche took concrete form around 1955. As Kim Il Sung formulated his “political culture,” he defined the “national destiny” in terms of his subjects’ foremost desire—national reunification. Given this preoccupation with reunification, we should reassess what Kim Il Sung originally meant by the word Juche. The English translations of “self-reliance” or “self-determination” seem inconsistent with Kim Il Sung’s focus on political rather than economic goals during the formative years of Juche. Kim Il Sung encountered Western political concepts as a young student in China where he learned about them by reading Chinese translations. Careful scrutiny of the Chinese characters he used to represent Juche suggests a meaning for this word very different from the one widely known outside North Korea. Juche consists of two Chinese characters: ju which basically means “rule,” and che which has the basic meaning of “essence.” In the political context of the early twentieth century, ju suggested the World War I-era Wilsonian concept of “self-rule” or “selfdetermination” for colonized people like Koreans. Combined with che (essence) we could translate Juche as “essence of self-determination.” If accurate, this more closely reflects Kim’s original preoccupation with Korea’s political independence from Japan. It also more accurately focuses the Korean term on Kim’s longtime championing of nationalism over Marxist-Leninist internationalism. As we shall see, a basic element of Juche is that Korea’s revolution must be conducted according to Korea’s unique conditions, rather than following a universalistic interpretation of reality like Marxism. Bruce Cumings pointed out in his insightful essay “The Corporate State in North Korea”11 that Kim’s use of the Chinese character che could reflect the term’s standard use in the 1930s to represent the idea of “national essence” or kokutai as then commonly used in Japan to refer to the Emperor as the “national essence” of Japan. If we wed “self-determination” to “essence,” Kim’s Juche can be translated as “the essence of self-rule” or “self-determination.” This matches more

11 Bruce Cumings, “The Corporate State in North Korea,” in Hagen Koo, ed., State and Society in Contemporary Korea (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 203.

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comfortably with Kim Il Sung’s long-time political priorities and the premises of contemporary Juche ideology. Juche’s Essence After Juche had matured as an ideology and was uniformly accepted in the KWP, Kim Il Sung named his son Kim Jong Il as his heir. To establish Kim Jong Il’s credentials, the treatise entitled On the Juche Idea was published in Kim Jong Il’s name in 1982.12 It has served ever since as the authoritative and most comprehensive explanation of Juche. The KWP is made responsible for indoctrinating the “masses” (or the people) in Juche to mobilize their innate desire to achieve independence and to express their creativeness (Jajuseong). Initiated after the Korean War, this massive effort has made Juche North Korea’s political culture, as recognized in the DPRK’s constitution, Article 3 of which reads, “The DPRK is guided in its activities by the Juche idea, a world outlook centered on people, a revolutionary ideology for achieving the independence of the masses of people.”13 Kim Jong Il’s legitimacy rests on the three-legged stool of: inheritance of his father’s authority; his father’s view of reality, Juche; and oversight of the military, Seongun Jeongchi. Kim Jong Il’s inheritance demonstrates respect for traditional Korea’s reverence for pedigree and prior preference for monarchy. Kim’s naming his father the “eternal” president observes filial piety, a highly cherished Confucian value. But Kim Jong Il could not, like his father, make any claims about military prowess. To compensate, he assumed the title of “Supreme Commander,” elevated the National Defense Council to the highest administrative organ, designated himself its chairman, and proclaimed Seongun Jeongchi in 1998. These steps appear designed to cement the military’s loyalty to him by giving it priority in politics, policy, and access to national resources. Juche stands at the center of Kim Jong Il’s political trinity, as explained in his treatise On the Juche Idea. After the mandatory rhetoric linking Juche to Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il’s treatise declares: “The Juche idea represents an invariable guiding idea of the Korean revolution … we are confronted with the honorable task of modeling the whole society on the Juche idea.”14 Kim Jong Il clarifies that Juche is a departure from, not a reinterpretation of, Marxism-Leninism. He asserts that Juche establishes “a new era in the development of human history” and directs the Korean revolution “in an independent and creative manner.”15 After dismissing 12 The version cited in this appears at , “Treatise sent to the National Seminar on the Juche Idea Held to Mark the 70th Birthday of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, March 31, 1982.” 13 DPRK, “Socialist Constitution of the DPRK” . 14 Kim Jong Il, On the Juche Idea, p. 1. 15 Ibid., p. 2.

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

the Korean “communists and nationalists” of the 1920s as elitists “divorced from the masses,” Kim Jong Il parts company with Marxism-Leninism. He is respectful in doing so, as clarified in his May 3, 1983 essay “Let Us Advance Under the Banner of Marxism-Leninism and the Juche Idea.”16 Nevertheless, he rejects some of Marxism-Leninism’s basic premises and concludes, “this is one of the starting points of the Juche idea.” Kim writes, “History develops through the struggle of the masses to transform nature and society.”17 Instead of class struggle and dialectical materialism, Kim cast the fundamental historical struggle as one between man and nature, not proletariat against bourgeoisie, or urban worker against capitalist. Nor is it Lenin’s vanguard of the proletariat that leads the masses in this struggle,18 but in Juche it is the “leader.” “The popular masses must be brought into contact with leadership,” Kim explains, adding, “The working-class party (KWP) is the general staff of the revolution and the leader.”19 Kim defines the central struggle of humanity as, “The Juche idea gives a new world outlook by answering the question of who is the master that dominates nature and society and where is the force that transforms them.” The role of the masses, Kim asserts, is the “history of human society in the struggle of the popular masses to defend and realize Jajuseong.” “‘Man’ … is a being with Jajuseong,” Kim explains, which is an innate quality that makes “man an independent social being and is the origin of his creative ability.”20 Consequently, “Man is the most powerful being in the world, and man alone is capable of transforming the world …” so that man can “bring everything in the world to serve him.”21 Man struggles to “destroy the outdated social system (capitalism) which tramples upon Jajuseong.” In other words, for Juche, the main motive of man’s political activities is his struggle to liberate his Jajuseong (literally “self-determination character”), not greed or a hunger for material gain, as Marx argued. The enemy of the masses is both the imperialists who trample on their desire for “self-determination” and the practitioners of “flunkeyism and dogmatism.” He defines “flunkeyism” as “an attitude peculiar to slaves serving and worshipping big powers and developed countries, and an attitude of nihilism which means looking down upon one’s own country and nation and despising them”22 They are condemned because they “dreamed of achieving independence by depending on foreign forces,” specifically Moscow’s Communist International of the early twentieth century. Practitioners of “flunkeyism and dogmatism” are dismissed

16 Ibid., pp. 111-42. 17 Ibid., p. 6. 18 Ibid., p. 3. 19 Kim Il Sung, and then Kim Jong Il, of the working class, who is the foremost leader of the revolution. 20 Kim, On the Juche Idea, p. 5. 21 Ibid., p. 6. 22 Ibid., p. 16.

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy

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as “bigoted nationalists and bogus Marxists.”23 “Flunkeyism” is singled out for particular criticism because the “leader” said, “if a person falls into flunkeyism, he would become a fool; if a nation is servile to big powers, the country would go to ruin, and if a party is subservient to big powers, it would make a mess of the revolution and construction.”24 Worst of all is the practice of “flunkeyism” toward “U.S. imperialism.” Kim wrote in 1982: This servility, which is expressed in the fear and worship of the United States, is doing great harm to the revolutionary struggle ... The harmfulness of this servility is most notable in south Korea today [1982]. Servility to U.S. imperialism, … spread by the U.S. imperialist aggressors and their stooges, is the most harmful ideological poison which is paralyzing people’s national and class consciousness in south Korea and trampling upon the precious cultural heritage and beautiful customs of our nation. Unless the struggle is intensified to oppose the fear and worship of the United States among the south Korean people and to heighten their spirit of national independence, neither the victory of the south Korean revolution nor the independent reunification of the country would be possible.25

The main imperialists are the United States and Japan, according to Juche. Success in the struggle against them requires several accomplishments beginning with arousing the masses’ ideological consciousness.26 This the “Leader” does through the KWP by propagating Juche, “Only when the whole Party and the whole society are imbued with the monolithic ideological system, will we be in a position to say that Juche in ideology has been firmly established.” The propagation of Juche also “requires that national culture should be developed”27 because “only when one knows the things of one’s country well will one be able to solve all problems arising in the revolution and … carry out the revolution and construction in conformity with the aspirations and requirements of one’s people.”28 Kim concludes: “Koreans must know well Korean history, geography, economics, culture and the custom of the Korean nation, and in particular our Party’s policy, its revolutionary history and revolutionary traditions. Only then will they be able to establish Juche and become true Korean patriots, the Korean communists.”29 Success against the imperialists also requires that “The people of each country must not tolerate any foreign pressure or interference.” Cooperation with other 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid.

North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

22

nations pursuing socialism is acceptable, as Kim explains: “One might receive aid from others in the revolution and construction, but in any case the main thing is one’s own initiative.”30 This is acceptable because, “The world revolution, too, will only be successful when the revolution in every country is successful and when, on this basis, mutual support and cooperation is given.”31 Nevertheless, the masses must “prevent imperialist cultural penetration and, reject the tendency to return to the past and nihilist inclination with regard to the heritage of national culture, inherit and develop its fine traditions, and crucially adopt progressive elements of foreign culture, which are congenial to our people’s sentiments.”32 The Principles of Juche—Guidelines for Policy Kim Jong Il devotes considerable attention to defining “The Principles of Juche” which have become guidelines for North Korea’s domestic and foreign policy makers.33 Kim Jong Il characterized these principles as “explicit fundamental principles which must be observed in successfully carrying out the revolution …” which echoes the nation’s constitution. The principles are as follows. The Independent Stand Must be Maintained To maintain the nation’s independence, “The leader laid down the principles of Juche in ideology, independence in politics, self-sufficiency in the economy and self-reliance in defense as the principles of realizing Chajusong.” Juche in Ideology The “whole Party” (KWP) and the “whole society” are to be imbued with the “monolithic ideological system.” This requires putting above all else an awareness and respect for Korea’s unique qualities and peculiar conditions. Flunkeyism is to be avoided, particularly “servility to U.S. ‘imperialism.’”34 Independence in Politics The goal is “upholding national independence and sovereignty of one’s people, defending their interests and conducting politics by relying on them.”35 Any “yielding to foreign pressure and tolerating foreign intervention in politics or acting 30 31 32 33 34 35

Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., pp. 14-22. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 17.

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy

23

at the instigation of others” must be avoided, and “it is imperative to exercise complete sovereignty and equality in foreign relations.” “Sovereignty” is termed an “inviolable right,” and foreign policy requires “strengthening the solidarity of the socialist countries and the international communist movement on the basis of opposing imperialism …”36 Self-sufficiency in the Economy Kim Jong Il clarifies his definition of the often misused term “self-reliance” as “The revolutionary spirit and a principle of struggle of the communists in carrying out the revolution by their own initiative. One must believe in one’s own strength and depend on it in economic construction …”37 His definition of “selfsufficiency” emphasizes the intent of government policy, not the avoidance of obtaining material goods from other nations. He clarifies this further: Building an independent national economy means building an economy which is free from dependence on others and which stands on its own feet, an economy which serves one’s own people and develops on the strength of the resources of one’s own country and by the efforts of one’s own people.38

Kim adds later: Building an independent national economy on the principle of self-reliance does not mean building an economy in isolation. An independent economy is opposed to foreign economic domination and subjugation, but it does not rule out international economic cooperation. Close economic and technical cooperation between socialist countries and newly emerging nations, in particular, plays an important part in ensuring economic self-sufficiency in these countries and in increasing their economic power.39

Kim Jong Il’s primary concern is preserving “independence in politics” and pursuing economic policies that promote national independence and sustain sovereignty. He expresses little interest in forging an economy that relies solely on its own domestic resources and that is divorced from international trade. Self-reliance in Defense Kim Jong Il calls this “a fundamental principle of an independent state,” and defines it as “defending one’s country by one’s own efforts.” Receiving “aid in 36 37 38 39

Ibid., pp. 17-18. Ibid., emphasis added. Ibid., pp. 18. Ibid., p. 19.

North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il

24

national defense from fraternal countries and friends” is condoned, but the “main thing is one’s own strength.” He declares that “Imperialism is a constant cause of war, and the main force of aggression and war today is U.S. imperialism.”40 Naturally, the army’s primary responsibility is to defend the nation’s sovereignty, but it is also assigned a role similar to that of the KWP “Only when the whole army is a cadre army will it become strong … And a modernized army which blends its politico-ideological superiority with modern technology will become a really unconquerable revolutionary army.”41 Later we will see how in 1998 Kim Jong Il makes this the basis of Seongun or military-first politics. Suffice it to say here that he linked rather than distinguished between the “party” and the “army” by assigning them shared responsibility to promote Juche. Also, long before he succeeded his father, Kim Jong Il emphasized reliance on “modern technology” to complement the Korean People’s Army’s “politico-ideological superiority.” He seems to have turned this rhetoric into concrete policy soon after his treatise on Juche appeared in 1982, as indicated by the many quotations of this treatise visible throughout the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center built between 1982 and 1985. Kim Jong Il concludes his treatise by devoting the final third to the “masses,” who are termed the “decisive force that propels the revolution and construction.”42 Their strength comes from “unity” achieved through mass movements and the propagation of Juche. “Political work” is assigned society’s first priority because to “remold” the masses raises their revolutionary consciousness and involvement in the revolution. This requires “a struggle to eliminate the remnants of the old society” to replace them with “the progressive idea of the working class.” Not surprisingly, the goal is to nurture “loyalty to the party and the leader” so that society will develop a single-minded solidarity which is the source of strength needed to counter imperialism and the corrupting influence of capitalism while sustaining national sovereignty and achieving socialism. All of this echoes Confucianism rather than Marxism-Leninism. Confucius and his disciples recognized man’s innate ability to improve himself and his environment through education. Kim Il Sung’s Jajuseong suggest a similar confidence in man who is assigned the role as prime mover of change in society and the natural world. There is no reference to Marx’s progression from one historical stage to another. Confucianism’s emphasis on ritual and education has become Juche’s political work and indoctrination, but both share the goal of promoting the common good. Confucius’ social harmony is equivalent to Juche’s emphasis on political unity and conformity. Like the Confucian monarch who was to forge harmony within society, Juche’s leader is to forge political unity and conformity by ruling through example and education rather than coercive methods, so that Korea’s national reunification and socialist revolution can be realized. Confucianism and Juche put 40 41 42

Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 22.

