North Korea Nuclear Disarmament: Can the West Prevail?

Introduction and Statement of the Problem

"The International Atomic Energy Agency has determined North Korea to be a full-fledged nuclear power since April of 2009. Since then, its foreign policy has revolved around brinksmanship, diverting the attention of the international community from the deprivation of the citizenry to the flamboyant posturing of the country's leader." — Kristine Lee, 2011

Perhaps the most bizarre country on earth today is North Korea. Not only does North Korea have the highest civilian-to-military ratio in the world, it is also the world's only Marxist dynastic regime. The recent promotion of Kim Jong-il's son, Kim Jong-un, to the nation's top leadership position following his father's death has added further fuel to speculation concerning what can be expected on the Korean peninsula in the near and long terms. Although the saber-rattling has remained at relatively normal levels, there have been some highly disruptive events in recent years that have kept tensions high. For example, despite their vehement and repeated denials, most international observers agree — and the results of international inspections indicate — that in March 2010, North Korea fired on and sank the South Korean warship Cheonan, with a corresponding loss of South Korean lives.^[1] Just a few months later, North Korea fired artillery shells on nearby Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010, and in August 2011, North Korean officials seized assets at Mount Kumgang, a jointly operated tourist site with South Korea.^[2]

Despite continuing efforts by the international community to resolve this longstanding political and military stalemate, there have been changes in the composition of the top political leadership in South Korea that may adversely affect these negotiations. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his inner circle of advisors are routinely referred to as "criminals" by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the official news agency of North Korea. The historical pattern of on-again-off-again negotiations between North Korea and the six-nation council makes it clear that efforts to negotiate a mutually acceptable resolution of North Korea's nuclear program have been largely ineffective. In this regard, Bellamy reports: "There is frustration that [military responses] could occur despite massive aid provided to the North, and a determination to enhance security. South Korea currently is following a two-track approach of providing opportunities for meaningful and genuine dialogue, while implementing sanctions with the international community."^[3]

At present, North Korea and Iran both represent crucibles for testing America's resolve in their respective regions. The United States formally remains at war with North Korea, and a war footing during wartime simply makes good sense. The rhetoric flowing from North Korea continues to emphasize this point. During a recent visit to the Demilitarized Zone, Kim Jong-un stated, "If there is a fight erupting, our military and people will have the enemy kneeling before us to sign not a truce this time but a document of surrender."^[4] Some authorities have therefore suggested that the U.S. experience with Iran cannot be used to guide the current negotiation process with North Korea. As Bellamy notes, "While Iran is denying that it is developing a military nuclear program, North Korea flaunts its program."^[5] In sharp contrast to the Iranian experience, the U.S. remains formally at war with North Korea, and the process is playing out in fundamentally different geopolitical ways. For example, Bellamy observes that, "While Iran is using its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, to trouble U.S. allies in the Middle East, North Korea has openly attacked the U.S. ally South Korea, both by reportedly torpedoing a South Korean ship in March 2010, killing 46 sailors, and by shelling a South Korean island in November, killing two South Korean soldiers."^[6] As Bellamy concludes, "While Iran is spewing over-the-top accusations against the West, its rhetoric is no match for North Korea's bellicose statements and actions. In short, North Korea would seem to be the place where U.S. credibility is most being tested."^[7]

As events in the Middle East continue to unfold, there has been a concomitant increase in activity related to North Korea, with a North Korean negotiator agreeing to a cessation of the country's nuclear program in exchange for aid. Even without nuclear weapons, however, North Korea represents a significant security threat. Another war between North Korea and the United States and South Korea would almost certainly involve the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of South Koreans, and millions of North Koreans on a scale not seen since the end of World War II. Most authorities agree that China would be forced to intervene in such an eventuality, and Russia would likely mobilize along its border with North Korea as well. In this regard, Bellamy reports that:

"Many military experts agree that on the Korean peninsula, the United States will be deterred from responding effectively to North Korean provocations and assaults. North Korea already has nuclear arms, roughly 1,000 missiles, many of which could devastate Seoul and other South Korean targets. It has between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of chemical weapons (including sarin and mustard gas) that could be mounted on missiles, a sizeable conventional army, and leaders who are difficult to deter because they are considered irrational [by the Western intelligence community]."^[8]

The centrality of China's role in ongoing negotiations is another point consistently made by international observers, with many citing the diplomatic initiatives taken by the current administration to enlist China's assistance in resolving the stalemate. By keeping China's economic interests at the forefront of these efforts, the United States has employed a carrot-and-stick approach that has met with mixed results. As Etzioni maintains: "In fairness, there are few other courses the United States could have followed; however, it does not build credibility or trust among allies. In short, unless the North Korean challenge grows much more severe, and arguably even if it does, the United States is unlikely to enhance its credibility by the ways it responds to the challenges it currently faces there."^[12] In this charged environment, where belligerents are equipped with tactical nuclear weapons, the potential for disaster appears to far outweigh the chances for success.

