Tag Archive for: North Korea

How will Biden approach the problem of North Korea?

The inauguration of Joe Biden as president on 20 January 2021 will usher in another chapter in the United States’ fraught relations with North Korea. The Trump administration tried summit diplomacy from 2018 through to 2019, after a year of high tensions in which threats of ‘fire and fury’ and nuclear brinkmanship rose to alarming levels. The summit diplomacy—as expected—failed to reverse Pyongyang’s determination to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.

The reality is that North Korea will not, under any circumstances, denuclearise, no matter what concessions the US might offer as part of any future ‘principled diplomacy’. Biden must work on the basis that North Korea is a nuclear-weapon state in every sense of the term.

A return under Biden to the Obama administration’s approach of ‘strategic patience’ is highly unlikely, simply because it achieved nothing, and instead only gave North Korea time to develop more capable nuclear forces. Biden knows that North Korea isn’t going to stop developing new nuclear and missile capabilities. New submarine-launched ballistic missiles and road-mobile solid-fuelled intercontinental ballistic missiles are probably high on Pyongyang’s agenda after revealing the massive liquid-fuelled Hwasong-16 ICBM at the 75th anniversary celebrations in October.

The North Koreans have called Biden a ‘rabid dog’ that should be ‘beaten to death’, so it seems unlikely that Kim Jong-un will send love letters as he supposedly did with Donald Trump. Instead, Kim is more likely to test the Biden administration with new missile tests, including the prospect of resuming tests of long-range ballistic missiles—and potentially a new nuclear test. The hope would be that Biden would respond meekly and be cowed into diplomacy that leads to concessions, with Pyongyang giving little or nothing in return.

That’s unlikely to succeed; Biden shares none of the adoration of Kim that Trump clearly developed. Instead, another North Korean long-range missile test would only prompt the Biden administration to move swiftly to reverse the erosion of the US’s relations with South Korea and strengthen the relationship with Japan, and a nuclear test would reinforce the US’s incentive to push back hard against Pyongyang.

The costs of a return to missile and nuclear testing should be clearly communicated to Pyongyang by Biden soon after his inauguration, and he should move to add substance to rhetoric by quickly strengthening US extended nuclear deterrence security guarantees to both Seoul and Tokyo. Such a step would enhance US allies’ confidence in Washington’s commitment to meet the challenge posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. It would send a clear signal to Pyongyang not to act irresponsibly.

Such a move would present its own challenges for the US. Biden is yet to formally announce his administration’s stance on nuclear forces, but strengthened extended deterrence would run counter to the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform of adopting a sole-purpose declaration posture for US nuclear forces. The US’s non-nuclear prompt-strike capabilities for pre-emptive deterrence aren’t mature enough to provide an alternative to traditional nuclear deterrence. Biden may find that the growing nuclear and missile threat posed by North Korea militates against changing the US nuclear posture prematurely.

It’s likely that with efforts by a Biden administration to strengthen extended nuclear deterrence and repair the damage done to the defence relationship with Seoul by destructive bickering over the financial aspects of hosting US forces in South Korea, Pyongyang recognises that the window for diplomatic engagement with the US is closing. The economic sanctions will remain in place, there will be no peace treaty or US withdrawal of forces, and all Kim will have left will be his nuclear stick.

For Kim, this is a trap of his own making. Rather than accept the opportunity for denuclearisation in return for the lifting of sanctions and a peace deal that could eventually see reducing tensions on the peninsula and, one day, the possibility of some form of reunification, North Korea remains defiantly unwilling to denuclearise. The US can’t give Pyongyang concessions without getting something in return.

A token gesture, such as the offer of once again closing Yongbyong made by Kim at the Hanoi summit in 2019, really amounts to trying to sell the same horse twice. It’s not a serious move towards denuclearisation. Step-by-step engagement with the US based on a real and verifiable arrangement for denuclearisation in return for US and allied economic and political engagement would be the enlightened path. That’s not going to happen, so expect a new period of increasing tensions to begin once Biden takes office.

North Korea’s new big stick

In a midnight military parade to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the country’s rule under the despotic Kim family, North Korea revealed a new monster intercontinental ballistic missile—perhaps one of the world’s largest—on the back of an equally large transporter-erector-launcher vehicle. The new ICBM has nuclear-weapons analysts and North Korea watchers guessing at the missile’s capability and, more broadly, considering what it means for US – North Korea relations, with either a second Donald Trump administration or a Joe Biden White House.

The missile’s existence demonstrates that North Korea has been working assiduously on enhancing its nuclear-warfighting capabilities, even as Trump boasted that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat to the US. It reinforces North Korea’s status as an effective nuclear-weapon state and suggests Pyongyang has no plans for eliminating its nuclear capabilities.

Trump may think that he and Kim Jong-un ‘fell in love’, but Kim has made it clear that the love is unrequited. Trump has been used. Most North Korea watchers predicted that nothing would come of Washington’s efforts to convince Pyongyang to accept comprehensive and verifiable nuclear disarmament. As expected, it’s back to square one.