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy

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similar emphasis on the core Confucian values of loyalty and subservience to one’s ordained superiors—subject to ruler, wife to husband, son to father, and younger brother to older brother. Juche emphasizes a similar political and social hierarchy that put loyalty to the nation, the leader, and his ideology before all else. For the Confucian scholar-gentry officials, both Chinese and Korean, inability or reluctance to remain loyal to one’s superior required their withdrawal from society or committing suicide by drinking poison. Tokugawa Japan’s interpretation of Confucianism, Bushido, called for ritual suicide, sempuku. Contemporary North Korea similarly has no middle ground for an individual who puts self before the leader, and service to the common good second to personal preference. Depending on circumstances, such persons face re-education, imprisonment, or execution. Like Tokugawa’s warrior society, there is no place for individualism in North Korea’s socialist society. Juche’s pervasive propagation since the 1980s makes it the cornerstone of education in North Korea, and Kim Jong Il’s 1982 treatise on Juche has become the nation’s official orthodoxy, that is, political culture. But it has not replaced North Koreans’ awareness and pride in their traditional Korean “Culture.” Kim Il Sung, his son, and their followers have intentionally preserved much of this cultural legacy. Unlike China, there was no rejection of the past, or “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” This preservation of Korea’s ancient Buddhist temples and other examples of traditional religion, art and architecture is consistent with Juche’s premise that Koreans must know and respect their cultural legacy. Another political motive for this is so that “Culture” can eventually serve as a bridge to reunify Korea’s two halves despite their increasingly divergent political cultures. Juche’s Impact on North Korea’s Foreign Policy The continuity and consistency of North Korea’s foreign policy is rooted in North Korea’s political culture, Juche, and gives it considerable continuity, consistency, rationality and predictability. The outside observer familiar with Juche should be able to comprehend and anticipate the nation’s likely reactions to a wide range of critical issues. North Korea’s current strategic priorities can be traced back half a century to the nation’s establishment. Now as then, Kim Jong Il’s priorities remain: national reunification, countering imperialism, and building a self-reliant socialist economy, all goals echoed in Kim’s “Guiding Principles of the Juche Idea.” This continuity is also apparent in what Kim Il Sung said about foreign policy half a century ago: Ever since the first days of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, we have consistently affirmed that we will promote friendly relations with all countries that oppose imperialist aggression, respect the freedom and independence of our people and desire to establish state relations with our

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il country on an equal footing, and in the future, we will continue to hold fast to this principle in the field of foreign policy.43

This passage appears in Dr. Kim Han Gil’s (of Kim Il Sung University) officially approved book, Modern History of Korea (1979). Dr. Kim echoes his Juche mentor when explaining that North Korea’s foreign policy is rooted in implementing the principle of Jajuseong and “firmly adhering to anti-imperialism.” Again Dr. Kim cites Kim Il Sung: The main task of the Korean revolution, therefore, is to overthrow the Japanese imperialists and win independence for Korea and … to liquidate feudal relations and introduce democracy. … In view of the main task of the Korean revolution, its character at the present stage is anti-imperialism, anti-feudal democracy.44

Even before North Korea’s establishment, Kim Il Sung’s foremost priority was and remains for his son to win and defend national sovereignty. Dr. Kim’s book was published in 1979 prior to Kim Jong Il’s 1982 treatise on Juche, but its content is consistent with both Kim Il Sung’s earlier writings and his son’s later treatise. Jumping to 2006, North Korea’s official media summarized North Korea’s national interests in a commentary entitled “Independent Policy” as being to: 1. preserve national sovereignty by rejecting “flunkeyism” while pursuing national reunification; 2. defend against imperialism, particularly that of the United States and Japan, by developing a “self-reliant defense;” 3. build a socialist nation with a “self-sufficient economy.”45 These priorities match Kim Jong Il’s “Principles of Juche” in his 1982 treatise, and have been North Korea’s foreign policy priorities since the nation’s founding. Today they serve as guide for North Korean diplomats in their negotiations with foreign governments. Any who diverge from them risk a quick end to their career, or even worse. National Unification Today this remains North Korea’s foremost foreign policy priority, as Kim Jong Il stated in his 1997 essay “Let Us Carry Out the Great Leader Comrade Kim 43 Kim Il Sung, Selected Works, English ed., vol. 4, p. 604, as quoted in Kim Han Gil, Modern History of Korea (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1979), p. 539. 44 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 7, as quoted in Kim Han Gil, op cit., p. 34. 45 The People’s Korea, “Independent Policy,” November 6, 2006, .

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy

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Il Sung’s Instructions for National Unification.”46 He wrote that since Korea’s division, “the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung regarded national reunification as the supreme task of our nation,”47 and Kim Jong Il has enshrined this in the Juche political culture. Kim Jong Il echoed his 1982 treatise On Juche when he explained in his 1997 essay on reunification: reunification … is a question of putting an end to the foreign domination and intervention of south Korea, establishing national sovereignty throughout the country, linking again the blood ties of the divided nation, and realizing unity as one nation.48

The primary impediments to national reunification are, according to the younger Kim, the U.S. imperialists’ occupation of South Korea49 and flunkeyism.50 He singled out the South-North “July 4 Joint Statement” of 1972, the first issued by the two Koreas which subsequently became the cornerstone of North-South Korean dialogue. The first series of North-South dialogue that produced this statement began as a reaction by both Koreas to the U.S.’s surprise diplomatic engagement of the People’s Republic of China after more than two decades of mutual hostility. Against this backdrop, the leaders of North and South Korea initiated a secret dialogue in the spring of 1972 that eventually yielded the first joint communiqué which was intentionally issued on July 4, the date the United States commemorates its 1776 declaration of independence from British rule. The Korean Joint Communiqué pays respect to Juche’s rejection of flunkeyism and champions Korea’s sovereignty, as evident in the text’s main points: The two sides reached an agreement on the following principles of the nation’s reunification: 1. Reunification should be achieved independently, without reliance upon outside force or its interference (Juche’s first guiding principle, according to Kim Jong Il). 2. Reunification should be achieved by peaceful means, without recourse to the use of arms against the other side. 3. Great national unity should be promoted first of all as one nation, transcending the differences of ideology, ideals, and system. All subsequent important joint Korean statements refer to the 1972 statement. The December 13, 1991 North-South Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Cooperation and Exchange recalls the 1972 statement’s first stipulation. It 46 Kim Jong Il, “Let Us Carry Out the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung’s Instructions for National Unification,” August 4, 1997, . 47 Ibid., p. 1. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., p. 2. 50 Ibid., p. 5.

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is reaffirmed in the first item of the June 15, 2000 North-South Joint Declaration issued after the first summit between Korea’s leaders, South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung and North Korea’s Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il. It was again reaffirmed in October 2007 after the second Korean summit between South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il. On April 18, 1998, Kim Jong Il issued his essay “Let Us Reunify the Country Independently and Peacefully Through the Great Unity of the Entire Nation.”51 Here he set forth five principles to achieve this goal: maintaining the principle of national independence, uniting under the banner of patriotism, the banner of national reunification, improving the relations between the north and south [Korea], fighting against the domination and interference of the foreign forces and the anti-reunification forces, and promoting visits, contacts, dialogues and solidarity among the Korean compatriots.

Again, all of this is consistent with Kim Jong Il’s 1982 treatise. While Juche sets forth the nation’s strategic priorities in a consistent and rigid manner, it allows some tactical flexibility depending on changing circumstances. This becomes apparent when we examine North Korea’s shifting attitudes toward South Korea’s leaders. Pyongyang restrained its rhetoric toward South Korea’s two previous leaders, Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyun, because of their perceived willingness to risk the U.S.’s displeasure by adopting policies toward North Korea of which the United States disapproved. Thus Pyongyang credited these two South Korean presidents with having avoided the pitfall of “flunkeyism” by putting improving relations with North Korea before maintaining smooth ties with the United States. But since Lee Myung-Bak’s inauguration as South Korea’s president in February 2008, Pyongyang has reverted to bombarding South Korea’s leader with vitriolic rhetoric. Viewed in the context of Juche, this is a consequence of President Lee’s perceived “flunkeyism” toward the United States and Japan, Juche’s foremost “imperialists.” Pyongyang’s verbal assaults on President Lee have intensified since he declared that “it is impossible to head for reunification and hard to improve south-north relations unless North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is dismantled.” Lee’s Minister of Unification in his inaugural speech stated that he would “adjust the speed, scope and ways for the development of inter-Korean depending on the progress made in the efforts to settle the north’s nuclear issue.” President Lee confirmed his stance in April 2008, when he met United States President Bush in Washington and then visited Tokyo to meet Japan’s Prime Minister Fukuda. North Korea’s political commentators writing in the official KWP newspaper Nodong Sinmun unleashed Pyongyang’s wrath at South Korea’s new president. He was declared a “flunkeyist” for allowing “outside influence” to infect north-south 51

.

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy

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relations. An April 1, 2008 Nodong Sinmun commentator52 exploded with vitriol when he labeled Lee’s administration a “regime” and called Lee a “charlatan” and “traitor.” Lee was also accused of “sycophancy towards the U.S.” because of his support of the U.S.’s insistence that North Korea dismantle its nuclear arsenal and his alleged “frantic” effort to re-establish triangular military cooperation between Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo. Lee’s Grand National Party (GNP) was accused of acting like a “fascist dictatorial regime,” a reference to the early 1970s South Korean President Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian rule. The Lee administration is also accused of negating the joint North-South statements of June 15, 2000 and October 4, 2007. Similar rhetoric and accusations appeared on April 7, 14 and 16, 2008. These verbal assaults are undoubtedly a consequence of the South Korean president’s perceived flunkeyism toward Washington and Tokyo. Anyone familiar with Juche could have anticipated these attacks, and should expect their continuation. Preserving Self-determination by Resisting Imperialism Kim Jong Il’s first principle of Juche states: “The independent stand must be maintained.” This requires not only avoiding flunkeyism, particularly “towards U.S. imperialism,” but also countering imperialism. Kim defines imperialism in very specific terms: That flunkeyism and the idea of dependence on foreign forces lead to the ruin of the nation is the serious and bitter lesson our nation learned through a long history of national suffering. Our country was occupied by the Japanese imperialists, the early communist movement failed, and the nationalist movement suffered frustration because, in the final analysis, our flunkeyism which meant disbelieving its own strength and grovel before big powers. Even after liberation of the country, the successive rulers of south Korea committed anti-reunification treachery to the country and the nation, with the backing of the United States, following its aggressive policy.53

In his summary of early twentieth-century Korean history, Kim Jong Il refers to dependence on “foreign forces,” a reference to traditional Korea’s reliance on imperial China (called Saedae in Korean) to manage its foreign relations and national defense. Kim again equates imperialism with Japan’s colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945, and concludes by referring to the United States’ “aggressive policy.” Juche and Kim Jong Il’s concerns with “imperialism” are less with it as a universal phenomenon and more with the “aggressive” role Japan and 52 Nodong Sinmun, “Lee Myung Bak Regime’s Sycophancy toward U.S. and AntiDPRK Confrontation Hysteria Blasted,” April 1, 2008, . 53 Kim Jong Il, “Let Us Unify the Country Independently and Peacefully Through the Great Unity of the Entire Nation,” April 18, 1998, . p. 5.

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the United States have played on the Korean peninsula since the late nineteenth century. This animosity toward the United States persisted after U.S.-DPRK relations began to improve with the October 1994 signing of their first diplomatic accord, the Agreed Framework. Nevertheless, Kim in his 1997 essay still points to the United States as the main villain threatening Korea’s reunification and peace on the Korean peninsula: The question of easing the tension and removing the danger of war in our country can be settled, before all else, when the United States gives up its hostile policy against our republic and a peace treaty is concluded between the DPRK and the U.S. Our Republic and the United States are still in the state of temporary armistice and the danger of war has not been dispelled from our country. … to remove the danger of war … a peace treaty must be concluded between the DPRK and the United States and a new peace-keeping mechanism must be established. In addition, it is imperative to reaffirm the nonaggression agreement between the north and the south … 54

By 1998, Pyongyang was keenly frustrated by the United States’ perceived reluctance to implement the Agreed Framework. North Korea’s official Korea Central News Agency reported on October 23, 1999 that “Over the past five years the U.S. has consistently put the brake on the implementation of the agreed framework ….”55 An exchange of high-level visits in 2000 eased but did not erase the bilateral tensions because Pyongyang remained convinced that Washington was clinging to its “hostile policy.” Tense relations intensified when a new U.S. president took office in 2001. Shortly afterward, the second Korean peninsula nuclear crisis erupted in late 2002, setting the stage for increasingly tense U.S.-DPRK relations and the start of the six-party talks in August 2003. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesman in an August 13, 2003 statement labeled the U.S. demand that North Korea give up its nuclear ambitions “an unreasonable unilateral assertion.” He then echoed Kim Jong Il’s 1997 essay: It will be considered that the U.S. has practically given up its hostile policy toward the DPRK when a non-aggression treaty with legal binding is concluded and diplomatic relations are established between the DPRK and the U.S. and it is made clear that the U.S. does not obstruct economic cooperation between the DPRK and other countries (i.e. ends its economic sanctions).56 54 Ibid., p. 6., emphasis added. 55 “U.S. Expresses Political Will to Delist DPRK as ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism,’” October 23, 1999 . 56 DPRK Foreign Ministry, “Fundamental Switchover in U.S. Hostile Policy Toward DPRK is Indispensable for Solution to Korea’s Nuke Issue,” August 14, 2003,

Juche’s Role in North Korea’s Foreign Policy

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This statement summarizes Kim Jong Il’s key points in his 1997 statement and has remained ever since the DPRK’s stance at the six-party talks. Since 2003, virtually every DPRK Foreign Ministry statement regarding relations with the United States has called for a “switch-over” from the U.S. perceived “hostile policy” toward North Korea, the end of economic sanctions, and the normalization of bilateral relations. For example, on March 2, 2005 the spokesman said, “The key to the settlement of the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the U.S. is for the U.S. to replace its hostile policy with a policy of peaceful co-existence ….” Later he added: “The U.S. denies a hostile policy toward north Korea, repeating empty talks that it has never been hostile to north Korea and has no intention to attack it.” Finally, the spokesman concludes: The Bush administration has so far pursued hostile policy toward the DPRK undisguisedly [sic] in a bid to topple its system, destroyed the groundwork for the six-party talks and removed all conditions and justification for negotiations, throwing a hurdle in the settlement of the nuclear issue.57

The theme of “U.S. hostile policy” persists. The annual 2008 New Year’s Joint editorial published by the newspapers of the KWP, KPA, and the Youth League refer to the U.S.’s alleged hostile policy: An end should be put to the U.S. policy hostile towards the DPRK and the Armistice Agreement be replaced with a peace pact. The aggressive joint military exercises and arms buildup should be discontinued and the U.S. military bases be abolished in South Korea.58

On March 3, 2008, the DPRK Foreign Ministry spokesman continued this theme by pointing to the joint U.S.-South Korea annual military exercises Key Resolve and Foal Eagle as a “clear indication that the U.S. is invariably sticking to its hostile policy to stifle the DPRK by force.”59 A few days later, KCNA asserted that Radio Free Asia broadcasts aimed at the DPRK were additional evidence of Washington’s continuing hostile policy: “The U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK is being stepped up in all fields as evidenced by its military blackmail and

. 57 DPRK Foreign Ministry, “FM Memorandum: U.S. to Pay Dearly for Failure to Resolve DPRK-U.S. Nuclear Stand-off,” March 2, 2005, . 58 DPRK, “Joint New Year Editorial of Leading Newspapers in DPRK,” January 1, 2008, . 59 DPRK Foreign Ministry, “Spokesman of Foreign Ministry Lambastes Joint Military Exercises,” March 3, 2008, .

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psychological warfare and the U.S. administration’s approach toward the DPRK in all aspects is aimed at destroying its political system.”60 The KWP official newspaper Nodong Sinmun commented in a signed article on March 20: The U.S. imperialist aggressor forces’ presence in south Korea is a typical expression of the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and a main obstacle in the way of ensuring peace. … The U.S. imperialist aggressor forces are field executors of the U.S. anti-DPRK policy. The situation always remains unstable on the Korean Peninsula and the building of a solid peace-keeping mechanism, … has been delayed because the U.S. has frantically driven the U.S. forces present in south Korea into the escalating the moves to start a war of aggression against the DPRK, desperately pursuing its hostile policy toward the DPRK … The U.S. would be well advised to roll back its hostile policy for aggression and war against the DPRK and respond to the proposal for building the above-said mechanism on the peninsula.61

Japan now ranks second as an “imperialist” enemy after being number one during the first half of the twentieth century. Japan’s role as a threatening imperialist resumed when “Japan took active part in the Korean War …” of 1950-53 by aligning itself with the United States and “obstructed the prosperity, development and reunification of Korea in every way.”62 Normalization of Japan-DPRK relations seemed possible in 1990, and again in 2002. Optimism rose when a multi-party delegation of leading Japanese politicians representing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) visited Pyongyang in September 1990. After discussions with Kim Il Sung and the KWP Secretary General for International Affairs Kim Yong Sun, the three political parties issued a “Joint Declaration” that urged the Japanese government to “fully and officially” apologize to and “compensate” North Korea for the “enormous misfortunes and miseries imposed on the Korean people” by imperial Japan during 36 years of colonization. The two sides urged that bilateral relations be normalized through “inter-governmental negotiations” and bilateral economic and cultural exchanges be initiated. The statement also urged that “Koreans in Japan must not be discriminated against,” a reference to the approximately 600,000 ethnic Koreans who reside in Japan. Finally, the political

60 DPRK, “KCNA Urges U.S. to Stop Anti-DPRK Psychological Campaign,” March 17, 2008, . 61 Nodong Sinmun, “U.S. Hostile Policy toward DPRK Slammed,” March 20, 2008, . 62 DPRK Foreign Ministry Spokesman, “DPRK to Settle Accounts with Japan,” January 1, 2005, .