North Korea's ongoing economic woes have kept the country's average citizens at starvation levels for years through draconian economic policies that favored the military over average citizens and the elite over everyone else. Recently, Kim Jong-il died and was succeeded by his youngest son, Kim Jong-un. Although it is too early to tell with certainty, recent initiatives by the North Koreans suggest that the country may now be willing to resume a nuclear disarmament dialogue with China and the West, as evidenced by the country's unilateral agreement to suspend further nuclear research in exchange for additional Western aid, primarily food. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to provide a case study analysis of the rapidly changing political situation in North Korea to determine whether the new political leadership headed by Kim Jong-un can be persuaded to abandon its nuclear arms program and what, if anything, he will likely demand in return. Although hard facts about North Korea are scarce in the West, it may be possible to identify potential opportunities for nuclear disarmament given the recent change in the country's top leadership.

This study was guided by the following research questions:

1. Can North Korea be persuaded to disarm its nuclear capability?
2. If so, how can North Korean nuclear disarmament be accomplished?
3. If not, what course of action is in America's best interests?

The study's theoretical framework was based on rational choice theory, which "conceives the actor as a decision-maker who successfully achieves three optimizing operations: finding the best action, for given beliefs and desires; forming the best-grounded belief, for given evidence; and collecting the right amount of evidence, for given desires and prior beliefs."^[13] The rational choice model has been shown to be effective in demonstrating that many types of human behavior are congruent with other choice models.^[14] According to Hechter (1997), rational choice theory is an iterative process that requires analysis of the lower levels of the social entity under consideration as they apply to the upper levels of the theoretical model. Hechter and Kanazawa further advise that, "Since norms and other kinds of institutions enter the models both as contexts for and as outcomes of action, rational choice theories do not rest on premises pertaining exclusively to individuals."^[15]

Two fundamental limitations of rational choice theory as applied to North Korea include: (1) people may act irrationally; and (2) the real-world situations in which people try to behave rationally are much more complex than the theoretical model assumes.^[16] Nonetheless, the rational choice framework appears particularly well suited to the research goals of this study. The major theoretical propositions include the desire of the new North Korean leadership to remain in power and the likelihood that Kim Jong-un is not ruling unilaterally but with the support of his uncle, "Mr. Jang," as well as key members of North Korea's Old Guard.^[17]

Review of Related Literature

Despite assertions by the American intelligence community that little is known about the secretive Hermit Kingdom, a great deal has in fact been learned about North Korea in recent years. Despite these new insights, the harsh reality for Western intelligence is that the North Korean leadership has consistently behaved in ways that defy rational explanation unless their unique geopolitical status is taken into account. Wedged between South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan, North Korea is surrounded by an increasingly ambivalent ally in China and potential adversaries everywhere else. As one analyst recently observed, "Over the last 50 years, Northeast Asia has been transformed from a remote backwater devastated by war into the crossroads of the 21st century, economically, politically, and militarily. One vestige of the old days remains: North Korea. Impoverished and isolated, it is nevertheless the keystone on which the fragile architecture of the region's power relations rests. A North Korean collapse — a possibility but not a certainty — could drag China, South Korea, Japan, and possibly the United States into conflict."^[18]

Moreover, it is clearly in North Korea's best long-term interests to join the international community in more meaningful ways. Bellamy emphasizes that, "A unified, peaceful, democratic and strong Korea would have a major impact on international relations, and the ability to make a vital and positive world contribution."^[19] Likewise, a correspondent for SERI Quarterly recently observed that, "In the next few years, North Korea will be focusing on strengthening its own capacity and improving its competitiveness during the leadership transition period. To achieve this, first of all, it needs to embrace economic, rather than political, reform."^[20] By developing an empathetic perspective of how North Koreans view the rest of the world following the death of Kim Jong-il, it may be possible to identify new opportunities for progress in the six-party talks toward nuclear disarmament.