North Korea’s new big stick is large—much bigger than the Hwasong-15 tested in 2017. It would potentially have sufficient throw-weight for multiple warheads, or a large, high-yield warhead and lots of penetration aids. It could hold at risk a range of targets across the continental United States, most likely large urban areas.

Either loadout would make it more difficult for US missile-defence systems in Alaska to counter this missile. It would be far more expensive for the US to add more interceptors than it would be for North Korea to simply build more of these large ICBMs and place more warheads on each of them. The cost–benefit advantage is definitely with Pyongyang, and this missile highlights the weakness of current interceptor-based missile-defence systems.

Such a large missile can’t be developed quickly, and its existence was alluded to by Kim back in January when he referred to a ‘new strategic weapon’. It was thought that it would be either a solid-fuelled road-mobile ICBM or a ballistic missile submarine. It seems highly unlikely that the missile is a fake; a mock-up could be quickly detected by the US intelligence community and would be counterproductive for the Kim regime’s credibility.

Alongside the new ICBM, the North Koreans showed the Pukguksong-4, which is based on the Pukguksong-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile. It could be an enhanced solid-fuelled SLBM, likely to be incorporated into a ‘Sinpo-C’ conventionally powered ballistic missile submarine as the basis for a second-strike capability, at least against a regional target such as Guam. Or, perhaps more worryingly, it could be a road-mobile solid-fuelled ICBM, which would be harder to monitor and disrupt before launch. That possibility was reinforced by the fact that the missile was displayed with a Korean People’s Army crew alongside. Also displayed were more advanced, solid-fuelled, road-mobile short- and medium-range missiles and battlefield rockets that extend North Korea’s ability to strike at targets deeper into South Korea.

These new missile capabilities will undermine any claims by Trump that his efforts towards summit diplomacy with Kim have been successful. If Washington doubles down on such diplomacy, the only outcome would be North Korean demands for concessions from the US. These would probably include a peace treaty designed to make the withdrawal of US forces from the Korean peninsula inevitable; the lifting of already weakened economic sanctions; and perhaps a pull-back of US nuclear-capable forces from the region. North Korea will give little in return, and certainly, with this missile being paraded about, denuclearisation isn’t likely to be on Kim’s agenda for any future summit. There would be little to gain from holding such a discussion when it’s clear North Korea is prioritising a nuclear weapons build-up.

At some point, Kim may decide to test the new missile, which would give him a new lever in any negotiations and, if the tests were successful, would add credibility to North Korea’s ICBM capability and cause a new round of tension with the US. Would a second Trump administration return to ‘fire and fury’, noting how close the crisis of 2017 came to war? Or, if Biden wins, might Kim decide to test the new administration by launching his new ICBM—perhaps over Japan?

A Biden White House will likely to focus on reinforcing and restoring confidence in US alliance structures, particularly with Japan and South Korea. Washington’s alliance with Seoul was seriously damaged by Trump’s efforts to extract greater financial payment for the hosting of US forces in South Korea and his constant suggestions that they could be withdrawn.

A Biden administration, in confronting a more challenging North Korean nuclear capability, must focus on reinforcing the US’s extended nuclear deterrence security guarantees to South Korea and Japan, or risk increased consideration in Seoul and Tokyo about options for developing independent nuclear deterrent capabilities.

Biden should also reinforce development of prompt-strike ‘left of launch’ options for the US to counter the threat of road-mobile ballistic missiles. The development of effective space-based surveillance and long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles operating in ‘near space’ would enable the monitoring of North Korean road-mobile ICBMs and the ability to strike them while they’re being fuelled prior to launch. This could be done with hypersonic non-nuclear precision weapons and would strengthen deterrence by denial.

Of course, these developments can’t be viewed in isolation from the broader US–China strategic competition. Beijing ultimately wants US forces out of northeast Asia, and getting US forces off the Korean peninsula would be a first step in that process, a goal that naturally aligns with Kim’s interests. A Kim who could use his more capable nuclear weapons to provide leverage to act in ways Beijing doesn’t control wouldn’t be good news for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, however.

A Biden administration’s diplomatic approach to North Korea may be to restart a multilateral process, akin to the six-party talks, which China could then exploit to achieve its own objectives. If he becomes president, Biden will need to be wary of being played for a sucker by both Beijing and Pyongyang in the same way that Kim played Trump.

Could a President Biden face a triple North Korea crisis?

North Korea presents a potential Biden administration with some deeply complicated problems and, quite likely, a crisis to manage soon after the presidential poll in November.

No one would be surprised if Kim Jong-un attempted to generate a crisis during the presidential transition period as a way of gaining Biden’s attention, an attempt to reopen direct communications and a way to extract concessions on sanctions. Pyongyang may test intercontinental-range ballistic missiles or threaten a nuclear test.

What can Joe Biden do about North Korea? He should admit that neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump had the right strategy. Obama’s ‘strategic patience’ strategy didn’t amount to much more than watching Kim accelerate attempts to develop reliable nuclear weapons and missiles. Few obvious disincentives were put in Kim’s way. Trump’s audacious engagement strategy came to nothing after calmer heads in the administration concluded that the North had no intention to surrender its capabilities.