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leaders recognized that “Korea is one and that the peaceful reunification through north-south dialogue accords with the national interests of the Korean people.”63 Subsequent negotiations stalled because of North Korea’s refusal to admit to Japan’s allegations that North Korean agents had clandestinely abducted Japanese citizens and forcefully taken them to North Korea to serve as language instructors for North Koreans being trained as spies and terrorists. The impasse persisted until 2002, when the Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro convened the first ever Japan-DPRK summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang on September 17. Amazingly, Kim admitted that “overenthusiastic special forces carried out” the abductions, and “expressed a sincere apology,” according to the official North Korean report about the summit. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed Pyongyang’s new line by stating: “It is regrettable that these issues surfaced in the past as a product of the abnormal relationship between the DPRK and Japan.”64 Kim Jong Il’s admission and apology opened the way for issuance of the “DPRKJapan Pyongyang Declaration” of September 17, 2002. Signed by both leaders, the statement called for the establishment of diplomatic ties “at an early date,” with bilateral negotiations scheduled to commence in October, 2002. The “Japanese side honestly admitted … that it had inflicted huge damage and sufferings upon the Korean people during its past colonial rule over Korea and … sincerely apologized for them.” North Korea promised not to repeat its abduction of Japanese citizens or again abuse their “life and security.” Both sides pledged to pursue a “comprehensive solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula,” and Pyongyang expressed “its will to extend its moratorium on missile tests beyond 2003 in the spirit of the declaration.” But once again expectations of prompt diplomatic normalization proved premature. The new impasse arose because of the abduction issue. The Japanese public demanded that North Korea do more than confess, apologize, and promise no more abduction. They insisted that their government press North Korea to allow all the abducted Japanese to return to Japan, prove that all the victims had been released, give a full accounting of who was responsible for the abductions, and an explanation of why many had died at a relatively young age during their captivity. Pyongyang’s adamant claim that the abduction issue has been resolved persists as the primary impediment to the normalization of relations. Nodong Sinmun on April 18, 2008, in a signed commentary, reiterated North Korea’s claim, stating: “The ‘abduction issue’ much touted by the Japanese reactionaries had already found a solution.” Japan’s recent extension of economic sanctions on North Korea for another six months, first imposed after North Korea 63 “Joint Declaration Issued by the Workers’ People Party (WPK), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Japan Socialist Party (JSP), September 28, 1990,” October 10, 1997, . 64 “DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration,” September 28, 2002, , p. 1.

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exploded a nuclear device in October 2006, is labeled a “deliberate political provocation” designed to “torpedo the six-party talks.” Japan is accused of treating Koreans in Japan “as hostages with the dyed-in-the-wool pro-Japanese Lee Myung Bak group …”65 The many twists and turns of North Korea’s attitude and policies toward South Korea, the United States, and Japan point to two consistent phenomena in North Korea’s foreign policy: consistency of strategic goals and flexibility of tactics. Pyongyang’s goals remain ending South Korea’s perceived “flunkeyism” toward Washington and Tokyo, replacing the United States’ perceived “hostile policy” with normal diplomatic relations, and getting Japan to do likewise. Its tactics, however, have shifted between nasty rhetoric and patient negotiations. The Grand Conspiracy Viewed through the prism of Juche, the U.S.’s “hostile policy” is more than an expression of paranoia and frustration. The policy is an “imperialist” plan coordinated in Washington and supported by Japan and the “flunkeyism” of South Korea’s present president to “strangle” North Korea and end its sovereignty. According to the first guiding principle of Juche, the leader, party, and nation must struggle to prevent this. In Pyongyang’s view, the “imperialists’” primary tool for “strangling” North Korea is trilateral cooperation between the three allies, their military forces, maintenance of extensive economic sanctions on North Korea, and demands that it unilaterally dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Since 1992, North Korea has consistently demanded that the United States and Japan take the following steps to end this “hostile policy”: •

• • •

Stop imposing economic sanctions, including removal of North Korea from the U.S. List of Nations that Support International Terrorism, something Japan adamantly opposes pending resolution of the abduction issue and which several members of the U.S. Congress firmly support. The sanctions imposed in 1950 under the Trading with the Enemy Act are also to be ended to allow Americans to invest in and trade with North Korea. Additionally Japan since the fall of 2006 has imposed its own unilateral economic sanctions on North Korea pending resolution of the abduction issue and dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. A bilateral peace treaty between the United States and North Korea is to be signed, the United Nations Command (UNC) dismantled, and the Korean War Armistice replaced by a “new peacekeeping mechanism.” All U.S. military forces are to be withdrawn from the Korean peninsula; South Korea is to halt its “flunkeyism” toward Washington and Tokyo, and adopt an “independent” stance that will enable it to deal with North Korea

65 Nodong Sinmun, “Rodong sinmun Assails Japan’s Extension of Sanctions Against DPRK,” April 18, 2008, .

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without interference from “outside powers” such as the United States and Japan. Thus far, since 2002, the United States and Japan have refused to consider taking such steps except for the first—the phasing out of economic sanctions, but influential elements of the U.S. government and Japan oppose this. Instead, they have offered North Korea diplomatic and economic inducements such as the normalization of relations, heavy fuel oil, food aid, and other economic assistance to convince it to end its nuclear programs. But this is insufficient because Juche dictates that the above requirements, not just diplomatic and economic incentives, must be accomplished prior to North Korea agreeing to dismantle its “nuclear deterrent capability.” Seongun—the Military First Given Pyongyang’s concerns about the “imperialists’” “hostile policy,” Kim Jong Il has elevated Juche’s fourth guiding principle, “self-reliance in defense,” to his top priority under the heading “Seongun Jeongchi,” or “military-first” politics. North Korea’s official media tied Seongun to Kim Jong Il’s 1982 treatise On the Juche Idea, and defined the term accordingly: Kim Jong Il took the Son’gun [Seongun] idea based on the Juche idea as the invariable guideline of the Korean revolution and applied it in all the fields of the revolution … He laid down the Son’gun revolutionary theories such as the principle of putting the army ahead of the working class ….”66

The Korean People’s Army (KPA) has been assigned the role of “demonstrating its might as the army of the Party and the leader and a model in protecting him both in name and reality.” Thus Kim Jong Il took the title of the “supreme commander” to guide the KPA in “waging an uncompromising struggle against U.S. and Japanese imperialism ….”67 Official commentators further clarified Kim Jong Il’s “Seongun idea”: The Korean people, under the leadership of President Kim Il Sung, waged the bloody anti-Japanese revolutionary war with arms in hand and liberated the country. Therefore, without a strong military power, the revolution cannot be successfully advanced even after the establishment of a socialist system. Especially the United States, which emerged as the only superpower of the world, 66 “Juche Idea, Almighty Precious Sword for Socialist Cause,” The Pyongyang Times, March 31, 2007, . 67 “Politico-Ideological Might of KPA,” The Pyongyang Times, October 31, 2006, .

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… is … ceaselessly committing military aggression and terrorism everywhere, infringing upon the sovereignty of independent states. If one has not one’s own military force powerful enough to beat off … reactionary forces including the U.S., he has only himself to thank for his falling prey to the strong. … As long as the imperialists suppress the masses’ cause of independence with bayonets, the significance of arms becomes great in the progress of the socialist construction … This is why the idea of realizing independence elucidated by the Juche idea becomes the very principle of arms philosophy.68

None of this auguers well for either the normalization of U.S.-North Korea and Japan-North Korea relations in the near future, or a quick resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula. Kim Jong Il’s emphasis on Seongun elevates the KPA to a dominate position in the DPRK government. The KPA is authorized to develop a “self-reliant” defense capability that includes the use of “modern technology,” that is, nuclear weapons, to defend the nation’s sovereignty. This suggests that it will be extremely difficult for even Kim Jong Il to convince his generals to dismantle their “nuclear deterrent” capability until the “imperialists” have definitively ended their “hostile policy.” So long as the KPA perceives that the “hostile policy” persists, it will most likely continue to see diplomatic and economic inducements as insufficient to warrent discarding North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. Conclusion Juche obviously plays a pervasive role in defining North Korea’s political culture. It defines the nation’s primary interests as achieving national unification, preserving national sovereignty, and building a socialist economy and society. The leader’s authority is established beyond challenge, and he assigns roles to his party and the army. While the party is the leader’s “general staff” for the propagation of his ideology, the army defends the leader, his ideology, and the nation’s sovereignty. Together they are to struggle for the nation’s foremost goal—national unification. But this will be possible only if South Korea rejects its “flunkeyism” toward the United States and Japan, and the imperialists are convinced to end their “hostile policy.” The ideology defines the nation’s friends and foe. Relations with socialist nations like the People’s Republic of China and allies like Russia are cherished while relations with non-aligned nations such as India and Indonesia are to be nurtured. Imperialism is deemed the main threat to man’s Jajuseong, or desire for self-determination, and to a nation’s sovereignty. The foremost “imperialists” are the United States and Japan, because their hostile policies aim to “strangle” North 68 “Arms Philosophy is Fundamental Principle of Son’gun Idea,” The Pyongyang Times, June 1, 2007, .

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Korea. Juche’s principle of a “self-reliant defense” requires that the nation maintain a policy of “Seongun” or “military first” which enables the KPA to develop itself into a “self reliant,” “invincible and modern” military force capable of deterring “imperialist aggression.” Juche lists some of the primary parameters of North Korea’s foreign policy, past, present, and future. It makes for consistency of strategic goals, but allows tactical flexibility. It breaks with the dogmatism of Marxism and Leninism to allow a more pragmatic approach to resolving Korea’s unique problems. Koreans are urged to prioritize their problems and formulate solutions based primarily on conditions within their own culture, nation, and society. This has permitted a surprising degree of pragmatism in both foreign and domestic policy. But Juche’s propagation as the sole legitimate orthodoxy since at least 1982, if not earlier, has eroded this tendency away from dogmatism toward pragmatism. Consequently, Pyongyang’s policy makers must avoid any appearance of being at odds with their leader. Otherwise they could be accused of disloyalty or putting selfish aims before the common good. The politically correct and safest thing to do, therefore, is to advocate policies that promote Juche’s strategic goals while cautiously proposing variations of the tactics for achieving these goals. A further limit on the formulation of flexible foreign policy is the military’s supremacy under Kim Jong Il. Diplomats striving to negotiate any agreements with a foreign nation, particularly the “imperialist” United States or Japan, must proceed with great caution. They cannot concede anything that might be perceived by Pyongyang’s leadership as undercutting the nation’s sovereignty. This issue remains particularly sensitive regarding the nuclear issue. Today, as in 1994, North Korea’s membership in the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is viewed as a severe restraint on the nation’s sovereign right to maintain a self- reliant defense. Kim Jong Il’s stress on Seongun would appear to enhance the Korean People’s Army ability to determine what is acceptable or not in the continuing six-party talks aimed at dismantling North Korea’s “nuclear deterrent” capability. Juche’s precepts strongly suggest that Pyongyang’s diplomats will not be able to agree to any dismantlement of their nation’s military capability without the concurrence of the KPA. According to Juche, the army must defend its nation and leader against the “imperialist United States.” Until the perceived “hostile policy” has been completely dismantled, the KPA can be expected to cling to its “nuclear deterrent” capability.

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Chapter 3

Assessing North Korea’s Strategic Intentions and Motivations Scott Snyder

Security studies analysis of prospects for war, peace, and the relative balance of power among states naturally gravitates toward two primary components: assessments of capabilities and intentions. While analysis of a state’s capabilities turns on a comprehensive analysis of a state’s war-fighting capacity, forces, order of battle, ability to use technology, organizational structures, and ability to effectively implement integrated command, control, communication, and computer capabilities, the analysis of state intentions and leadership motivations tends to be more qualitative, revolving around assessments of psychology, perceptions of its own situation and the intent of its enemies, strategic dilemmas, signaling, and so on. The empirical advantages of focusing on capability are obvious, but such assessments can be foiled by lack of transparency or efforts by a state to engage in strategic deception, either as a means by which to magnify external perceptions of its own capabilities in order to avoid potential attack, or to hide capabilities from others so as to gain tactical or strategic advantage in the event of conflict. Problems in assessing capabilities are therefore inexorably tied to the analysis of intent, since attempts to hide capability or lack thereof are symptoms of a troubling absence of transparency which cannot be addressed without considering intent. But the data set for assessing intent is by its nature incomplete. Public statements that might indicate intentions cannot necessarily be taken at face value since such statements could constitute a conscious effort to mislead or obscure true motivations, while non-public motivations are by their nature concealed from public scrutiny. The challenge of assessing the intentions of secrecy-prone authoritarian states such as North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) are formidable, and data is scarce, so it should not be surprising that analyst assessments of North Korean strategic intentions and motivations tend to serve more as a Rorschach test that reveals more about the preconceptions of the analyst than about North Korea. Given the lack of empirical data available to assess questions of intent, the inherent opaqueness of the North Korean regime and leadership, and the resulting doubts about the credibility and purposes behind North Korean public statements, debates over North Korean intentions are more likely to be settled by historians than political scientists or security analysts. Much contemporary analysis of North Korean intentions revolves around the question of whether or not the regime still aspires to pursue Korean unification on its own

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terms, or whether North Korea’s accumulated difficulties have caused it to focus almost exclusively on the narrower objective of regime survival. The conclusions are in the eye of the beholder. Globalization and North Korea’s “Statist-nationalist” Grand Strategy As a window into the questions of North Korean strategy and motivations (as well as the capacity of the leadership to achieve its aspirations), this chapter will analyze the efforts of the North Korean leadership to cope with the economic effects of globalization. Globalization has posed a powerful leadership challenge to every state’s leaders, and the North Korean leadership is no exception. The framework I intend to employ in conducting this analysis is Etel Solingen’s theoretical analysis of state responses to globalization through the shaping of competing political coalitions that espouse opposing political grand strategies, the “internationalist” coalition, and the “statist-national-confessionist” coalition. Solingen posits that the outcome of this competition shapes the direction of the state and the nature of the state’s interaction in a regional context. According to this theory, the interaction of various domestic groups with an integrating global political economy will have distributional impacts that shape the preferences and responses of actors and institutions within the North Korean system. The competition will yield an outcome that in most cases results in an alignment by which domestic coalitions and international actors reinforce tendencies toward global integration, but may also yield an outcome that reinforces the preferences of “backlash coalitions” that seek to protect and contain the effects of global integration on state leadership.1 Utilizing this theoretical framework, I intend to assess political, economic, and social changes in North Korea over the course of the past decade, roughly from the death of Kim Il Sung and the great famine of the mid-1990s to the North Korean nuclear test in October of 2006. I will analyze the extent to which it is possible to identify internationalist and backlash coalitions active in the North Korean leadership structure and in North Korean society. (As one case study, Solingen explores the Korean peninsula, arguing that North Korean competing factions remain evenly matched in a stiff competition for supremacy. Her work on the Korean peninsula features South Korea, where the theoretical framework she applies is very convincing.) On the basis of this analysis, I will develop preliminary conclusions about the extent to which globalization has influenced North Korea’s intentions and motivations, and highlight policy implications of these findings. Solingen identifies the distributional impact of internationalization as a primary factor around which competing political coalitions are mobilized in support of a common, mutually beneficial objective. Through the building of coalitions of mutual interest, either in support of or in opposition to the distributional effects of 1 Etel Solingen, Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 1-61.