Although the Korean people enjoyed a lengthy period of independence throughout their history, the 20th century brought subjugation to various foreign powers — especially the Japanese — and the adverse effects of this history are still being manifested throughout the peninsula today. South Korea has won the economic development race decisively, but its future remains closely aligned with Japan, which is hated even more than the United States by the North Koreans, who are still smarting from decades of virtual enslavement by their Japanese taskmasters. Scarcely a day goes by without a demand from the North Korean government for acknowledgment, apologies, and reparations from Japan for their actions during the first half of the 20th century. After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan first occupied Korea in 1905 and formally annexed the entire Korean peninsula in 1910.^[21] Following the end of World War II, the Korean peninsula was divided between South and North along the 38th parallel, roughly where the dividing line was before hostilities broke out and where the situation remains stalemated today.

South Korea has adopted a Western-style free market economy and is joining the Asian Tigers as a major economic force. North Korea, however, has languished across the board since the collapse of its former sponsor, the Soviet Union. While China has picked up some of the Soviet Union's slack with respect to North Korea, the past 60 years have been marked by cross-border intrusions and other saber-rattling by the North Koreans, leading up to their testing of nuclear weapons in more recent years. An otherwise failing state equipped with tactical nuclear weapons is clearly troubling for the powers in the region as well as the international community.

Heading the North Korean nation through these turbulent periods has been an unprecedented hereditary succession of leaders: from Kim Il-sung until his death in 1994, to Kim Jong-il until his death in late 2011, and now to the grandson, Kim Jong-un — increasingly referred to by the international press as "Kim III." Throughout this succession, two common themes have characterized North Korean political ideology: an unrelenting fear of the West (especially the U.S.) and its neighbors (especially Japan and South Korea), and an inward focus on becoming sufficiently self-reliant to shake off any foreign sponsor and assume what it perceives to be its legitimate place in the international community as a modern, sovereign nation capable of leading the reunification of the two Koreas under its Juche doctrine.

According to U.S. government intelligence analysts, "After decades of economic mismanagement and resource misallocation, the DPRK since the mid-1990s has relied heavily on international aid to feed its population. North Korea's history of regional military provocations, proliferation of military-related items, long-range missile development, WMD programs including tests of nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009, and massive conventional armed forces are of major concern to the international community."^[22] Some international observers even suggest that the most recent overtures by the North Korean leadership to suspend the country's nuclear program in exchange for food aid are merely part of a larger plan to stockpile food for upcoming celebrations: "The regime has marked 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung's birth, a banner year; to that end, the country has heightened its focus on developing its economy and improving its people's livelihoods."^[23]

Despite these high-profile initiatives, it has become painfully clear that most average North Koreans remain unaware of the outside world, and their political leadership continues to operate in an information vacuum that contributes to the culture of fear and the personality cult that has been cultivated throughout the country. Robertson emphasizes that the overwhelming majority of average North Korean citizens may be unaware of the changes that have taken place in other parts of the world, despite efforts by activists and North Korean exiles to smuggle in information sources such as cell phones, transistor radios, and digital CDs.^[24]

This information vacuum has contributed to the ability of the North Korean leadership to inculcate the personality cult that has kept the Kims in power for six decades. According to Robertson, "The lack of information over many generations has led large numbers of citizens to believe that the North Korean leadership is truly looking after their interests. Problems such as hunger and poverty are believed to be the fault of corrupt underlings."^[25] There are indications, however, that some cracks have appeared in this veneer: "Yet there are many North Koreans who no longer believe the big lie of the ruling Kim family's infallibility. The famine of the 1990s and the disastrous monetary reform in November 2009, which effectively demonetized most North Koreans' savings, have done away with many illusions. For the majority, the main reason they almost never protest in public is because the consequences are so dire. Public executions of those who cross the regime remain common. Forced-labor camps incarcerate entire families suspected of disloyalty to the regime."^[26]

Even a nation full of ardent believers in their near-god leader will not be able to overcome the harsh realities facing North Korea today. A staff writer for the Harvard International Review recently observed, "The currency devaluation that Kim Jong-il implemented in the fall of 2009 was ostensibly an attempt to stimulate a foundering state-run economy. In reality, it resulted in one of the worst economic disasters that the country has experienced since its so-called 'Great Famine' of the mid-1990s — a time in which more than 900,000 North Korean citizens are reported to have starved to death."^[27]

