North Korea's Missile Tests and U.S. Tensions Explained
This essay examines the motivations behind North Korea's escalating missile tests under Kim Jong Un, tracing the roots of hostility to the Korean War and decades of failed diplomatic efforts. The paper explores how historical grievances, nuclear ambitions, and the breakdown of denuclearization agreements have created one of the most dangerous geopolitical crises of the Trump era. It also considers the roles of China and the United States in managing — and sometimes inflaming — tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and argues that effective multilateral diplomacy and potential sanctions reform offer the most viable path toward de-escalation.
- Introduction: Understanding North Korea's Behavior: Overview of North Korea's provocative missile testing motivations
- The Korean War and Its Lasting Legacy: Korean War roots of anti-American sentiment in North Korea
- The Hwasong-15 and North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions: North Korea's new long-range missile as a bargaining chip
- Mobile Launch Vehicles and the Threat of Imminent Attack: Expanding mobile launch fleet complicates US threat detection
- Failed Diplomacy and Broken Agreements: History of failed US denuclearization agreements with North Korea
- Prospects for De-escalation and Diplomatic Solutions: Sanctions reform and multilateral diplomacy as paths forward
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds current geopolitical tensions in historical context, tracing the conflict back to the Korean War to explain present-day hostility.
- Uses a mix of journalistic and scholarly sources — including Cumings's The Korean War and reporting from The Guardian and The New York Times — to support claims at multiple levels of analysis.
- Balances descriptive analysis of North Korea's military capabilities with normative arguments about what the United States and its allies should do differently.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates cause-and-effect reasoning across historical periods, linking the destruction of the Korean War to North Korea's anti-American ideology, then connecting that ideology to contemporary missile development and diplomatic breakdown. This longitudinal approach strengthens the argument that current tensions are not isolated events but the product of decades of accumulated grievance and policy failure.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a statement of the central problem and a brief thesis, then works chronologically — from the Korean War through successive U.S. administrations' diplomatic strategies — before concluding with a policy recommendation centered on sanctions reform and multilateral dialogue. Each body paragraph introduces evidence from a cited source and connects it back to the central question of what motivates North Korea's behavior.
Introduction: Understanding North Korea's Behavior
North Korea has done considerable damage to its reputation with its singular ally, China, and even more damage with its sometime adversary, the United States. What is motivating North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un to act this way? Perhaps it is history. North Korea has a long record of attempting to demonstrate its military might, from the three-year Korean War that began in 1950 to the ongoing missile tests conducted in the seas off Japan. Something is going awry within the country to account for such an escalation in troubling behavior. This essay highlights the background of North Korean conflicts with the United States and examines the current problem of North Korea's decision to continue missile testing against the wishes of both China and the United States.
The Korean War and Its Lasting Legacy
To begin understanding North Korea's erratic behavior regarding recent missile tests, one must look at the Korean War. Every schoolchild in North Korea is taught, mistakenly, that the United States caused the Korean War. As journalist Justin McCurry notes, North Korean students "also learn, correctly, that their nemesis was responsible for laying waste to dozens of towns and cities from the air during the 1950–53 conflict, a fact rarely reported in the US media at the time" (McCurry). While the United States was not the cause of the Korean War, its intervention certainly produced deaths and widespread destruction within the country, creating decades-long tensions between North Korea and the United States — tensions capable of planting the seeds of future conflict.
Those seeds were cultivated by Kim Jong Un's father, and Kim Jong Un has continued the same process. Like the leaders before him, Kim Jong Un has tested missiles in order to assess capabilities and advance military strength. However, such actions have drawn international condemnation and produced mounting tensions with other nations. "In 2013, North Korea said it and South Korea were in a 'state of war' following international condemnation of its nuclear test. Three years later, it said US sanctions targeting Kim Jong-un and other senior officials were tantamount to a declaration of war" (McCurry). The additional sanctions imposed as a result of the testing have placed North Korea in a precarious position. If the country is not faring well economically because of escalating sanctions, the missile program may be an attempt to gain leverage in an otherwise powerless situation.
Going back further, the Korean War itself deserves closer attention, as relatively little is said about it in Western discourse. As scholar Bruce Cumings observes, "The Korean War, more than any other war in modern times, is surrounded by residues and slippages of memory" (Cumings 62). If the United States had such a devastating impact on North Korea during that conflict, this shared history may be exactly the place where the United States could attempt to improve relations. North Korea has long suffered from food shortages and a struggling economy. Diplomatic strategies focused on improving the economic situation of ordinary North Koreans might create an opening to address the missile testing problem. Americans should also seek to understand why North Korea views the United States so negatively. As Cumings notes, American historical memory tends to treat the Korean War as having been "started in 1950 by Stalin and Kim Il Sung" and ended in 1953, earning it the sobriquet "the forgotten war" (Cumings 64). When countries come to understand their adversaries' perspectives, common ground can form and allow for more productive collaboration.
The Hwasong-15 and North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions
North Korea recently developed a new missile with a larger warhead potentially capable of reaching the continental United States. The missile is called the Hwasong-15. North Korea claimed it carried "a 'super-large heavy warhead which is capable of striking the whole mainland of the U.S.'" (Sang-Hun). If this warhead has the capability of reaching the American mainland, it may represent Kim Jong Un's desired bargaining chip — a means of gaining leverage against the United States. The warhead is large enough and theoretically capable of traveling far enough to be considered a legitimate threat to mainland Americans should North Korean officials decide to launch it.
North Korea's isolated leadership has long believed that nuclear weapons will ensure regime survival against U.S. military power, enabling the country to reunify the Korean Peninsula on its own terms. Successive U.S. administrations have tried various strategies to thwart the dangerous trajectory of the regime — some making progress, only to be set back by North Korean violations of agreements, changes in U.S. policy direction, and cautious partners and allies in the region who preferred a different approach.
Works Cited
Cumings, Bruce. The Korean War. Modern Library, 2011.
Harrison, Selig S. Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U. Princeton UP, 2009.
McCurry, Justin. "Why Are North Korea's Leaders Specifically Threatening US Bombers?" The Guardian, 26 Sept. 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/26/why-are-north-koreas-leaders-specifically-threatening-us-bombers. Accessed 30 Nov. 2017.
Sang-Hun, Choe. "North Korea's New Missile Is Bigger and More Powerful, Photos Suggest." The New York Times, 30 Nov. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/north-korea-missile-test.html. Accessed 30 Nov. 2017.
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