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globalization, domestic politics is influenced by international factors and creates a new playing field around which actors are likely to coalesce and compete with each other. The theory presumes the formation of competing “internationalist” and “statist-nationalist-confessional” coalitions: “Grand strategies reveal a coalition’s definition of the state’s relation to the global political economy, to the internal extraction and allocation of resources among groups and institutions, and to the regional strategic context.”2 Solingen expects internationalist coalitions to promote domestic economic reform, expand exposure to the international economy, and cooperate with neighbors to preserve regional stability. In contrast, statist-national coalitions seek to preserve the control of the state, especially over the militaryindustrial complex, to oppose liberalization, and to weaken political adversaries that support internationalization. Her model further predicts the outcome of regional interactions among states led by various coalition types, based on whether respective factional leaderships are strong or weak. In the case of the Korean peninsula, South Korea is led by a strong internationalist coalition type, while North Korea has been led by a weak statist-nationalist coalition type. (Solingen characterizes the North Korean situation as one in which “competition between the two ‘ideal-type’ coalitions within a single state fails to yield a clear victor,” and that this explains the North’s erratic regional behavior during the late 1980s and early 1990s.3 According to Solingen’s theory, this dyadic combination imposes a “hard dilemma” for the weaker nationalist coalition leadership, since cooperation with internationalist counterparts may undermine a nationalist coalition’s raison d’être, while confrontation with a stronger internationalist leadership may enhance the nationalist coalition leadership’s security dilemma, either by feeding support for internal internationalist opposition to a nationalist coalition’s dominance, or by causing a more powerful internationalist coalition to strengthen its own military capabilities. Thus, this combination is by its nature unstable, and is likely to lead to further change.4 Although this theoretical framework stops short of providing an explicit prediction, the logical expectation is that a strong internationalist coalition in South Korea will either provide distributional benefits necessary to enable internationalist counterparts in North Korea to overcome and replace North Korea’s nationalist coalition, or the nationalist coalition will eventually collapse under the weight of its own failure to cope effectively with the pressures of globalization. However, neither outcome has been realized thus far. The question of whether a real coalitional struggle along factional lines existed within the North Korean leadership remains contested. Based on his visits to North Korea in the early 1990s, Selig Harrison depicted factions within the North Korean leadership between “pragmatists” and “technocrats” who advocated economic 2 3 4

Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., pp. 80-81.

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opening, and the “old guard” from the military and nuclear establishment that opposed economic opening.5 However, Alexander Mansourov characterizes North Korean institutional changes over the past decade as “designed to reduce its vulnerabilities to the challenges of modernity and pressures of globalization, while safeguarding the basic foundations of the North Korean political system.”6 This interpretation suggests a situation in which apparent coalitional struggle on its surface obscures the underlying reality of a state that is fundamentally resistant to internationalist coalitional activity or that is attempting to manipulate internationalist coalitions as a means to procure the resources necessary to keep a dominant nationalist coalition in power. The difficulty of defining the nature of any coalitional struggle in North Korea—whether there are divisions within the leadership or whether a nationalist leadership is facing unprecedented pressure from social forces outside the leadership—is central to assessing the capacity of the leadership to respond to globalization pressures, and sheds light on leadership intentions. To further test the applicability of the theory and to understand in greater detail the nature and ramifications of North Korea’s response to globalization, it is necessary to undertake a more detailed assessment of political, institutional, and social change in North Korea during the past decade. This empirical analysis of internal change in North Korea should help to explain why North Korea has continued to survive despite formidable external challenges, the relative capacity of the North Korean government to respond to the challenges of globalization, whether the process of change in North Korea will result from state failure or will lead to a shift from a nationalist to an internationalist coalition, and the choices posed for the international community by the path of the North Korean leadership. North Korean Political Change: Coalitional Struggle or Military-first Unity? By the early 1990s, the North Korean system faced acute shocks that brought into relief the dilemmas accompanying globalization, as the regime was forced to respond to the end of subsidies from the Soviet Union and a desire on the part of China to employ a market basis for pricing of goods to replace “friendship prices” by which North Korea received subsidized food and fuel from China. The DPRK’s initial inability to adjust to these pressures coincided with a leadership transition to Kim Jong Il following Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, and resulted in a widespread systemic failure that led to the famine of the mid-1990s. This crisis set in motion profound institutional, economic, and social changes in North Korea in an attempt to adapt to the pressures of globalization. 5 As cited in ibid., p. 234. 6 Mansourov, “Emergence of the Second Republic: The Kim Regime Adapts to the Challenges of Modernity,” in Young Hwan Kihl and Hong Nak Kim, eds, North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2006), p. 44.

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In the face of these challenges, North Korea’s political leadership under Kim Jong Il has shown impressive resilience and continuity. However, this does not suggest that there have not been political adaptations in an attempt to deal with new circumstances. Major political and institutional adjustments that have occurred inside North Korea under Kim Jong Il include the establishment of a new constitution, the adoption of “military-first” ideology as a primary banner for describing the revised institutional, political, and social order within North Korea, and the adoption of June 2002 economic reforms that liberalized prices and wages.7 The 1998 constitutional revision centralizes control of the state apparatus under the National Defense Commission, with Kim Jong Il as the chairman and central player, while marginalizing the Korean Worker’s Party (KWP) and state institutions as instruments with real bureaucratic authority. In addition, the institutionalized structures of governance within the party and state structures were essentially suspended or called into action on an ad hoc basis. KWP leadership structures have not been active, and the Supreme People’s Assembly, always a rubber-stamp organization, convened rarely. Existing state organizations had to rely primarily on their ability to gain Kim Jong Il’s favor and approval to get things done, and this meant that relative power of any organizational structure in North Korea was determined by the capacity of that organization to gain favor at the top levels, or to have a powerful “champion” with personal ties to Kim Jong Il. The 1998 Constitution accepted the legality of market exchanges, but it is not clear whether this was intended as a reform measure or as acquiescence to the reality that the Public Distribution System (PDS) was no longer capable of meeting the needs of the people, even if the government did continue to provide rations to critical sectors in support of the state structure, including the military, bureaucrats, and citizens of critical areas in and near Pyongyang. The Seongun Jeongchi, or military-first, politics of Kim Jong Il, elevated KPArelated institutions over the party and the government, and provided KPA-related institutions with the best opportunities to gain approval to take action, even in areas not connected to the military. A primary objective of Seongun Jeongchi has been to achieve a “strong and prosperous nation” (Gangseong Daeguk), constituting implicit authorization for a military role in utilizing economic instruments to revive and strengthen North Korea. For instance, North Korea’s “second economy,” or economic institutions connected with the KPA, received preferential treatment, resources, and access to the outside world as a means to raise capital and to procure both luxury goods and essential goods from abroad. This also meant that military-related institutions had the capacity and the cover to engage in black market activities and to supply foreign-made goods to North Korea’s domestic economy, both through legitimate and through black market channels. North Korea’s 2002 economic reform measures partially liberalized price and wage controls, further legalized markets (providing farmers’ markets with 7

Ibid., pp. 37-58.

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the state’s blessing), and accepted monetization of economic exchanges in the markets, partial privatization of farming and household production, and reforms in the role, scope, and financing of private and state-owned enterprises within the North Korean economy. These mechanisms further accepted the importance of markets as a medium of exchange in North Korea, but also provided a state role in regulating some market activities that had already been going on illegally outside the reach of state control. The reforms also provided more efficient means by which to encourage monetization of the North Korean economy, and provided structural advantages for firms that had access and authorization to trade with the outside world. However, it seemed that the reforms were more designed to recapture a legitimate role for the state in relationship to markets in light of high levels of corruption and to mobilize opportunities for leadership-connected entities to make money while significantly relieving the economic burdens as well as the moral responsibilities of the leadership to provide for the people. Another area of institutional adjustment that occurred in the wake of the famine was the weakening of the relationship between central and local or regional institutions within North Korea. At the height of the famine, local and district governments, enterprises, and work units discovered the true meaning of Juche, or “self-reliance,” since they learned that the central government no longer had the capacity to care for their needs. The necessity to procure food and other essentials spurred the development of markets in the mid-1990s, and also forced local institutions to fend for themselves, often by relying on the markets as the medium of exchange to procure their needs. During this time, there was a temporary boom in North Korean enterprises that made their way to China to barter scrap metal, timber, or natural resources in return for food and daily necessities. The effect of this change was to relieve the central government of the economic burdens of the public distribution system, ceding that role to the market. However, this transition did not mean that the state was ceding its supervisory role over local institutions or its demand for political loyalty to the central government leadership. As one considers the adjustments that have taken place inside North Korea under Kim Jong Il, there are some elements that might suggest the possibility of an emergence of coalitional struggle, especially in the form of decentralization and apparent competition among bureaucratic institutions in the North. However, the predominant theme is that of deinstitutionalization, that is, the consolidation of power in the hands of Kim Jong Il and weakening of institutions that might serve as alternative power centers (such as the party or the government). Within the leadership, greater attention has been placed on procurement of the economic resources necessary to assure the survival of North Korea and Kim Jong Il, but the institutions that have gained official authorization to conduct economic activities are primarily instruments for the procurement of goods in the service of the leadership, and such activities have clearly been entrusted to loyal political actors who utilize necessary economic instruments in the service of existing leadership structures; as such, the likelihood that these instruments of a nationalist power structure will pose an effective “internationalist” challenge is highly unlikely.

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To the extent that such efforts yield private opportunities or create networks for personal gain, these activities may promote internationalist coalition-building, but it appears that such networks exist outside the official sphere and that central government authorities may turn a blind eye to such activities as long as they are not excessive. Solingen identifies several members of a nascent “internationalist” coalition in her own analysis of North Korea’s leadership structure and seeming competition between “internationalist” and “nationalist” coalitions within the DPRK leadership, including Kim Jong U and Kim Dal Hyon.8 But Kim Jong U, a former chairman of the Committee on Promotion of Cooperation with Foreign Countries, was reported to have been removed from his post in 1998 for receiving bribes from prospective foreign investors,9 while Kim Dal Hyon, who was purged from his position of vicepremier in December of 1993 and placed in charge of the February 8 Vinalon Plant in Hamhung, never returned to a position of prominence in the central government.10 External Economic Affairs Committee Vice-Chairman Kim Mun-song is reported to have been executed. The evidence suggests that “internationalizing” coalitions within the DPRK’s formal leadership structure have been decisively tamed. Successive North Korean prime ministers, such as Yon Hyung-muk and Pak Pong-ju, have been viewed as individuals in the North Korean system with economic credentials who could promote economic reform, but such a view is perplexing, given that real power lies with the National Defense Commission under Kim Jong Il’s authority, and the Prime Minister’s ability to maneuver within the system is constrained by the power of military-related institutions under the “military first” ideology. In a separate 2007 analysis of North Korean domestic politics, Solingen cites a Nodong Sinmun analysis that explicitly places economic initiatives in subordination to the needs of North Korea’s “military- first” leadership, although she clings to the idea that there is an internal coalitional struggle taking place within North Korea’s leadership structure: What takes the leading position in the correlation between the army and economy is, however, still the army. It is the new principle illuminated by the militaryfirst idea that only when we place importance on the gun barrel can we build an economically powerful state. If economic power is based on military power, military power is a guarantee for economic power and impetus for economic

8 Solingen, “Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn,” p. 234. 9 Choe Seung-chul, “North Korea Purges Officials Engaged in Inter-Korea Business Exchanges,” The Korea Herald, November 6, 1998. 10 “N. Korean Ex-Vice Premier Kim Said Unlikely as PM,” Kyodo News Service, July 27, 1997. During a visit to Seoul in 1992, Kim Dal-hyon provided a statement regarding North Korea’s objectives in pursuing economic zones: “Now we are trying to take on capitalist countries as our trading partners. That is why we need special zones. They are needed both to protect our system and for us to survive”; Takuji Kawata, “Pyongyang Views Border Area as Key to Survival,” Daily Yomiuri, February 23, 1995.

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North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jong Il development. We cannot defend national industries nor ensure a peaceful environment for economy-building without strong military power.11

Additional evidence regarding the role and purpose of economic instruments in the service of a nationalist coalition—and the lack of competition between nationalist and internationalist coalitions within the North Korean leadership structure—is discernible through an analysis of the structure of developments in inter-Korean economic relations. Most notable has been the monopoly on inter-Korean economic projects in both Mount Geumgang and the Gaeseong Industrial Complex by the Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, a party-related organization that has long been reputed to enjoy the special protection of Kim Jong Il. The former head of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, Kim Young Sun, was known to have a special relationship with Kim Jong Il. The committee has retained a special role as the preferred instrument for managing economic projects with South Korea. On the South Korean side, Hyundai Asan has enjoyed a monopoly position following the initiative of Chung Ju Young to set up the initial arrangements with North Korea. Initiated in 1998 under the auspices of Kim Dae-Jung’s newly established “Sunshine Policy” and the principle of “separation of politics and economics,” the initial arrangements for Mount Geumgang were highly dependent on large cash transfers to the North that made the project economically unviable on market terms. Subsequent adjustments, including the establishment of a land route to the North and a payment arrangement with the North that functions on a per capita basis, have helped to introduce a market element to the project, but the isolation of Mount Geumgang from the rest of North Korean society and the highly limited inter-personal interaction between North and South Korean individuals as part of the project underscores the essential nature of the project as one in which North Korean authorities are renting tourist access by South Koreans to the mountains while also gaining infrastructure investment on a gradual basis. This arrangement provides a steady stream of cash to North Korean authorities while posing a minimal intrusion or impact on North Korean society, and does not appear to promote reforms or to enable the development of an internationalist coalition inside North Korea. The rent-seeking nature of the project and the role of the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee as an instrument by which to raise economic resources in the service of North Korea’s nationalist institutional structure was underscored by the use of Hyundai Asan as the main channel for the provision of direct payments to North Korea amounting to about $500 million in the context of the inter-Korean summit in June of 2000.12 11 Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 137. Originally from Nodong Sinmun, “Military-first Ideology is an Ever-victorious, Invincible Banner for Our Era’s Cause of Independence,” March 21-22, 2003, . 12 Larry Niksch, “Korea: U.S.-Korean Relations—Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, updated April 14, 2006, , March 24, 2008. 13 Yeung Sueng Dong, “The Present and Future of the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” in Philip W. Yun and Gi-wook Shin, eds, North Korea: 2005 and Beyond (Stanford, CA: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, 2006), pp. 79-102. 14 Kim Eun-Jong, “The Present and Future of Kaesong Industrial Complex—In the wake of the October 4th South-North Joint Declaration,” paper presented at the 3rd Hankyoreh-Busan International Symposium, “After 2007 Inter-Korean Summit: The Role of the Two Koreas for Peace in Northeast Asia,” November 13-14, 2007.