Biden starts with an empty policy cupboard: the reality that North Korea has a believable but limited nuclear capability and a porous but somewhat effective sanctions regime. Beyond these threadbare realities, I suggest that Biden should take the following steps.

First, Biden should surround himself with a bipartisan group of the smartest policy minds he can recruit, thinking through all possible options for Korean policy. We can only hope that the era of gut instinct and real-estate videos is behind us. Let a creative brains trust have a crack at some lateral thinking.

Second, Biden should reach out to Seoul, reassuring it that America’s presence is rock solid. While he’s at it, Biden should quietly but firmly bring South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe into a trilateral dialogue designed to help South Korea and Japan overcome their differences in the face of far bigger strategic challenges.

Third, Biden should gather the allies to make it clear that the best way to deal with North Korea is from a platform of shared allied intent. This engagement cuts both ways—America needs to understand that the allies are looking for leadership and want to confidently judge that their interests will not be undercut by random deal-brokering of the Trump variety. For his part, Biden should be clear that allies and regional friends must shoulder more of their own security burden. This is not Washington’s problem alone.

Finally, Biden should appoint a high-level representative to engage with North Korea. A direct line of communication has been opened and it should be kept open, but there should be no prospect of a meeting between Biden and Kim until—and if—major strides towards controlled denuclearisation happen.

So many factors could disrupt these plans. Kim’s health looks to be poor. An attempted leadership transition might already be happening. What of coronavirus? Can a nation in deep lockdown for over 70 years really keep the virus at bay?

Biden may well find himself dealing with a North Korean triple crisis of an unsure dynastic succession happening during a viral outbreak and escalating nuclear confrontation. There is no easy transition to a government plan for that.

Kim goes back on script

Like the leading character in a long-running television series, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un kicked off the latest crisis on the Korean peninsula with familiar theatrics. After cutting off all communications with South Korea earlier this month, the Kim regime blew up the building in which it had previously hosted South Korean diplomats. It redeployed troops into demilitarised border areas and issued renewed threats of violence against the South. Those displays of bombast followed Kim’s scene-stealing performance in May, when he announced that North Korea would boost its investment in ‘nuclear war deterrence’.

Yesterday, however, North Korean state media reported that the country’s Central Military Commission has decided to suspend ‘military action plans’ against South Korea. How long this interlude will last is anyone’s guess. The meeting, chaired by Kim, also reportedly considered documents outlining measures for ‘further bolstering the war deterrent of the country’.

Washington has so far ignored the latest episode, and for good reason. After two years of playing along with President Donald Trump’s made-for-TV summitry, Kim is convinced that the ‘bromance’ storyline has run its course, and that an older narrative will keep his ratings up.

Having banked his political gains from Trump’s fecklessness, Kim is now unambiguously asserting North Korea’s status as a nuclear power. To drive that point home, he promoted the general in charge of the nuclear program to serve as vice-chair of the Central Military Commission, while also rewarding 69 other generals who have contributed to the country’s strategic success in recent years.

Since the failed nuclear summit in Hanoi in February 2019, Kim has been consistent in both word and deed. Last April, he warned that Trump had until the end of last year to lift US sanctions on North Korea. Since then, the North has continued its short-range missile testing (chalking up noteworthy successes), expanded a missile production plant and built new support facilities for its missile program.

Clearly, Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign to choke off North Korea’s clandestine sources of income and trade has utterly failed to alter the course of the regime’s nuclear and missile programs. American officials acknowledged as much last month when the US Department of Justice indicted 28 North Korean and five Chinese officials and bankers for (successfully) circumventing the sanctions regime. Since 2014, the indictment alleges, the North’s global network of front companies has—with China’s help—funnelled US$2.5 billion into Kim’s nuclear weapon, missile and high-tech programs.

Kim has been no less consistent in expanding North Korea’s massive conventional military capacity. While its military hardware remains far inferior to the US-furnished armour and aircraft across the border, the North has nonetheless managed to upgrade both the accuracy and reach of its weapons. It has also placed 70% of its 1.1 million-strong army within 100 kilometres of the demilitarised zone, putting South Korea’s capital well within its sights. By one estimate, the North could rain down 25,000 artillery rounds on the Seoul metropolitan area—including a major US military compound—in the space of just 10 minutes.

To be sure, US and South Korean forces would have a major technological edge in an all-out war on the peninsula. But even a short-lived conflict would be devastating to Seoul, which is home to some 25 million people and accounts for half of South Korea’s population and 70% of its GDP.

Against this background, Trump’s effort to extort South Korea to quadruple its financial support for US forces stationed there is astonishingly irresponsible. Although negotiations to renew the expired US–South Korean cost-sharing pact remain at an impasse, a new stopgap deal at least ends the furlough of 4,000 South Koreans who work at US facilities. But with Seoul temporarily assuming the cost of these salaries, the deal will hardly improve Trump’s standing in the eyes of South Koreans.