The relatively smooth hereditary line of Kim successions can be attributed to the near-total control over information that the North Korean leadership has maintained. Many analysts predicted that the North Korean leadership could not possibly endure the series of hardships the country experienced, but the historical record confirms they succeeded where everyone believed they would fail.^[29] The reunification of the two Germanys in the 1990s was marked by enormous obstacles and costs, yet it succeeded because there was widespread agreement that it was in Germans' long-term best interests. The same cannot be said for many South Koreans. As Lee points out, "Reunification under democracy appears unlikely in the near future, and the process will be challenging by any measure. Reunification would bring major benefits to Korea, such as greater access to natural resources, but incorporating a highly militarized and indoctrinated society with an obsolete economy and infrastructure would represent a major challenge for the South."^[30]

Reunification would also likely spell the end of the survival-at-all-costs regime in the North: "North Korea has not shown strong indications of fundamental change facilitating reconciliation, and perhaps peaceful and gradual integration. Similarly, absorption and a voluntary or peaceful collapse appear unlikely given the North's militarization, and the regime's determination to survive."^[31] Indeed, the North Korean leadership has consistently sought extra-legal and outright illegal activities to support their regime.

With respect to UN Security Council resolutions 1718 (2006) and 1874 (2009), these resolutions demanded that the DPRK cease further ballistic missile launches and suspend all related activities. According to one international analyst, "As resolutions adopted under Chapter VII, such demands and decisions are legally binding and the DPRK is legally obligated to do what is prescribed."^[32] Article 25 of the UN Charter stipulates that "[t]he Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter."^[33] Consequently, the demands set forth in these resolutions are legally binding on North Korea, and recent overtures by Kim Jong-un to comply should be regarded in that legal context.

From the North Korean leadership's perspective, the country had a legitimate right to exercise its sovereignty and withdraw from the salient provisions of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). As Asada points out:

"In January 2003, the DPRK gave notice to the Security Council of its immediate withdrawal from the NPT 'in exercising its national sovereignty' as provided for in Article X of the Treaty. Despite different views held by some parties to the NPT regarding North Korea's status under the treaty, the resolutions implicitly recognized that the DPRK is now out of the NPT by demanding that it return to the NPT generally rather than simply return to compliance with the NPT. However, at the same time, the resolutions rejected the DPRK's decision to exercise its right to withdraw from the Treaty and ordered it to return. This is a strong measure rejecting in effect a sovereign state's right to exercise its national sovereignty."^[35]

Asada also emphasizes that, "It is insufficient to simply order the DPRK to return to the NPT. An obligation to return to a treaty is different from being bound by that treaty. Unless and until the state in fact returns to the treaty, it is not bound by it. The international community cannot say that the DPRK is in breach of the NPT until it rejoins the Treaty."^[36]

This is a particularly significant area because it forms the legal basis for the economic sanctions used to persuade the North Korean leadership to once again abide by the terms of the international nonproliferation agreement. In an attempt to compel the North Korean leadership to comply with the course of action stipulated by the international community, the Security Council has imposed a wide array of sanctions, including:

1. Extensive sanctions measures on the DPRK, including trade-related measures, financial sanctions, and a travel ban under resolutions 1718 (2006) and 1874 (2009);
2. An arms embargo encompassing related financial transactions and technical training or services, with the exception of small arms and light weapons;
3. A nuclear, ballistic missiles, and other WMD programs-related embargo;
4. A ban on the export of luxury goods to the DPRK; and
5. Individual targeted sanctions — a travel ban and/or assets freeze on designated persons and entities.^[38]

Targeted sanctions, sometimes called "smart sanctions," are intended to maximize the effect of coercive pressure on those responsible for wrongdoing while minimizing unintended impact on innocent and vulnerable populations. The DPRK sanctions committee has designated five individuals and eight entities — a level Asada considers far too low to be effective, but the process is fraught with politicization, as any of the committee's 15 members may block any new designation.^[42] Moreover, the North Koreans are known to avoid sanctions through surreptitious means: "The DPRK uses masking techniques in order to circumvent the sanctions. These include false description of cargo, indirect shipping routes, and the use of multiple layers of intermediaries and front companies."^[45]