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Korea’s top leadership saw the zone as a mechanism for pursuing reform, or simply as a method for drawing in foreign capital either through licit or illicit means. Upon Yang Bin’s return to China after having been appointed as the head of the Sinuiju zone, he was placed under house arrest by Chinese authorities, and plans for the Sinuiju zone have remained dormant.15 The Chinese leadership has persistently encouraged Kim Jong Il to pursue the Chinese model for pursuing economic reforms for decades, to no avail, by encouraging Kim Jong Il’s visits to Shanghai in 2001 and to Guangdong in early 2006. However, despite Chinese hopes that Kim Jong Il would lead economic reforms, there has been no progress. In fact, Chinese authors have recently alleged that the real purpose of Kim Jong Il’s 2006 visit to southern China, following the footsteps of Deng Xiaoping, was not to learn about Chinese economic reform, but to request a massive expansion of Chinese assistance to North Korea from 12 billion yuan to 30 billion yuan. The Chinese leadership resisted these demands, instead providing a $24 million glass factory and promoting the idea of a transition of Sino-DPRK economic relations to a more market-oriented basis. Recent Chinese leaks regarding North Korean illicit drug activities and counterfeiting of money and cigarettes across the Chinese border further underscore the extent to which North Korea’s nationalist coalition attempts to utilize any means possible to draw in economic support for its activities while resisting any impetus for economic reform.16 Given this situation, a military leader, an immediate relative, or Kim Jong Il himself would be the only actors in the North Korean system capable of initiating real economic reforms. This would mean changing the current focus of central government-authorized projects from resource extraction to the construction of a viable capital base and promotion of self-sustaining economic activities within North Korea at Kim Jong Il’s initiative. However, the evidence suggests that North Korea’s nationalist coalition under Kim Jong Il’s leadership remains intact and unchallenged, instead subordinating reforms that would promote greater integration of North Korea’s domestic economy with the outside world and focus on extracting economic resources from the international community as the means by which to maintain his survival and his rule. One might argue that this is an astute choice, given the magnitude of the threat that globalization represents to Kim and his leadership, but it also suggests that the North Korean leadership has been successful in minimizing the impact of international impulses in the service of its own political objectives and the preservation of its structure.

15 BBC News, “China Chargest Tycoon With Fraud,” November 27, 2002, . 16 Satoshi Tomisaka, Foreword, Taikitachosen Chugoku Kimitsu Fairu, September 15, 2007, published in Japanese, accessed at Open Source Center, Document JPP20070919026002.

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Economic and Social Change in North Korea: Internationalization from Below The discipline of the North Korean leadership in the service of its own nationalist agenda, as illustrated through the slogan Gangseong Daeguk, underscores the North Korean desire to survive and even to thrive on its own terms by subjecting the instruments of capitalism to the service of its own autarkic, authoritarian agenda. But the commitment the North Korean leadership has shown to its own survival and the relative lack of internal debate over the dilemma of globalization evident in North Korea’s formal institutional approaches to its external economic relations does not mean that globalization has not penetrated the North Korean state and society, or that it does not still pose a challenge to the leadership even despite leadership efforts to contain and subordinate external economic relations to the political requirements of North Korea’s unique political system. However, it does mean that the challenge faced by the North Korean leadership is not so much a formal internal institutional challenge characterized by a dilemma over the direction of state policy (reform or revanchism), but rather a challenge to a relatively unified state structure that appears to gradually be losing control over economic and social mechanisms within the society. The coherence of the structure supporting Kim Jong Il’s political leadership has been maintained, but the relative capacity of state instruments to impose political control over economic and social processes appears to be under increasingly severe challenge. This challenge is taking place outside the formal institutional structures for governance, through a growing private sphere of informal exchange activity. These activities are often fed through the same instruments that have been empowered to engage in international trade, but on a personalistic, informal basis through informal exchanges that exist alongside the formal institutional mechanisms empowered to extract resources on behalf of leadership purposes. The challenge posed to the state has been acknowledged by Kim Jong Il himself in a 2001 speech: “ … the socialist rationing policies of the past malfunctioned and the society experienced an extreme form of egalitarianism, and it became the norm for people to unlawfully take government property. The [situation] created indolence among the citizens, and decreased efficiency and productivity. During the last few years, when the state was unable to supply food efficiently, people began to abandon their jobs and began searching for ways to acquire personal gains.”17 According to one Chinese observer, it is also taking place through social and political changes in which the prior vertical relationships between state and society, enterprises, and local governments are being upended, resulting in an expansion of individual or local autonomy and space to make decisions without being directly controlled by the state.18 17 As cited in Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 208. 18 Author conversation with Chinese researcher, Beijing, April 2006.

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Since the non-governmental sphere remains relatively unorganized, it does not constitute a coherent direct threat to the power of North Korea’s core leadership institutions and structures; however, the declining capacity of the central leadership to control such activity raises questions about whether and how an alternative power structure might emerge to challenge the predominance of North Korea’s state-led nationalist coalition. Let us now turn to a more detailed examination of the ways in which the sphere of informal economic interactions is emerging as a base from which eventual challengers might act to further limit, and perhaps even challenge, the political authority and legitimacy of North Korea’s nationalist leadership. The North Korean famine of the mid-1990s has been the most consequential challenge to the state’s political control capacity within North Korean society. Despite propaganda efforts to mobilize the people through slogans such as the “arduous march,” the pressing necessity for individual survival in the face of the state’s failure to distribute food has catalyzed both marketization and monetization, primarily beyond the bounds of state control. As the Public Distribution System broke down, there was a loss of central government social control, creating space for individuals and local-level actors to take the initiative. Hazel Smith, who observed the effects of the crisis first-hand while working for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), observes that: Social change came to the DPRK as the unintended effect of individual attempts to survive the crisis. In practice the problem-solving methods adopted by local officials and communities were based around market-based provision of food and other basic goods. Local officials facilitated marketization, as the alternative would have been starvation for neighborhoods and the communities they represented. Government became an economic bystander as people began to fend for themselves—in the process institutionalizing private farmers’ markets as a major source of food and goods.19

Likewise, Haggard and Noland assess that “the substantial marketization from below that has occurred to date has been largely in spite of, rather than because, of government policy. The regime has tolerated the emergence of market activity only grudgingly, and reform efforts have repeatedly been undermined by a zigzagging process that opens up opportunities only to close them down.”20 There have been periodic efforts by the state to regain control over food distribution, for instance by scaling back reliance on foreign assistance as a means by which to limit foreign influence in the North. In the fall of 2005, the DPRK declared that it would no longer be needing assistance from the WFP, and that 19 Hazel Smith, Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance, and Social Change in North Korea (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005), p. 96. 20 Haggard and Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform, p. 215.

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it desired transition from humanitarian to development assistance. Subsequent negotiations with the DPRK allowed the WFP to stay in North Korea, but with a smaller anticipated contribution to North Korea’s food needs, and under a constrained scope of monitoring and operations proportionate to the smaller contribution. Under a revised agreement signed on May 10, 2006, the scope of the WFP work was dramatically constrained, from a program that reached 15.5 million people with 940,000 metric tonnes of food aid in 160 counties in 2005 to one that aimed to provide 150,000 metric tonnes of food aid to 1.9 million North Koreans in up to 50 counties through 2007. Moreover, under the new agreement, five WFP field offices were closed and in-country travel plans are required to be submitted two weeks in advance, with field visits to pediatric wards and county hospitals not permitted.21 This adjustment in conditions on WFP presence represents an attempt by the state to recapture control and limit foreign influence inside North Korea. Likewise, North Korean authorities see a connection between the rising political threat posed by liberalization and the central role of the markets in daily life in North Korea. In late 2007, the North Korean central government has attempted to impose age restrictions on individuals authorized to trade in the markets, limiting participation as a vendor to women over 40 or 50 years old. But this restriction has been greeted with frustration, and even protests to local security authorities, since market activity has become central to assuring continued survival within North Korean society. The South Korean NGO Good Friends has provided periodic reporting on local clashes in the markets as well as surreptitious efforts by individuals to get around the restrictions to limit their enforcement at the local level. A March 4, 2008 protest led by women in Chungjin to management offices in local markets allegedly resulted in the removal of age restrictions in light of dire food conditions there.22 These types of protest represent a potentially serious challenge to the authority of the state, and have even demonstrated the limits of state capacity to impose its will under certain conditions, reflecting a changed balance between state and society over issues involving marketization. Another element of social change within North Korea involves the expansion of inflow into North Korean society of information from the outside world. Andrei Lankov describes how the use of radios, cell phones, word-of-mouth contacts, VCR tapes of South Korean media, dramas, and movies, and other outside 21 UN WFP Emergency Report No. 20, May 19, 2006, , UN WFP Summary of the Work of the First Regular Session of the Executive Board, 2006, , UN WFP Operational Priorities, February 1, 2007, , accessed March 22, 2007. 22 “Women in Local Markets in Chungjin City Protest En Masse,” North Korea Today, Research Institute for North Korean Society, . No. 115, March 2008 and various editions during 2007-2008. Protesters are reported as shouting, “We will all die like this. If you won’t let us trade, give us food.”

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information once strictly controlled by North Korean authorities is now entering into North Korea and influencing the behavior of North Korean young people.23 Surveys conducted by Radio Free Asia among refugees along the border with North Korea also show an increase in awareness and listenership of Korean and foreign radio broadcasts, although word of mouth remains the most active form of dissemination of information about the outside world. The inflow of information is a powerful force for potential change that has developed despite efforts by the central government to limit its impact. China-DPRK economic cooperation includes subsidies as a component of state-led cooperation, even if those subsidies are masked as legitimate trade and investment into North Korea. But there is also a thriving barter trade as well as substantial uncounted trade across the China-North Korea border. Some of that trade may be trade between North Korean state-approved institutions and Chinese counterparts on an illicit or personal basis, and some may be pure barter among private individuals and/or Chinese corporations providing goods to North Korean counterparts on a market or semi-market basis through a range of barter arrangements.24 This type of trade may indeed be the type most likely to reinforce market-oriented development inside North Korea, precisely because it may occur outside state-sponsored channels. However, even if it takes place outside statesponsored channels, if the North Korean entity is also authorized to do business with the outside world, such activity would constitute a relatively manageable threat to the North Korean regime since the entities concerned have been enabled to conduct such trade through collaboration with North Korea’s power institutions. Inter-Korean economic interaction, as currently structured, is even less likely to catalyze further bottom-up economic reforms, given the monopoly of involvement by state sector-sponsored institutions tasked with resource extraction on the North Korean side and the inability of South Korean companies within the zone to select or pay North Korean workers directly.25 Conclusions and Implications for Policy toward North Korea Based on Etel Solingen’s theoretical framework that the task of responding to the pressures of globalization creates distributional impacts that result in internationalist and nationalist ideal-type coalitions, we have examined North Korean responses to pressures of globalization as a means by which to shed light on North Korean intentions and motivations. One result of this analysis has been the conclusion that 23 Andrei Lankov, “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” Asia Policy, no. 1 (January 2006), pp. 95-121. 24 Author interview with Chinese scholar, Beijing, June 2007. 25 Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Follow the Money: North Korea’s External Resources and Constraints,” , accessed on March 24, 2008.

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state structures in North Korea have predominantly responded to the challenge of globalization in a statist-nationalist manner, effectively punishing or severely limiting the impetus for supporting economic reform through a state-led process. Instead, the leadership subordinates economic institutions to its own purposes, engaging in behaviors and projects designed to maximize resource extraction rather than promoting integration of the domestic economy with the international economy. A growing challenge to the leadership is its own diminished capacity to control economic behaviors within North Korean society, despite the state’s ability thus far to prevent alternative economic power centers from being organized in ways that would directly challenge the state’s political leadership inside North Korea. However, a “bottom-up liberalization” process has occurred outside the control of the leadership, through which internal economic forces have increasingly aligned themselves with the external economy through market penetration into North Korea. Although the leadership has the capacity to suppress and harass such activity, state-led attempts to roll back or marginalize the role of the markets within North Korean society have illustrated new limits to the political power of North Korea’s leadership. As economic forces in favor of liberalization have spread within North Korean society, they have generated attempts by the leadership to catch up or recover its role within North Korean society. However, these economic forces, if they are allowed to spread too far, constitute a mortal threat to the North Korean leadership structure as it currently exists. North Korean leadership appears to be aware of this threat, but it is not clear whether the capacity exists in the midto long term to respond to the challenge posed to North Korea’s statist-nationalist leadership posed by globalization. The intentions of the North Korean leadership appear to be to hold the line against economic penetration of North Korea, rather than to promote economic reform. Economic instruments, as wielded by the state, continue to serve as an instrument in the service of an illiberal leadership, rather than as a vehicle by which to promote collective reform or prosperity of the North Korean people. These findings have several implications for the formulation of policy toward North Korea. First, the relative lack of internal contestation within the North Korean leadership over the state’s response to globalization and the simultaneous bottom-up nature of economic reforms in alignment with globalization suggest that policy reform is more likely to occur as a result of a failure of the existing leadership and a replacement with new leadership, rather than as a result of gradual change and contestation, resulting in the liberalization of North Korean policy by reformers from within. This conclusion suggests that regime/leadership change is more likely than a gradual regime transformation. The gradual loss of political and economic control by state leadership structures in North Korea will allow continued penetration of market forces within North Korea, but in the absence of any alternative leadership structure, the result of globalization will be a brutal, wholesale marketization, increasingly unmediated and unregulated by political structures. Until it is possible for globalizing forces to organize themselves

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politically and challenge the current leadership, anarchy is likely to be a bigger political threat to the current leadership than organized resistance. A second policy implication arises in the context of the South Korean leadership transition to Lee Myung-bak and possible revisions to a decade-long policy of engagement with North Korea. Engagement provides continued opportunities to strengthen liberalizers inside North Korea, but the above analysis suggests that the most effective vehicles by which to do so may be through the promotion of informal, personalistic exchanges with North Korean counterparts on the periphery of North Korean society, rather than promotion of a focus on making official arrangements with designated agents of the North Korean leadership. Another possibility might be to utilize official agreements as vehicles for expanding the space for informal interaction on a private or unofficial basis with North Korean counterparts. Either strategy would suggest that continued engagement is an important and necessary tool for promoting liberalization in North Korea, but such interaction by itself, on an uncritical basis, is not sufficient to promote reform or accelerate the loss of capacity by the North Korean leadership. Another complicating factor is whether and how to deal with the effects of anarchy in the absence of a power center able to regulate or mitigate the most negative social effects of globalization (by the rules of the jungle) even while facilitating the rise of an internationalist and reformist North Korean leadership. A third policy implication arises from the challenge of dealing with a nuclear North Korea in ways that will limit subsidies to the state while promoting greater space for economic reform. A consistent argument of Chinese observers and others is that liberalization is impossible without ameliorating North Korea’s hostile security environment. But North Korean interlocutors have persistently linked economic and political demands with each other as part of negotiations over the North Korean nuclear issue. This situation suggests the possibility that the United States should be considerably more forthcoming with political incentives that address North Korea’s security, in promoting proposals designed to catalyze market liberalization, and resisting subsidies that would ultimately go toward supporting the role and influence of the North Korean state and/or its leadership. Since North Korea is linking denuclearization to economic subsidies, the international community needs to be particularly attentive to the necessity of linking denuclearization with economic liberalization inside North Korea. The Lee Myung-bak administration’s “Denuclearization and Opening 3000” proposal attempts to do just this, but it remains to be seen whether it will be possible to implement such an approach in practice. Although the capacity of the North Korean leadership to impose economic controls within the North Korean system is declining as a result of grassroots reforms influenced by the external forces of globalization, the state persists in imposing a statist-nationalist framework, and has thus far effectively squelched meaningful internal competition within official structures that might lead to reforms. These policies are an important near-term indicator of North Korean intent as it copes with the challenges of globalization, but it is increasingly doubtful that

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the leadership will have the capacity to prevent the effects of globalization from promoting liberalization within North Korean society. The core dilemma within North Korea foreshadowed by Solingen’s theoretical framework is how to resolve the contradiction between a statist-nationalist leadership, and a society and region that is increasingly influenced by internationalist forces.