Kim can take further comfort from the fact that Trump has also been browbeating Japan, demanding that it, too, boost its financial support for US forces within its borders. Though Japan is crucial to South Korea’s defence, the two countries have a rocky relationship. Last year, South Korea threatened to pull out of a bilateral intelligence-sharing arrangement before reversing course under US pressure. As in South Korea, most Japanese have no confidence in Trump’s handling of international affairs. Such factors inevitably will contribute to diplomatic disarray between the US, South Korea and Japan, all of which will benefit Kim.

In addition to undermining US alliances in the region, Trump is also doing Kim a favour by escalating tensions with China, which now will be less inclined to rein in its client state. With China accounting for over 90% of North Korea’s trade, Kim has been cultivating a closer relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who visited Pyongyang last June. That meeting and others suggest that China has been neither surprised nor particularly concerned about Kim’s behaviour.

This is not to suggest that Kim has clear sailing ahead. Owing to US sanctions, limited food production and various reform failures, North Korea faces formidable challenges at home. Following a speech at the Workers’ Party of Korea’s annual plenum in December, public remarks issued by Kim in February and April suggest that he may have spent the first half of this year focusing on domestic priorities. By forcing the closure of the Chinese border, the Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly hurt the North’s faltering economy. And the fact that Kim has imposed tougher oversight on implementation of his previous economic reforms suggests that more domestic trouble may be on the horizon.

With or without economic problems, Kim is unlikely to deviate from his family’s well-rehearsed oeuvre. Like past performances by his late father and grandfather, his repertoire will continue to feature threats of violence, sensational provocations and potentially even military incidents like the shelling of South Korean islands a decade ago. All signs indicate more brinkmanship on the part of the North. The leading character in the Korean peninsula’s long-running psychodrama may still be new, but the play remains the same.

Blowing up diplomacy on the Korean peninsula

In a stunning dismissal of the value of inter-Korean diplomacy, Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, ordered the destruction of the joint liaison office in Kaesong near the border with South Korea. It wasn’t just a decision to hold off on further contact with the South—she had the building blown up. Diplomacy seems to be dead in the eyes of the Kim regime.

This move follows a long-running leafleting campaign by North Korean defectors based in the South. North Korea appears to be using that campaign as an excuse for a series of retaliatory actions designed to pressure Seoul into making concessions. The risk is that each provocation could increase the chances of inadvertent escalation across the demilitarised zone.

The official North Korean news agency, KCNA, released several statements following the destruction of the liaison office. They suggest that the regime plans on deploying the Korean People’s Army into the Mt Kumgang resort area and the Kaesong industrial zone, as well as ‘opening many areas in the ground front and southwestern waters’. Any harassment at sea, along the Northern Limit Line, would increase the potential for naval conflict.

The statements indicate that destroying the liaison office won’t be the last provocative move. Reporting suggests that the Korean People’s Army will reinstall guard posts and resume military exercises in frontline areas, reversing progress in North–South diplomacy made over the past two years. Frontline units, such as artillery, will reinforce formations close to the DMZ, increasing the threat to South Korean territory from which the balloon-borne leafleting campaign was launched. North Korea has rejected an offer from Moon Jae-in’s government in Seoul to restart talks.

The prospects for an easing of tensions on the Korean peninsula are now dramatically diminished.

Attempts at diplomacy by the United States have also clearly been rejected by Pyongyang. The North Korean foreign minister, Ri Son-gwon, has ruled out further negotiations with President Donald Trump, noting, ‘Pyongyang will never again provide the US chief executive with another package to be used for achievements without receiving any returns.’

Instead, North Korea is apparently focused on ramping up the production of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons following a meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, chaired by Kim Jong-un. He said the country ‘should mass-produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, the power and reliability of which have already been proven to the full, to give a spur to the efforts for deploying them for action’. In December, Kim announced that North Korea was no longer bound by its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests, and suggested that a new strategic weapon would be unveiled.

So, don’t expect any new moves towards a summit between Trump and Kim, especially in a combustible atmosphere charged by North Korean provocations along the DMZ with South Korea. Instead, the prospect of additional long-range missile tests, and the potential for a new nuclear test, have to be taken seriously.

What is perhaps most interesting about this latest crisis is the role of Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong. After Kim Jong-un disappeared for some weeks in April, likely either isolating himself from Covid-19 or suffering health issues, his sister emerged as increasingly influential in the regime. Now she is apparently moving to strengthen her influence and visibility by building up her ‘revolutionary achievements’, such as provocations against South Korea, as a way to enhance her authority in a male-dominated hierarchy.

Kim Yo-jong is extremely militant in her language and threats against South Korea, a posture likely to be approved by her brother, and which reinforces the message that the Kim line is firmly in charge of the state. South Korea’s Daily NK newspaper suggests she still feels sufficiently insecure in her powerbase and must demonstrate toughness and political acumen to elders within the regime, including the military leadership of the North Korean People’s Army.

The North Korean actions also tie into the impact of Covid-19 on the hermit kingdom, with the requirement to close the border between North Korea and China accentuating the economic misery faced by the North Korean people, who are already suffering the effects of sanctions. By bullying South Korea, Pyongyang wants to see Seoul split with Washington and the lifting of sanctions. Such an achievement would be a huge coup for Kim Yo-jong and would strengthen her influence greatly.

Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean Studies at the Washington think tank the Center for the National Interest, argues that North Korea’s actions ‘have zero to do with leaflets sent over the DMZ but [rather] the anger it feels towards the Moon government for not delivering bigger incentives in recent years of détente’. The regime in Pyongyang felt that both summits between Trump and Kim, and inter-Korean diplomacy, would by now have brought real concessions to North Korea and at least the lifting of sanctions.

Although inter-Korean engagement has brought benefits such as a reduction of military forces along both sides of the DMZ, sanctions remain in place and neither South Korea nor the US will lift them unless North Korea moves to comprehensive, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation, an outcome unacceptable to Pyongyang.

So, Kim Yo-jong, seeking to strengthen her revolutionary political credentials, with the support of Kim Jong-un, plans to coerce the South into lifting sanctions and looks set on using military provocations to prove her ability to lead. In one of the most heavily militarised locations on earth, that’s a bold and dangerous path to take, because Seoul is unlikely to buckle.

When that becomes apparent to Kim Yo-jong, what might she do next?

Japan’s deepening diplomatic crisis with South Korea

Japan’s relationship with South Korea is not amicable at the best of times. Yet in recent months it has entered a rapidly descending diplomatic spiral of unprecedented depth and scope. Mounting bilateral friction over the intractable ‘history problems’ is steadily bleeding into the economic and security realms of the relationship. The result is a bilateral trade war with potential repercussions for the global supply chain of high-tech devices.

On the surface, it appears that a series of contentious developments in their longstanding history problems drove Tokyo and Seoul to this crisis point. South Korean President Moon Jae-in reneged on a diplomatic accord in 2018 that was purported to ‘irreversibly’ settle the ‘comfort women’ issue. The South Korean judiciary is also growing increasingly incessant in demanding Japanese companies pay damages to the Koreans mobilised for wartime labour.

These bilateral developments are doubtlessly playing a central role in the deterioration of Tokyo–Seoul relations. Yet there are broader strategic parameters to this dispute that have also shaped the contours of diplomatic friction, and these are largely being overlooked.

In short, there has been a major divergence in Seoul’s and Tokyo’s strategic views towards North Korea. This began to develop in January 2018 when Seoul embarked on a rapprochement with Pyongyang, while Tokyo’s policy on North Korea remained fundamentally unchanged. This strategic divergence, which has continued to deepen with time, undermined the ability of Japan and South Korea to cooperate in the security realm. By extension, it also reduced their diplomatic incentives to manage their history problems.

North Korea’s belligerence throughout 2017 encouraged Seoul and Tokyo to contain their diplomatic problems. As North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rapidly advanced his nuclear program, his missiles were frequently traversing Japanese airspace. The continental United States also came under potential threat with Kim’s successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. These events provoked a rhetorical war between Kim and US President Donald Trump that threatened to escalate to a de facto war. Indeed, media reports emanating from the US indicated that Trump was seriously considering a preventive attack—a ‘bloody-nose’ strike—against North Korea.

This precarious security environment provided strong incentives for Seoul and Tokyo to cooperate in the defence realm, and their strategic outlooks on North Korea were aligned closely. Both sides were in favour of strong sanctions, intelligence-sharing and trilateral military exercises with the US. Defence cooperation necessitated keeping their ever-present history problems in check, as collaboration in this sphere has always been tenuous. Against this backdrop, Moon expressed opposition to the 2015 comfort women agreement but remained ambiguous as to whether or not he would dissolve it.

Yet when North Korea initiated an about-turn in January last year, the strategic views of Seoul and Tokyo quickly began to diverge. Kim extended an olive branch to Moon in his 2018 New Year’s address, suggesting that the two Koreas jointly compete in the Winter Olympics. Moon seized upon this conciliatory gesture, ushering in an inter-Korean rapprochement and a round of regional summitry. To ensure that the diplomatic door remained open to Kim, Moon was reluctant to provoke him, meaning that trilateral exercises with Japan and the US became problematic.

Yet, from Tokyo’s point of view, little had changed with regard to North Korea. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was not prepared to risk political suicide by following suit with his South Korean and US counterparts. The issue of Japanese abductees takes precedence over the North Korean nuclear threat in Japan, and Abe’s domestic political success is explained in part by his hardline stance towards Pyongyang on that issue. Consequently, Tokyo became sidelined from the regional summitry.

Amid this growing strategic divergence, Moon unilaterally dissolved the comfort women accord in November 2018. In the same month, Tokyo announced that it would appeal to the International Court of Justice over a South Korean court ruling concerning Korean forced labourers. Relations took a further downturn in January, when the two governments disputed whether a South Korean navy destroyer had locked its targeting radar on a Japanese maritime patrol aircraft.

This downward spiral in Tokyo–Seoul relations is being compounded by their mutual US ally taking more of a backseat than usual in the dispute. Normally, Washington would be strongly encouraging its two key Asian allies to maintain their security cooperation despite their diplomatic issues. But this is now complicated by the fact that Trump supports—at least in practice—South Korea’s rapprochement policy towards North Korea and is thereby deepening the Tokyo–Seoul strategic divergence.

Although Pyongyang has now resumed missile testing, it’s doubtful that this development will provide an incentive to Japan and South Korea to repair their relations. Moon is likely to continue pursuing his rapprochement policy with North Korea, and there has already been too much bilateral damage done in the current dispute between Tokyo and Seoul.

There is no clear way out of this diplomatic crisis. But it’s evident that Seoul and Washington are likely to persist in engaging North Korea and working towards denuclearisation—at least for the foreseeable future. If Tokyo and Seoul wish to pave a foundation for mending their ties, they must recalibrate the strategic parameters of their relationship. Their relations will need to be predicated on mutual engagement with North Korea, rather than the mutual isolation of the past. To achieve this strategic convergence, Tokyo will need to try to end its longstanding impasse with Pyongyang.

Walking the byungjin line: North Korea in the Eurasian century

US President Donald Trump isn’t concerned by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s latest tirade of missile tests and crude insults—but he’s not in the firing line. Since 2017, several North Korean test missiles have flown over Japan. Unsurprisingly, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for ‘concrete’ action over ‘talks for the sake of talks’, but Trump still believes that a deal with Kim is on the horizon.

North Korea’s attitude towards disarmament has been apparent since March 2013, when the newly minted supreme leader announced his ‘byungjin’ (‘parallel development’) policy. The policy, also known as the ‘byungjin line’, advances simultaneous economic and nuclear-weapons development. It builds on the ruling family’s principles of statesmanship—a reference to Kim Il-sung’s revolutionary slogan of ‘a gun in one hand, and a hammer and sickle in the other’. The byungjin policy was an opportunity for Kim Jong-un to distinguish his own legacy while ensuring the continuation of his family’s rule.

Since that announcement, US policymakers have used the byungjin policy to design and implement effective international sanctions to deter North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. In 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry said, ‘North Korea needs to recognise that it will not succeed in developing its economy or breaking out of diplomatic isolation if it continues to reject denuclearisation.’

Kerry’s message is reflective of a broader dichotomy underpinning US–DRPK relations (and to a lesser extent the DPRK’s relations with the rest of the world): that North Korea can have nuclear weapons or international trade—but not both. Yet the trade-off between weapons and trade has been inconsistently enforced, and the North Korean nuclear weapons program has accelerated as a result. In 2016, former US director of national intelligence Jim Clapper admitted that getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons was ‘probably a lost cause’.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative received mixed reactions when it was announced in 2013. The ambitious program promised to inject US$1 trillion across Eurasia through infrastructure projects designed to establish and stimulate regional trade routes. China says the BRI is ‘based on extensive consultation and its benefits will be shared by us all’. Australian commentators shrewdly labelled it ‘a geopolitical and geo-economic agenda to enhance China’s global power and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party’. Despite recent ‘open, green and clean’ proclamations, Australia, Japan and the United States remain sceptical of the initiative.

Just over a year ago, I reported that trade among revisionist military powers along China’s proposed ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ with Iran and Russia had surged, and this trend continued into 2018.

Trade between Iran and China was expected to grow by around 12% and reach US$42 billion by the end of 2018. Meanwhile, trade between Russia and China reportedly grew by almost 30% and reached US$107 billion over the year.

The notable exception was North Korea, whose trade with China officially shrunk by 51% in 2018. This figure is disputable, however, as persistent allegations of smuggling in the Yellow Sea continue to undermine the credibility of Chinese self-reporting.

If North Korea has signalled a changing focus from the ‘gun’ to the ‘hammer and sickle’, then the byungjin policy needs to remain a key reference point for US policymakers. North Korea attended China’s Belt and Road Summit in May 2017, and the Silk Road Economic Belt could be one of Kim’s most attractive economic opportunities. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that North Korean participation could have been considered as early as March 2018, and the idea has still gained some traction in 2019. This would give China greater leverage over North Korea, at the expense of Western interests, which would reduce the relative magnitude and absolute effectiveness of economic sanctions. And it’s not yet clear how China, an authoritarian revisionist state and aspiring hegemon, would use its increased leverage over Russia, Iran and North Korea.

It’s in the West’s interests to better understand Kim’s thresholds for entering negotiations over nuclear disarmament. Strategies of nuclear ‘latency’ and ‘hedging’ are both potential compromises that would bring North Korea closer to denuclearisation and improve regional stability. Kim’s closing remarks after the Hanoi summit with Trump confirmed that this middle ground remains unexplored.

Washington’s relations with military powers along the Silk Road Economic Belt are deteriorating. The trade war with China is worsening, security tensions between the US and Iran are simmering, and arms sales to Turkey are the latest battleground in US–Russia relations. In this regard, the major concerns outlined in the 2018 US national defence strategy have become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the document focuses on great-power conflict and explicitly targets China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The byungjin policy remains a useful tool for dissecting North Korean bilateral and multilateral relations as Kim pivots between nuclear weapons and economic development. Such tools will be increasingly necessary as Eurasian relations become more complex. Western governments should recognise North Korea’s desire to carry both the gun and the hammer and sickle and make policies that account for it.