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Chapter 4

North Korea’s Negotiating Position during Fifteen Years of Chronic Crisis: Continuities and Discontinuities Curtis H. Martin

For more than fifteen years, the United States, most recently in combination with North Korea’s closest neighbors, has attempted to prevent North Korea from becoming, or remaining, a nuclear weapon state. This effort has been focused on three distinct periods of intense negotiation corresponding to periods of crisis in relations. This chapter will examine and compare the negotiating strategy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) throughout these negotiations. It is the contention here that despite inconsistencies, contradictions, tactical halts and turns, the DPRK has stood by a core set of demands that were fixed at the time of the first crisis in 1993 and 1994, leading to the Agreed Framework. Despite subsequent changes in the regional and international environment, the regime has consistently sought to uphold, and later to resurrect, the fundamental architecture established by the Agreed Framework. This basic architecture is reflected in all subsequent agreements through to October, 2007. In order to highlight patterns in the DPRK negotiation strategy, this study will employ the schema first developed by Roger Fisher for framing a negotiation in terms of three components: the demand, the offer, and the threat.1 The “demand” refers to the actions that the negotiator wishes the interlocutor to take. In the case of the DPRK’s negotiations over its nuclear and missile programs, the demand has centered on ending U.S. sanctions, normalizing relations, and, arguably, building a strategic relationship. In theoretical terms, the DPRK has demanded an easing of its security dilemma. In virtually every case, it has also included demands for economic aid or compensation for concessions. From time to time, the DPRK has upped the ante by supplementing its core demands with demands for side payments.

1 Roger Fisher, Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Elizabeth Borgwardt, and Brian Ganson, Coping with International Conflict: A Systematic Approach to Influence in International Negotiation (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1997).

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In sanctions literature, the “offer” consists of positive sanctions—the concessions or benefits the interlocutor may expect if it satisfies the demand.2 Bernauer and Ruloff define positive sanctions as “transfers of valued resources, such as money, technology, or know-how from one actor to another with the aim of driving the behavior of the recipient in a direction that is desirable from the point of view of the provider.”3 However, given the paucity of economic rewards available to the DPRK, Davis’s broader definition of concessions as “rewards that address the target’s specific needs or grievances” seems more appropriate.4 The DPRK’s main bargaining assets have been its massive conventional military establishment and its nuclear program. As a result, the DPRK offer has consisted of a combination of promises not to take actions that its interlocutors feared, and promises to take affirmative steps to remove the threat. Its principal offer throughout various bouts of negotiations has been to resolve “all the security concerns of the United States” by suspending, ending, or dismantling its nuclear and/or missile programs in the spirit of prior agreements on restoring peace on the Korean peninsula. Unlike the offer, the “threat” consists of negative sanctions—the punishments or costs that the interlocutor may expect if it fails to comply with the demand.5 On the one hand, sanctions theory predicts that the DPRK, whose ostensible goal is to transform its hostile relations with the United States, might resort to positive sanctions. As Davis tells us, positive sanctions “can transform relations among adversaries in a way that threats cannot.”6 On the other hand, theory warns that the high levels of mistrust among adversaries make such relationships a “least likely case” for using positive sanctions.7 Bearing out the second proposition, 2 For a fuller theoretical discussion of positive and negative sanctions, see David A. Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power (New York: Blackwell, 1989); James W. Davis, Jr., Threats and Promises: The Pursuit of International Influence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Daniel W. Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Johan Galtung, “On the Meaning of Nonviolence,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 22, no. 3 (1961), pp. 228-57; Gerald L. Sorokin, “The Role of Rewards in Conflictual International Interactions,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 40, no. 4 (December 1996), pp. 658-77. 3 Thomas Bernauer and Dieter Ruloff, “Introduction and Analytical Framework,” in Bernauer and Ruloff, eds, The Politics of Positive Incentives in Arms Control (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), p. 2. Davis speaks of “private rewards” as “transfers of value between or among actors … In international relations examples of private rewards include cash payments, territorial concessions, the granting or transferral of resource rights, as well as transfers of arms and food” (James W. Davis, Jr., Threats and Promises, p. 15). 4 Davis, Threats and Promises, p. 20. 5 Galtung, “On the Meaning of Nonviolence,” p. 238; Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power, p. 63. 6 Davis, Threats and Promises, p. 19. 7 Harry Eckstein, “Case Studies and Theory in Political Science,” in Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby, eds., Handbook of Political Science, vol. 7 (Reading, MA: Addison-

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reliance on the threat rather than on the offer has been the defining characteristic of DPRK negotiating behavior.8 North Korea has employed a number of general and specific threats throughout the period that have been tied to the core issues, or at times to side issues. These threats have been embedded in official policy statements and conveyed via state broadcasts, DPRK negotiators, or even via highprofile symbolic acts such as missile and nuclear tests. In addition, the DPRK has engaged in a steady stream of “background” provocations, ranging from attacks on Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) vessels, to efforts to infiltrate spies by land and sea, to shots fired in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), to kidnappings.9 In periodically calibrating and recalibrating the offer and threat, the DPRK has effectively exploited the theoretical axiom that, “today’s rewards may lay the groundwork for tomorrow’s threat, and tomorrow’s threat may lay the groundwork for a promise on the day after tomorrow.”10 Over time, the DPRK has adapted all three components of its negotiating position to changes, some of considerable magnitude, in both the internal and external environments. Throughout, the DPRK has shown considerable tactical flexibility with regard to the mix and timing of threat and offer while remaining true to its basic strategy. North Korea’s Objectives For the DPRK’s interlocutors, the question at the heart of this chronic crisis has been, “What does North Korea want?”11 Has the DPRK cynically used more than fifteen years of negotiations to mask a determined and now-successful effort to become and to remain a member of the nuclear club? Or has it employed its nuclear program as a bargaining chip to wring security guarantees and economic aid from the United States and other powers? Has the DPRK pursued nuclear weapons as “Badges, Shields or Swords”—as a source of prestige and legitimacy, as a deterrent, or as a coercive tool?12 From a wider strategic perspective, the Wesley, 1975), pp. 79-137. And see Curtis H. Martin, “Rewarding North Korea: Theoretical Perspectives on the 1994 Agreed Framework,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39, no. 1 (January 2002). 8 See Chuck Downs, Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1999); Scott Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2000). 9 See Dick Nanto, North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950-2000, Congressional Research Service, CRS-RL 3004, updated March 18, 2003, . 10 Baldwin, The Power of Positive Sanctions, p. 65. 11 Martin, “Rewarding North Korea: Theoretical Perspectives on the 1994 Agreed Framework,” pp. 59-60. 12 Victor D. Cha, “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Badges, Shields or Swords?” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 117, no. 2 (Summer 2002), pp. 209-28.

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debate concerns whether the DPRK is “a security seeker” or a “greedy state.”13 The meaning of the DPRK’s negotiating behavior ultimately depends upon the answer to this question—an answer that remains elusive. Three Crises in a Chronic Confrontation Negotiations over the DPRK’s nuclear program have continued on and off through three distinct crises, each of which illuminates the DPRK’s negotiating behavior. From the North’s perspective, this chronic state of affairs was precipitated by the existential threat that followed the collapse of the USSR. The first crisis, in 1993 and 1994, was prompted by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) demands for special inspections of the North’s nuclear energy facilities, and from a perceived retreat by the United States from security commitments made to the DPRK early in 1992. The immediate crisis passed when the United States and DPRK signed the 1994 Agreed Framework, pledging a freeze and eventually an end to the DPRK’s nuclear programs in exchange for security guarantees, economic aid, and other benefits. The second crisis played itself out from 1998 to 2000 in response to mutual recriminations over compliance with the Agreed Framework compounded by the DPRK test of a long-range missile. Scholars have given this crisis less attention than the other two. But it was a serious confrontation at the time, and one that is of a piece with those that preceded and followed it. The third crisis came about at the end of 2002 with the unraveling of the Agreed Framework, and has continued through several rounds of six-party talks on denuclearization, punctuated by the North’s nuclear test in 2006. During each of the three episodes, the DPRK pushed forward a set of demands to remove the perceived threat, backed up by relatively consistent re-combinations of its repertoire of offer and threat. The First Crisis: “Going Critical,” 1993-199414 The DPRK’s refusal to permit special inspections or to account for all its reprocessed plutonium fuel raised fears in the United States and the IAEA that the DPRK might be moving toward developing a nuclear weapons capability.15 The crisis escalated when in March 1993 the DPRK announced its intention to withdraw from the 13 Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics, vol. 50 (October 1997), pp. 171-201. 14 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci use the phrase in the title of their 2006 book, Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis: Going Critical (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004). 15 The North’s reaction to IAEA demands for special inspections would have been shaped in part by their conviction that Iraq’s defeat had been ensured by the lack of a sufficient deterrent, and its continued humiliation had been precipitated by the findings of

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Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and again in the spring of 1994, when it threatened to reprocess additional spent fuel from its reactor. From 1993 to 1994, the United States conducted negotiations to bring the DPRK back into compliance with its NPT obligations and to ensure that it could not pursue a nuclear weapons program. Before it would accede to any of these demands, the DPRK utilized a mix of threats and incentives to get the United States to satisfy its own demands. The Demand, 1993-1994 Throughout more than fifteen years of talks, the DPRK has consistently demanded that the United States end its efforts to “stifle” or “strangle” it, and that it instead normalize relations. In pressing for an end to the military threat from the United States, the DPRK sought legally binding assurances and, at times, even a peace treaty.16 It demanded an end to joint U.S.-ROK military exercises, and a halt to the planned deployment of Patriot missiles in the ROK. At times, the DPRK also demanded inspection of, and removal of U.S. “nuclear military bases” from the ROK (which the U.S. had already accomplished at the end of 1991), and termination of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over the ROK. 17 The DPRK insisted not only that the United States end existing sanctions (and as the crisis developed, desist from seeking new United Nations Sanctions), but that it provide significant economic assistance as well. From June of 1993 onward, the DPRK demanded the provision of two Light Water Reactors (LWRs) to replace its graphite reactors.18 Implicit in the demand for LWRs was an assertion of a right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy (which the United States did not challenge at the time). North Korean negotiators demanded regular deliveries of heavy fuel oil as compensation for shutting down their functioning reactor, even demanding compensation for the energy forgone from all the reactors then being constructed or in the planning stage.19 As was to become standard practice, the DPRK demanded side payments for specific concessions, such as allowing additional IAEA samples.20 The DPRK was determined from the beginning that the dispute remain as far as possible a bilateral one.21 Another core demand that emerged during the first IAEA special inspections (Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 35). 16 Ibid., p. 96. 17 Ibid., p. 49. 18 The LWR proposal’s provenance dated to the DPRK’s signing of the NPT in 1985, Ibid., p. 54. 19 Ibid., p. 286. 20 Ibid., pp. 143-4. 21 Michael J. Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 116.

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62

Table 4.1

The Demand, 1993-1994

Provide binding security assurances Conclude a peace treaty Remove the nuclear umbrella from the ROK Provide economic/energy compensation Accept right to peaceful use (implicit) of nuclear energy End sanctions and halt efforts to impose new UN sanctions Respect DPRK sovereignty and establish normal diplomatic relations Take step-by-step, reciprocal, and simultaneous actions Ensure reciprocity of inspections of facilities Keep discussions bilateral Make cash side payments

crisis was the DPRK’s insistence upon “a sequencing of moves to be implemented reciprocally and simultaneously”—what ten years later would be phrased as “action for action.”22 The DPRK would return to all of these demands in various forms in its subsequent negotiations with the United States and others. Although several demands fell by the wayside in the later crises—such as the demand for IAEA impartiality—a clear core of demands remained. Table 4.1 summarizes the DPRK demand. The Offer, 1993-1994 The DPRK offer was centered on promises to fulfill its obligations under the NPT and the 1991 Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In those agreements the North pledged neither to “test, produce, receive, possess, store, [nor] deploy nuclear weapons,” nor to “possess facilities for nuclear reprocessing and enrichment.” During the talks, the DPRK emphasized pledges to resume adherence to existing commitments. Specifically, it offered to permit IAEA inspections, though always under as limited a mandate as possible.23 As a further incentive, the DPRK’s “package” proposal included a supervised shutdown of its five-megawatt nuclear plant, supervised storage of nuclear fuel, and a freeze on construction of two larger reactors, to be followed at a later date by a full accounting of its nuclear program and eventual dismantlement of existing facilities.24 In June of 1993, the DPRK pledged to refrain from unloading its fivemegawatt reactor, and promised that if it received the LWRs, it would return to

22 Leon V. Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 78. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 116. 23 Michael J. Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb, pp. 132, 143, 147. 24 Michael J. Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 135.

Continuities and Discontinuities

Table 4.2

63

The Offer, 1993-1994

A negotiated solution Resumption/continuation of prior commitments A freeze of nuclear facilities Eventual dismantlement of facilities Eventual full declaration of nuclear materials Reassurances Promise of talks/rapprochement with the ROK Side payments

the NPT and be open to providing transparency in its program.25 The freeze was to become the defining characteristic of the DPRK’s offer and, eventually, the foundation of the Agreed Framework. In time, the DPRK expressed a willingness to take steps to end its nuclear program even before the final delivery of LWRs. The DPRK was also adept to turning sticks into carrots. For example, it agreed ultimately to suspend its threat to withdraw from the NPT, to end the “semi-war state” that it had declared at the beginning of 1993, to allow IAEA continuity inspections even as it denied expanded inspection rights, and toward the end of the crisis, to forgo reprocessing fuel from, or refueling, the five-megawatt reactor.26 Accompanying its concrete enticements, DPRK officials intermittently undertook efforts at reassurance. Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and other high officials repeatedly pledged never to make nuclear weapons. “Never in the future,” proclaimed the senior Kim in April 1994, “will we have nuclear weapons.” In April 1993 the North repeated a 1983 statement condemning terrorism and pledged not to encourage or support it.27 As it suited its interests, Pyongyang occasionally toned down its propaganda, as when it muted its usual vitriol commemorating the anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War. The DPRK exploited U.S. concern for improvement in DPRK-ROK relations by occasionally abandoning its harsh rhetoric and hard bargaining to ease relations with the South, promising at one point that if progress were made in U.S.-DPRK negotiations, a “decisively favorable phase” in relations with the ROK was possible.28 When the U.S. and ROK showed alarm over a DPRK negotiator’s threat to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire,” Kim Il Sung himself dismissed the remark as a “mistake” and insisted

25 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korea Nuclear Crisis, p. 224. 26 Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 132, pp. 162-163; Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, pp. 239, 316. 27 Dick N. Nanto, North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950-2000, p.9n. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 42. 28 Ibid., p. 263.

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that the DPRK did not want war.29 In a few instances, the North made or offered symbolic side payments, as when it agreed to the return of the remains of U.S. service personnel, when it engaged in North-South dialogue, and when it quickly returned a U.S. soldier whose helicopter had crashed in the North at the end of 1994. Table 4.2 summarizes the DPRK offer. The Threat, 1993-1994 The DPRK threat included announcements of intent to withdraw from or suspend compliance with its previous nuclear or other obligations, threats to suspend talks, threats of military retaliation for sanctions or use of force by the United States, instigation of military provocations against the ROK, and stepped up propaganda. At the height of the crisis, in the spring of 1994, the DPRK threatened to withdraw from the IAEA, and, most worrying to the United States, to proceed with unsupervised reprocessing of spent fuel—both threats that it carried out. Although Kim Il Sung regularly disavowed any nuclear aspirations, other officials hinted at the DPRK’s “capability,” indicating that “maybe they have nuclear weapons.”30 The North’s negotiators also played on U.S. fears by warning that if the United States did not agree to DPRK proposals, the military might step in and “make bombs.”31 The DPRK warned that it would withdraw from the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) if the United States delivered Patriot missiles it had promised to the ROK, and periodically held dialogue with the South hostage to U.S. compliance with its demands. Threats—oblique and otherwise—of war were a constant. In March 1993, the DPRK warned that U.S.-ROK Team Spirit exercises forced the DPRK to “enter a semi-war state.”32 The DPRK regularly warned that new United Nations sanctions would amount to a “declaration of war,” would have “grave consequences,” or would “force countermeasures.”33 It admonished the United States that it would impose “slap for slap” and “an eye for an eye and a war for a war.”34 In December 1993, the Chief of the General Staff promised that during the decade, the North would seek unification “with guns ... without fail.”35 Most notoriously, a few

29 Sigal, Disarming Strangers, p. 111; Wit, Poneman and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 152. 30 Sigal, Disarming Strangers. p. 63; Wit, Poneman and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 53. 31 Ibid., pp. 72-4. 32 Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb, 104; Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 24. 33 Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb, 112-13, 147; Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 37. 34 Sigal, Disarming Strangers, p. 125. 35 Nanto, North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, p. 11.