Round 2: North Korea and China versus the USA

North Korea set out on its quest to develop a nuclear-weapons capability (reliable nuclear explosive devices and the means to deliver them over medium and long distances) in the mid-1980s. Progress was slow and uneven. The DPRK lacked financial resources and technological capacities. All the countries that possessed the relevant technologies paid at least lip service to nuclear non-proliferation and had export controls on the core technologies, including China, through which the great bulk of North Korea’s trade has transited since the demise of the USSR.

Two major efforts were made to dissuade Pyongyang from proceeding with its nuclear program—a freeze agreed with the US in 1994, which was to be followed by the verified dismantling of the DPRK’s nuclear capabilities, and the six-party talks of 2003–2005, which had the same objective.

North Korea tested its first nuclear device in 2006, and five subsequent tests through 2017 confirmed its competence in making nuclear explosive devices. The testing was accompanied by what a surprisingly rapid mastery of building ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over distances as far as the west coast of the United States.

The blizzard of missile tests in 2016 and 2017 generated an acute sense of crisis that was abruptly defused at the end of 2017 when the DPRK used the Winter Olympics being hosted by South Korea to revive dormant channels of communication, first with Seoul and Beijing, and then with Washington.

North Korea’s achievement of a genuine nuclear-weapons capability was remarkable but, in a crucially important sense, not surprising. Indeed, it’s consistent with the pronounced belligerence that has characterised the regime since its emergence under the wing of the USSR shortly after World War II ended.

Its first leader, Kim Il-sung, began lobbying the Soviet leader to support the invasion of the South and bring the entire peninsula into the socialist camp. Stalin eventually agreed that it was an attractive idea, but insisted that the People’s Republic of China also agree to support the venture. Mao agreed and North Korean forces struck on 25 June 1950. The war ended more than three years later with an armistice agreement that is still in place.

North Korea, though economically depleted, maintained its aspiration to unite the two Koreas on its terms and set out to steadily increase its armed forces. A quarter of a century later—a period interspersed with acts of extreme belligerence towards the South in particular—they topped 1.1 million personnel, rendering the DPRK the most militarised state in the world but also among the poorest.

The subsequent commitment to nuclear weapons appears to have emerged from the assessment that, despite facing in the US an implacable enemy seeking a second chance to terminate it, the DPRK could not support the continual modernisation of such a massive force. For essentially all of this period, Russia and China have gone along with the DPRK, declining to compel or even encourage it to amend its national story and strive to coexist with its neighbours and the wider world in the normal way.

US President Donald Trump brashly agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore in June last year and resolved to honour that commitment despite the North’s firmly resisting all efforts to flesh out what was at stake or how the parties might begin to address the issues between them. At the conclusion of the Singapore summit, North Korea raced to occupy the moral high ground, insisting that it had endured decades of US aggression and that the US had a major trust deficit to make up—particularly through easing the sanctions regime and transforming the armistice into a peace treaty—before the DPRK could even begin to consider reciprocal steps. The US went through the motions of asking the DPRK to draw up a baseline inventory of its nuclear assets and facilities as a prelude to joint development of a schedule to eliminate them, but the entire process fell flat very quickly.

A second summit will be held in Hanoi, Vietnam, later this week. There’s still little evidence of new flexibility on either side. Kim and Trump have corresponded since Singapore and the new US special envoy has spent some days in Pyongyang. This may point towards the painstaking incremental, action-for-action approach agreed in broad terms at the six-party talks in September 2005.

In addition, Kim met again with Chinese President Xi Jinping in mid-January 2019—their fourth meeting in less than a year after six years without any meetings. We have no visibility of how North Korea’s objectives and tactics may have been influenced by China. China did at several points lose patience with North Korea, especially when its actions threatened a full-blown crisis that could have spun out of control and prove costly to China’s long-term interests.

Broadly speaking, we can assume that China has reaffirmed its willingness to stand behind the DPRK economically and politically, provided Pyongyang remains receptive to China’s counsel on how best to manage the issue in a way that protects China’s primary interest—a US position in Northeast Asia that has been weakened rather than reinforced. Trump, meanwhile, has been highlighting the economic bonanza that denuking could deliver for the DPRK.

An even more important reason to be skeptical about a breakthrough at the Hanoi summit is that the main players continue to cling to very divergent narratives on how we got to where we are. The background rehearsed so briefly above—a few highlights from the ‘Western’ record—has been completely buried. We cannot expect a shared narrative.

Nor can issues of this kind be resolved through any kind of simple reckoning of past injustices. That said, however, it’s difficult to see how a meeting of the minds sufficiently strong and deep to reach and to implement a denuclearisation agreement can happen if the two principals clash so spectacularly on how and why the situation is in its current shape.

Policy, Guns and Money: Episode 13

In this podcast, Tom Uren and Elise Thomas discuss the revelations that a ‘sophisticated state actor’ was behind cyberattacks on Australia’s parliament and major political parties and ask where we draw the line between espionage and political interference.

NATO Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security Clare Hutchinson talks to Lisa Sharland about the progress of the WPS agenda and Huong Le Thu talks to Rod Lyon about whether we might see any meaningful progress in round two of talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump. You can view links to the articles mentioned in this week’s episode here.