Continuities and Discontinuities

Table 4.3

65

The Threat, 1993-1994

Threaten withdrawal/withdraw from international treaties, and organizations Threaten fuel reprocessing and reloading Threaten to have/make nuclear weapons Threaten war Engage in physical demonstrations

months later, the North’s chief delegate to inter-Korean talks threatened that in case of war, Seoul would “turn into a sea of fire.” The final threats in the DPRK arsenal were physical acts that reinforced, or in some cases carried through, diplomatic threats. In March 1993, following the “sea of fire” comment, North Korea conducted military exercises, tested its military communications system, and held a massive public rally against the deployment of the Patriot missile.36 In May, it conspicuously test-launched its Nodong 1 missile over the Sea of Japan. Early in 1994, it put the army on alert, and U.S. intelligence spotted what appeared to be two new long-range missiles. In May 1994 the DPRK crossed one of the United States’ “red lines” and began carrying out its threat to defuel the five-megawatt reactor and for good measure fired an anti-ship missile. In December, it shot down a U.S. helicopter and briefly held one of its crew. Table 4.3 lists the main elements of the threat. The Second Crisis: Missiles and Caves, 1998-2000 Though most U.S. observers have dubbed the escalating U.S.-DPRK crisis after 2002 the “second nuclear crisis,” the seriousness of an earlier confrontation in 1998-2000 is an important part of the overall crisis pattern and should not be overlooked.37 When former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry visited the North 36 Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb, pp. 127, 132, 155; Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 160. 37 See, for example, Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo, eds, North Korea’s Second Nuclear Crisis and Northeast Asian Security (Aldershot: Ashgate 2007). Others have applied the designation of “crisis” in different way. Jun, for example, identifies the first crisis with the 1991 dispute over safeguards, the second with the 1993 DPRK announcement of withdrawal from the NPT, the third with the DPRK’s 1994 decision to unload spent fuel at Yongbyon, and the fourth with the October 2002 clash over the DPRK’s secret HEU program. Bong-Geun Jun, “North Korean Nuclear Crisis: An End in Sight?”, Arms Control Today (January/February 2006), .

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in 1998 as special envoy, he judged the level of the crisis as equivalent to that in June 1994, when the United States came close to launching strikes against the DPRK’s nuclear facilities. From the United States’ point of view, the second crisis was brought about by fears that the DPRK was secretly conducting prohibited nuclear activities in an underground facility at Geumchang-ri, and was exacerbated by a long-range missile launch over Japan in August 1998. From the DPRK point of view, this second crisis arose over the United States’ delinquency in meeting its Agreed Framework obligations. During the crisis, the DPRK was able to reinforce many elements of its demand, offer, and threat in several negotiating forums. The Demand, 1998-2000 As in 1993, the DPRK pressed the United States to recognize its sovereignty, including the sovereign right to strengthen national defense capabilities, and the legitimacy of its political system. As during the first crisis, the DPRK sought from the United States a “switchover” from its “hostile policy,” and a normalization of relations. The DPRK continued to emphasize its desire to be approached “on equal footing,” according to the principles of equality and reciprocity.38 Earlier demands for cancellation of joint U.S.-ROK military exercises were regularly repeated.39 What was different about the second crisis was that the DPRK’s core demand now focused upon getting the United States to fulfill obligations already undertaken in the Agreed Framework: timely delivery of heavy fuel oil, expedited construction of the promised LWRs, lifting of economic sanctions, and removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.40 It placed special emphasis on the “unavoidable commitment” to LWR delivery.41 The North claimed further that the United States should “make compensation for the economic losses inflicted on the DPRK” resulting from delays.42 It also continued to demand broad security assurances, including a “new peace mechanism,” a “peace treaty signed,” and the “U.S. military threat completely removed.”43 It deemed “vital” the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the South and lifting of the U.S. nuclear umbrella.44 When its 1998 missile test prompted a new set of negotiations, the DPRK added a second broad objective: striking a deal to end its missile program that one observer called “an Agreed Framework for missiles.”45 The DPRK extended 38 KCNA, May 28, 1999. 39 KCNA, June 8, October 25, 1998; February 2, 1999. 40 KCNA, March 30, 1998; June 22, 1998. 41 KCNA, September 6, 1999. 42 KCNA, January 8, 1999. 43 KCNA, December 12, 1998; April 29, 1999. 44 KCNA, July 13, 1998; January 28, 1999. 45 Jonathan D. Pollack, “The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework,” NAPSNET Special Report, May 5, 2003, .

Continuities and Discontinuities

Table 4.4

67

The Demand, 1998-2000

Completely discard “hostile policy” Cancel joint military exercises Provide security assurances Complete a peace treaty Meet Agreed Framework obligations Normalize ties, give equal treatment Engage the DPRK in direct bilateral talks Accept the sovereign right to nuclear energy and missile development Provide new economic compensation for concessions on missile program Undertake reciprocal disarmament measures

its claims to the sovereign right of self-defense to include the right “to develop, test and produce missiles.”46 The North’s demands for surrendering its missile program were similar in many respects to demands put forward in the talks on the nuclear program: transforming the overall “hostile policy” of the United States, providing security assurances, and ending U.S. sanctions. The DPRK demanded compensation as it had in the earlier negotiations, but this time for economic losses incurred from ending production and export of missiles.47 When it came to the negotiations over Geumchang-ri, the DPRK also demanded “an inspection fee” for a “one-time” inspection, as well as “political and economic compensation” for groundless slander and infringements of sovereignty connected with the affair.48 Reflecting efforts to frame outstanding issues in ways that reflected the DPRK’s claim to equal status, the DPRK demanded, at least in public, that the United States should eliminate all of its weapons of mass destruction.49 Table 4.4 summarizes the DPRK demand. The Offer, 1998-2000 During the second crisis, the DPRK’s offer centered largely upon cooperation in implementing the Agreed Framework, reducing its missile threat, and expanding talks on a variety of outstanding issues. Prior to the second crisis, the DPRK had consented to begin four-party talks on restoring peace on the Korean peninsula. Later it resumed long-delayed talks with the ROK and consented to bilateral talks 46 KCNA, March 31, 1999. 47 KCNA, January 8, 1999; KCNA March 31, 1999. During the 1993 crisis, Kim Jong Il had raised the idea of ending missile exports in return for economic assistance. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, p. 50. 48 KCNA, January 28, March 18, June 9, 1999. 49 KCNA, March 31, 1999.

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Table 4.5

The Offer, 1998-2000

Consent to talks with U.S. in a variety of forums Conduct talks with the ROK Resume suspended formal commitments/assume new commitments Provide reassurance, moderate propaganda Demonstrate tangible threat reduction Make side payments

with the United States, both on the missile issue and on the suspect facility at Geumchang-ri. Six rounds of missile talks were held before they were suspended in 2000. In addition to the formal talks mentioned above, the DPRK agreed to several high-level U.S. contacts, including a visit to Pyongyang by former Defense Secretary Perry in 1998 and a later visit by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. On substance, the DPRK offered to continue meeting its formal Agreed Framework commitments on the safe removal and storage of fuel rods. Most significantly, in bilateral missile talks, the DPRK offered to impose a missile test moratorium and to suspend missile sales, a particularly important issue for the United States.50 The DPRK agreed to settle the dispute about Geumchang-ri by consenting in March 1999 to an on-site inspection that eventually removed U.S. suspicions. The DPRK increased contacts with the ROK, leading to a highly publicized summit with ROK president Kim Dae-Jung in June 2000. Reassurance was another component of the DPRK offer. Throughout the period, the DPRK spoke of the United States as its “dialogue partner,” and repeated that it did not wish to regard the United States as a “sworn” or “permanent enemy.”51 Officials continued to promise never to make nuclear weapons. In the October 2000 U.S.-DPRK Joint Communiqué, the DPRK affirmed that “terrorism is an unacceptable threat to global security and peace, and that terrorism should be opposed in all its forms, including terrorist acts involving chemical, biological, or nuclear devices or materials.”52 In 1998, the United States and the DPRK held joint goodwill games. Following Perry’s visit and a U.S. agreement in September 1999 partially to lift sanctions, the DPRK softened broadcast criticisms of the United States, concentrating its fire on “conservative hard-liners” in Washington.53 50 KCNA, September 24, 1999. The offer was extended to Secretary Albright during her visit, Pollack, “The United States, North Korea and the End of the Agreed Framework.” 51 KCNA, August 5, September 27, 1999. 52 Daniel A. Pinkston and Phillip C. Saunders, “Seeing North Korea Clearly,” Survival, 45, vol. 3 (Autumn, 2003):, 89. 53 KCNA, December 10, 1999.

Continuities and Discontinuities

Table 4.6

69

The Threat, 1998-2000

Threats to withdraw from international obligations Threats to withdraw from Agreed Framework Threats to test/sell missiles War threats Physical demonstrations Suspension of or setting conditions for talks

The DPRK continued to make side payments in the form of returning (for a price) remains of U.S. service personnel. Table 4.5 lists the main elements of the DPRK offer. The Threat, 1998-2000 Throughout the second crisis, the DPRK threatened to abandon its Agreed Framework obligations, to resume missile testing and continue missile sales, and to engage in unspecified retaliation for perceived “hostile policies.” The DPRK repeatedly warned that in light of U.S. lapses in implementation, the DPRK could not be bound by the Agreed Framework.54 The DPRK threatened to restart its five-megawatt reactor, reopen its reprocessing plant, and resume construction of its two larger power plants. It even briefly suspended canning of spent fuel. The DPRK warned further that if the United States reneged on that agreement, “our only option would be to go nuclear and to do it publicly.”55 DPRK spokespersons even threatened that the “DPRK would fabricate nuclear weapons to target Japan and America,” and on another occasion, that it would “sell nuclear weapons to any country, to the highest bidder.”56 As the missile issue rose to prominence, the DPRK variously threatened to develop, test, and deploy missiles as necessary.57 The DPRK was able to parley its missile-test moratorium into a threat to resume testing. The DPRK frequently resorted to general threats of war, and at one point asserted its “right to preemptive strike.”58 U.S.-ROK War maneuvers, the DPRK claimed, “may lead to the second Korean war,” a war in which the United States would be “reduced to ashes” by “a thousand-fold annihilating blow” and wiped 54 KCNA, June 22, December 21, 1998; January 12, 1999. 55 New York Times, January 3, 1999. 56 Nicholas Kristoff, “North Korea’s Hardening Line on U.S. Raises Fear of New Crisis,” New York Times, January 3, 1999; January 1999, p. 13. 57 KCNA, June 16, 1998. 58 KCNA, December 6, 1998.

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“from this planet for good.”59 Echoing the 1994 threat against Seoul, a military spokesman threatened that in case of war, U.S. forward bases would be turned into “a sea of fire.”60 As in 1993-94 and succeeding years, the DPRK resorted to numerous physical demonstrations, such as military intrusions into the South, a nine-day naval confrontation in June of 1999, suspension of return of remains of U.S. military personnel, and most notably, the test of a long-range Taepo-dong missile in August 1998.61 The DPRK briefly suspended four-party talks in April 1998. Table 4.6 lists the principal DPRK threats. The Third Crisis: The Axis Strikes Back, 2002-2008 The third crisis has recapitulated many features of the first and second, though it escalated far beyond them when the DPRK conducted a nuclear test in October 2006. The story of how that crisis escalated following U.S. charges in 2002 that the DPRK was concealing a uranium enrichment program is a familiar one. By February 2003, the DPRK had restarted its reactor and resumed reprocessing of nuclear fuel rods. The result of the DPRK’s crisis escalation was to force a return, at least in some respects, to the status quo ante prior to the conclusion of the Agreed Framework. The DPRK was generally in a weaker position than it had been in 1993. The economic gap between itself and the ROK had continued to widen; the United States was militarily more powerful, and governed by an administration both more determined to augment and use that power and less willing to compromise. In 2003, not only did the United States take actions in Iraq that the North deemed threatening, but it publicly espoused a defense doctrine that would have sanctioned pre-emptive war. In a few respects, however, the situation was more favorable. For most of the period, a sympathetic government in Seoul staunchly opposed undermining or provoking Pyongyang. Furthermore, by 2006 the DPRK’s “dialogue partners” at the six-party talks faced the difficult task of getting the DPRK to dismantle an existing nuclear weapons capability, not just to forgo weapons development. The Demand, 2002-2008 The DPRK’s demand throughout the third crisis has been remarkably similar to that advanced in 1994 and 1998: an end to the “hostile” U.S. policy of sanctions and pressure, binding security guarantees, compensation for freezing and then 59 John Bolton, “U.S. Taking Limp-wristed Approach to N. Korea,” Taipei Times, September 22, 1999 ; KCNA December 4, December 5, 1998; May 30, 1999. 60 KCNA, December 17, 1998. 61 For an extended list of similar acts, see Hannah Fischer, “North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950-2007,” Congressional Research Service, updated April 20, 2007.

Continuities and Discontinuities

71

dismantling the nuclear program, high-level bilateral talks, and a “package settlement” implemented according to the formula “words for words, actions for actions.” Prior to the breakdown of the Agreed Framework in November 2002, the position of the DPRK was that the United States should continue to abide by the terms of that agreement and the more recent Joint Communiqué of October 2000, which included a commitment to “redouble their commitment and their efforts to fulfill their respective obligations ... under the Agreed Framework.”62 Most important, the DPRK’s core demand continued to focus on resurrecting Agreed Framework’s basic formula: U.S. recognition of DPRK sovereignty, binding assurances of non-aggression, and removal of hindrances to the DPRK’s economic development.63 Ken Quinones contends that he was told explicitly by a North Korean official in 2004 that the DPRK wanted to achieve its security objectives “the same way we did it in 1993-1994 ... We want a new agreed framework.”64 Even during the six-party talks, the DPRK has continued to insist that the nuclear issue “should be solved between the DPRK and the U.S.”65 Security, including security of the regime, continued to be at the top of the DPRK agenda, as captured in the stock demand for a “switchover in U.S. hostile policy” as “the main key to the settlement of the nuclear issue.”66 As in previous negotiations, the demand included replacing the armistice agreement with a peace treaty, scrapping the U.S.-ROK alliance (and a halt in joint military exercises), and an end to the U.S. nuclear threat. The DPRK even demanded “comprehensive denuclearization” that would include dismantlement of the U.S. nuclear arsenal “in a verifiable and irreversible manner.”67 The DPRK demanded that the United States abandon its efforts to create a theater missile defense shield.68 Having concluded that presidential “political” guarantees, such as the agreements with presidents G.H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, had a shelf-life no longer than their respective terms of office, the DPRK wanted guarantees that could survive the 62 Robert Carlin, “Wabbit in Free Fall,” Policy Forum Online 06-78A: September 21st, 2006 . 63 Pollack, “The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework.” 64 C. Kenneth Quinones, “The United States and North Korea: Observations of an Intermediary,” Address, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, November 2, 2006. Peter Hayes and David von Hippel conclude that because of the identification of LWRs with the legitimacy of Kim Jong Il’s rule as heir of Kim Il Sung, obtaining the LWRs would be “the DPRK’s highest goal ... and will be the last option to be given up, if ever”; “Anticipating Six-Party Energy Negotiations,” Nautilus Institute, Special Report 07-042A, May 31, 2007. 65 Jonathan D. Pollack, “The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework.” 66 KCNA, July 12, 2005. 67 Foreign Ministry statement, KCNA, March 31, 2005; October 19, 2006; October 23, 2007; April 30, 2003. 68 KCNA, August 2, 2006; October 23, 2007.

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change of administrations—either a “non-aggression treaty,” or “a written nonaggression guarantee.”69 As in the past, the DPRK demanded the lifting of economic sanctions and removal of the DPRK from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.70 When the United States imposed a series of new financial sanctions in 2005, including the well-publicized sanctions on Banco Delta Asia (BDA), the DPRK put removal of those sanctions at the top of its list of conditions for resuming talks. It continued to demand that the United States abandon its efforts to seek United Nations sanctions. Finally, the DPRK insisted that the United States discontinue its “tailored containment” policy that later evolved into the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).71 Countering the Bush administration’s demand for Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Disarmament (CVID) prior to the receipt of any rewards, the DPRK revived the formula that had served as the foundation of the Agreed Framework: step-by-step, reciprocal, and simultaneous actions—a package solution in which the DPRK would receive compensation for its cooperation. The DPRK expressed this concept in the oft-repeated phrase, “words for words, action for action.”72 Initially, the DPRK would freeze its program in exchange for “removal from state sponsor list, lifting economic and military sanctions, provision of heavy fuel oil, electricity and other aid.” Only much later, after other conditions had been met, would the DPRK dismantle its nuclear program. The DPRK continued, as it had in 1994, to demand energy compensation— “reward for freeze”—in the form of heavy fuel oil deliveries. In May 2001, the DPRK reiterated its March 2000 demand that the U.S. increase the amount of energy compensation in light of delays in implementing the LWR project.73 Throughout the six-party talks, the DPRK insisted that “loss of electricity is a crucial issue,” and that “only if compensation issue is settled can the DPRK freeze plan be achieved.”74 The DPRK insisted that reviving the lapsed LWR deal was “most essential,” “a basic benchmark of confidence,” and “a core issue.”75 For the DPRK, the LWRs were more than an energy source. They were also a symbol of a “sovereign right to peaceful use” of nuclear energy and “a physical guarantee for

69 KCNA, October 24, 2003; October 25, 2003. 70 Niksch, North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program, Congressional Research Service, U.S. Congress, updated February 21, 2006, p. 3. 71 KCNA, January 29, 2003. 72 KCNA, July 24, 2004. 73 KCNA, May 16, 2001. 74 KCNA, April 29, 2004. 75 KCNA, Foreign Ministry statement October 18, 2003; KCNA, September 19, 2005; KCNA, Foreign Ministry statement, September 21, 2005; KCNA, September 27, 2005; KCNA October 15, 2005. And see Jae-Jean Suh, “North Korea’s Strategic Decisions After the February 13 Agreement,” Nautilus Institute, PFO 07-030A, April 10, 2007, .

Continuities and Discontinuities

Table 4.7

73

The Demand, 2002-2008

Abide by previous agreements (including new commitments under the October 2007 joint document). Provide binding security assurances Conclude a peace treaty End “hostile policy” Normalize diplomatic relations, conduct equal relations Lift sanctions and cease obstructing DPRK development Provide economic/energy compensation Respect sovereign right to nuclear program Carry out reciprocal U.S. nuclear disarmament Solve issues bilaterally Accept a sequenced, reciprocal package solution End the U.S.-ROK alliance, joint exercises Retract insults

confidence-building.”76 Beyond that, they demonstrated that Kim Jong Il could get a deal at least the equal of that reached by his father, the “Great Leader.”77 Many key demands were framed as rights—a right to a peaceful energy program, a right to reprocess fuel, and a right “to possess not only nukes ... but also any type of weapon more powerful than that.”78 After the October 3, 2007 joint document had spelled out a concrete road map for implementing the Beijing agreement, the DPRK insisted that the United States meticulously fulfill its commitments “to begin the process of removing the DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act ... in parallel with the DPRK’s actions.” It also has demanded that the United States nullify the Human Rights Act, retract administration characterizations of the DPRK as “an outpost of tyranny,” a “criminal regime,” and part of an “axis of evil.” Table 4.7 lists the principal DPRK demands. The Offer, 2002-2008 In general, the DPRK offer repeated the main elements of previous offers from the 1990s: the promise of a negotiated solution, offers to abide by previous agreements 76 KCNA, Foreign Ministry statement, September 21, 2005; Chosun Ilbo, cited in Nautilus Institute, NAPSNET Daily Report, October 11, 2005. 77 Peter Hayes and David von Hippel, “Anticipating Six-Party Energy Negotiations,” Nautilus Institute, Special Report 07-043A, May 31, 2007, . 78 KCNA, January 18, 2003; October 15, 2005.

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or to enter into new commitments, agreement to allow renewed inspections, promise of a freeze and eventual dismantlement of nuclear facilities, reassurances about intent, and various side payments. The breakdown of talks following the Kelly visit in September 2002 allowed the DPRK to use the promise of renewed talks as leverage. Whenever the DPRK suspended talks, it hinted that talks could be renewed if the price was right. Late in 2002, the DPRK announced that “everything is negotiable, including inspections of the enrichment program,” in order “to clear the U.S. of its worries over its security.”79 In April 2003 talks in Beijing, the DPRK reiterated that the North Koreans might “get rid of all their nuclear program [and] stop their missile exports” while agreeing at the same time to accept the proposed six-party format for negotiations.80 At the June 2004 session of the six-party talks, the DPRK offered “to freeze all the facilities related to nuclear weapons and products churned out by their operation, refrain from producing more nukes, transferring and testing them and the freeze would be the first start that would lead to the ultimate dismantlement of the nuclear weapons program [sic].”81After its nuclear test, DPRK officials, and Kim Jong Il himself indicated a desire to resume talks, but only after U.S. sanctions on Banco Delta Asia (BDA) were lifted. Track II contacts continued to be an important channel for the DPRK to hint at concessions or offer reassurance. The DPRK also used willingness to engage in other negotiations, such as North-South talks and a second summit meeting, as a sign of flexibility. In its statement justifying its missile launch, the DPRK also restated its pledge to “denuclearize the Korean peninsula in a negotiated peaceful manner.”82 The DPRK skillfully exploited the anxiety of its interlocutors by turning its willingness to return to talks into a “reward.” Regularly since 2003, the DPRK has offered to resume its prior commitments and to undertake new ones. It has repeated its commitment to the 1992 denuclearization agreement and its willingness to return to the Nonproliferation Treaty.83 In 2002, the DPRK extended the missile test moratorium that it had first declared in 1999. The DPRK agreed at long last to provide the complete declaration of all nuclear activities promised in the Agreed Framework, a declaration whose accuracy was still in dispute as the end of 2008. The centerpiece of the DPRK’s offer at the six-party talks, beginning in 2003, was to offer to reimpose a freeze on its nuclear facilities, eventually including “all facilities and products.”84 Disablement and eventual dismantlement would follow at the end of the “actions for action” process 79 Reuters, “White House Urges Pyongyang to End Weapons Program,” New York Times, November 3, 2002. 80 Paul Kerr, “North Korea, U.S. Meet; Pyongyang Said to Claim Nukes,” Arms Control Today, May 2003, . 81 Foreign Ministry Statement, KCNA, June 29, 2004. 82 KCNA, July 6, 2006. 83 KCNA, September 20, 2005. 84 Bob Edwards, “How the Bush Administration is Trying to Manage the North Korean Nuclear Threat,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, October 21, 2003; Selig

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envisioned by the DPRK.85 These pledges were enshrined in the 2007 Beijing agreement. Although the DPRK briefly suspended the disablement process to protest failure of the United States to remove it from the state sponsors of terrorism list, once the U.S. government announced in October 2008 that it was taking the DPRK off the list, the DPRK promptly lifted a ban on UN inspections and resumed disabling its Yongbyon facility. Although most U.S. experts remain skeptical that the DPRK would give up its entire nuclear arsenal, the DPRK has promised that if its demands are met, “it will feel no need to keep even a single nuke.” Even as it announced its withdrawal from the NPT in 2003, the DPRK offered to “prove through a separate verification between the DPRK and the U.S. that it does not make nuclear weapons” and prepared to allow resumption of continuity inspections. In January 2004, Dr. Siegfried Hecker was allowed to complete a very limited inspection of the DPRK’s nuclear facilities. By the time the February 2006 Beijing Agreement was reached, the DPRK had removed its objections to a return of the IAEA to Yongbyon. The DPRK also employed reassurance, much as it had during the two previous negotiations. In the early months of the Bush administration, the DPRK sent positive signals to encourage resumption of talks. The DPRK promptly expressed regret following a June 2001 naval confrontation; and in Kim’s summit with Junichiro Koizumi (itself an effort to send a positive signal), Kim apologized for the abductions of Japanese citizens. The DPRK quickly sent condolences to the United States over the 9/11 attacks. Until 2006, it continued to pledge that it would never make, test, keep, or transfer nuclear weapons. Kim claimed that the DPRK had “no intention,” ... “no reason to possess even a single nuclear weapon.”86 To lend more credence to such claims, the DPRK asserted—even after the nuclear test—that it had been Kim Il Sung’s wish “that the peninsula be denuclearized.”87 In 2005, the DPRK affirmed that “we do not intend to possess nuclear weapons forever.”88 Paradoxically, it simultaneously pledged both to continue “to do its utmost to realize the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” and at the same time to act as “a responsible nuclear state” that would not resort to first use of nuclear weapons.89 The North maintained its claim that its nuclear program was

Harrison, “DPRK Trip Report,” Nautilus Institute PFO 05-39A, May 10, 2005, . 85 Foreign Ministry Statement, KCNA, September 21, 2005; KCNA, April 24, 2003. 86 Donga Ilbo, cited in Napsnet, January 24, 2005; Associated Press, “N. Korean leader hints at rejoining nuclear talks,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 18, 2005 via Proquest database. “Full Text: N Korea Nuclear Agreement,” BBC News, September 19, 2005, . 87 KCNA, June 15, 2005; October 11, 2006. 88 KCNA, July 12, 2005. 89 “N. Korea Statement on Nuclear Test,” BBC News, October 3, 2006,

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Table 4.8

The Offer, 2001-2008

Agree to talks Pursue talks, improved relations with the ROK Offer to resume/undertake new formal commitments Agree to renewed inspections Implement a freeze Dismantle nuclear facilities Make complete declaration of nuclear materials in accord with its NPT obligations Prospect of eventual “dismantlement of the deterrent force” after LWRs Provide reassurance Make side payments

for peaceful purposes only, and was “not aimed to threaten or blackmail others.”90 Turning to the ROK, the DPRK proclaimed that it would never use nuclear weapons against its countrymen.91 On a matter that was of heightened importance to the United States following the attacks of 9/11, the DPRK insisted (despite having claimed the right to do so) that it had “no intention of transferring any means of that nuclear deterrent,” and that it was opposed to selling either nuclear substances or missiles.92 This notransfer pledge was explicitly included in the October 3, 2007 Joint Document, and claimed to preclude “secret nuclear cooperation” with Syria, as was being charged.93 The DPRK also publicly spoke out against terrorism and signed two United Nations conventions on terrorism, and pledged that the DPRK “would not stand against the United States but respect and treat it as a friend.”94 The DPRK continued to offer side payments in the form of North-South contacts including ministerial meetings and resumption of general-level military talks, family reunions, agreements on rail, shipping, and economic cooperation, and progress on implementing these. In response to U.S. sanctions on BDA, the DPRK advanced its own proposals for cooperation on the issues of money laundering and counterfeiting. Until the United States suspended the program in 2005, the DPRK continued to return the remains of U.S. service personnel. Following the February 2007 Beijing agreement, the United States and the DPRK resumed their joint recovery efforts. Table 4.8 lists the main points of the DPRK offer.

90 KCNA, June 9, 2003. 91 Xinhua, November 23, 2006, cited in Nautilus Institute, NAPSNET Daily Report, November 28, 2006. 92 KCNA, June 19, 2003. 93 KCNA, September 18, 2007. 94 KCNA, June 17, 2005; October 25, 2003.

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The Threat, 2002-2008 Since 2002, the DPRK has employed tried and true threats: threatening to resume and later to accelerate its nuclear program, to launch militarily retaliation in response to sanctions or attack, to sell nuclear materials to third countries, to end its missile test moratorium, and to suspend negotiations. As in 1994, when the DPRK de-fueled its reactor, the DPRK showed a willingness to cross red lines set by the United States and its partners, in this case, by testing a nuclear weapon. The threat to test “the nuclear deterrent,” and of course, the 2006 test itself, negated previous assertions by both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il that the DPRK did not desire and would never have nuclear weapons.95 Threatening to suspend, or actually suspending talks, proved effective in light of the anxieties of several six-party talk participants about the consequences of failure. The threat was normally linked to a core demand, but at times it was employed as a tactical expedient to express displeasure with alleged insults by various U.S. or other leaders. On two separate occasions, the DPRK actually suspended participation in the six-party talks for a period of months, once following the June 2004 round (for eight months), and again following the November 2005 round (for fifteen months). The DPRK at times suspended North-South talks. The DPRK also found it expedient to threaten to break, or to break, previous agreements and pledges. As early as February 2001, the DPRK revived its warning that it might have to abandon the Agreed Framework and restart its reactor if the commitment to supply LWRs were not “honestly” implemented.96 From 2001 onward, the DPRK regularly warned that it might be compelled to abandon its missile test moratorium—a threat it finally carried out in July 2006. On one occasion, an official even told a Western diplomat that the DPRK would sell missiles to whoever wanted them.97 In January 2008, the DPRK announced that it would “adjust the tempo of the disablement of some nuclear facilities” in line with what it claimed was U.S. failure to take promised actions according to the principle of “action for action.”98 In the late summer of 2008, the DPRK carried through on this threat when it suspended disablement and even took initial steps toward restarting its program. Following a similar logic, for months it stalled on submitting the “complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs” to which it had agreed. Until 2003, the DPRK referred obliquely to “the physical deterrent force.” At the April 2003 Beijing talks, the DPRK for the first time asserted more directly 95 China Daily, cited in Nautilus Institute, NAPSNET Daily Report, October 21, 2003. 96 Pollack, “The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework.” 97 KCNA May 4, 2001. Don Kirk, “North Korea Refuses to Stop Arms Exports, Delegation Says,” New York Times, May 5, 2001. 98 KCNA, January 4, 2008.

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Table 4.9

The Threat, 2002-2008

Suspend or threaten to suspend talks Break/threaten to break agreements Delay agreed steps Engage in crisis escalation Make military threats Engage in physical demonstrations Suspend cooperation with the ROK

that it possessed nuclear weapons.99 In 2005, Kim Gye-gwan boasted that the DPRK had “enough bombs to defend against a U.S. attack” and that the DPRK was building more.100 Connecting the nuclear and missile threats, North Koreans told Selig Harrison: “We are ready to put warheads on our missiles whenever we want.”101 Its October 2006 nuclear test carried out a threat made in 2003 to display “its nuclear deterrent ... as a physical force.”102 Following the test, the DPRK alternated between continued expressions of willingness to end its nuclear programs and assertions that the DPRK could not give up nuclear weapons, which were required as a “reliable war deterrent.”103 At the extreme end of the threat continuum, the DPRK warned of military retaliation and even war if the U.S. crossed certain “red lines.” As it had done for decades, the DPRK announced that a particular U.S. action—a speech, a military exercise, new sanctions—was equivalent to a “declaration of war” or “little short of a declaration of war.” This was the case when the DPRK condemned Security Council Resolution 1718 as “a declaration of war against our Republic.”104 More explicitly, the DPRK warned that a U.S. attack on “our peaceful nuclear facilities … [might] spark off a total war,” and hinted that “pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S..”105 Just as the DPRK offer hinted at “words for words, action for action,” the threat suggested that the DPRK would “counter force with force and confrontation with confrontation.”106 99 Kerr, “North Korea, U.S. Meet.” 100 “N. Korea Admits Building More Nuclear Bombs,” ABC News, June 8, 2005,

101 Selig Harrison, “DPRK Trip Report,” Nautilus Institute, Policy Forum Online 05-39A, 2005,