Reciprocal irreversibility is the key to North Korean denuclearisation

In his annual New Year’s address, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he is committed to denuclearisation but will change course if the US persists with ‘sanctions and pressures’. The statement confirmed that all steps taken by North Korea to date are fully reversible. Conversely, in the difficult negotiations on denuclearisation, the key principle is ‘irreversibility’. The great wall of distrust built over 68 years’ dealings with one another makes all sides determined to ring-fence the future against the possibility of reversibility by the other side. Without an understanding of all sides’ requirement for irreversibility, progress will remain elusive.

Westerners have difficulty grasping the continuing hold of historical memories in shaping Asians’ current policies. Most also tend not to take North Korea seriously, demonising and caricaturing its young leader as an unserious figure of fun. Few bother trying to understand its security concerns and admit the possibility that its paranoia might be grounded in long experience.

The Korean War began with unprovoked aggression by the North in 1950. Since then, Pyongyang has earned its credentials as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, as attested in the UN commission of inquiry report and by North Korea’s assassinations of political opponents, terrorist attacks on foreign soil, abductions of Japanese and South Korean citizens, and attacks on targets in South Korea with significant losses of life. It has acquired nuclear weapons in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, made repeated commitments to abandon them in return for security assurances and economic assistance, shelved its nuclear ambitions temporarily, and then broken its promises serially.

The US carried out obliteration bombing of the North during the Korean War, stationed atomic weapons in South Korea in 1958 in breach of the 1953 armistice agreement, and refused to honour commitments under the 1994 agreed framework to provide aid to the North. Many US global actions reinforce the narrative of an America that can’t be trusted. Russia’s actions in Ukraine, China’s defiance of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 South China Sea ruling, and the US’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal confirm the ugly reality that big powers get away with breaking international agreements virtually scot-free.

Nuclear weapons earned Kim a summit with US President Donald Trump as an equal; abandoning the quest for them brought an undignified early death to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and renewed threats against Iran. The reinstatement of US sanctions on Iran, explained President Hassan Rouhani and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the North Koreans, proves America’s bad faith and untrustworthiness. Security to Kim might therefore mean agreeing to freeze his nuclear and missile capabilities at existing levels in order to avoid US preemptive military strikes today, but retaining those capabilities in order to deter punitive US strikes tomorrow.

Despite Trump’s declaration that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat, the evidence shows that North Korea continues to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear materials. The US cannot accept symbolic but inconsequential dismantlement that ‘can be reconstituted within months’ as an adequate basis for full normalisation and a peace treaty. The declaration of an end to war, once issued, cannot be taken back. It would weaken avenues for US pressure on the North like military exercises and sanctions. So the US demands proof of Pyongyang’s sincerity, with an inventory of nuclear material and production facilities verified by international inspectors.

Pyongyang wants the US to abstain from joint military exercises with the South, provide economic assistance and security guarantees, and open up diplomatic relations. All of these can be suspended at any time without notice on a presidential whim. But complete denuclearisation by North Korea cannot be reversed. So, on 20 December, a commentary published by the official North Korean news agency said: ‘When we refer to the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” it means the removal of all sources of nuclear threat not only from the North and the South but also from all neighboring areas targeting the peninsula.’ In other words, removing the US nuclear umbrella from Japan and South Korea is a precondition of North Korea’s denuclearisation.

Hence, too, Pyongyang’s counter-demand that the Korean War be declared over in order to launch the process towards full normalisation. The language and numbered sequencing of the Trump–Kim declaration of 12 June were deliberate. ‘New US–DPRK relations’ and ‘a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula’ came before a commitment to ‘work towards’ denuclearisation of the whole peninsula.

Insisting that it has already made enough concessions, North Korea has become more forceful in demanding reciprocal gestures from Washington. In his address to the UN General Assembly on 29 September, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho noted that ‘continued sanctions are deepening our mistrust’. ‘Without any trust in the US’, he added, ‘there will be no confidence in our national security and under such circumstances, there is no way we will unilaterally disarm ourselves first’. On 2 November, Pyongyang threatened to resume the build-up of nuclear forces unless US sanctions are lifted and bilateral relations are improved.

A split is evident between Seoul and Washington on the use of sanctions as a tool with which to pressure Pyongyang. Against US opposition, South Korea supports a continued loosening of sanctions, arguing that economic development will give incentives to the North to cooperate on denuclearisation. Once sanctions are lifted, however, efforts to reimpose them will be hostage to Chinese and Russian veto in the UN Security Council.

Calculating that Trump has a greater personal investment in a ‘win’ on North Korea, Pyongyang has also been trying to drive a wedge between the president and his senior advisers. Every new hardline comment from Washington is denounced as a violation of the statement and spirit of the Singapore declaration.

We must avoid a return to the ‘fire and fury’ days of 2017 and the associated risk of a catastrophic war in East Asia. This makes it critical, in South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s words, to find the ‘intersecting point’ between the competing US and North Korean calls for steps towards denuclearisation and an end to US hostility.