THE DRIVING FACTOR: Songun's Impact on North Korean Foreign Policy
Abstract
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is the most heavily militarized country in the world and continues to be a source of instability and intransigence in both the East Asian region and the international system. The reclusive regime led by Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il has become an international pariah for its system of brutal totalitarian control and widespread violation of human rights,1 its dangerous development and proliferation of nuclear materials and technologies,2 and its propensity for armed aggression, demonstrated most recently by its torpedoing of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March 20103 and its shelling of South Korea’s Yeongpyeong Island in November 2010.4 Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have been further exacerbated by indications of instability and uncertainty5 emanating from Kim Jong-il’s apparent and ongoing transition of power to his son, Kim Jong-un. As elucidated by Georgetown University’s Victor Cha in his testimony before the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs in March 2011,6 the danger of the situation cannot be overemphasized. A close analysis of the North Korean regime, and particularly its system of civil-military relations as manifested in songun (or “military-first politics”), reveals that Kim is a shrewd political strategist and that the DPRK’s foreign policy is rational, meticulously calculated, and essential to the survival of the regime. The Kim regime’s perceptions of external threats notwithstanding, songun is the fundamental factor in explaining the aggression and defiance that have defined North Korea’s foreign policy since Kim assumed power. By prioritizing the armed forces over all other aspects of state and society and allocating a highly disproportionate share of national resources to the military, songun has equated the survival of the state with the continued primacy and indispensability of the Korean Peoples’ Army (KPA). Songun has brought militarism to permeate all aspects of North Korean life and has extended the military’s influence to sectors far beyond national security. Moreover, it has retarded the economic and social development of the North Korean state and made the nation and regime dependent on international aid for survival.
The Songun Trap: A Vicious Circle
In order to secure this international largesse while deterring its enemies, the DPRK resorts to coercive international bargaining tactics, especially in negotiations over its nuclear activities. Pyongyang’s aggression, brinksmanship, and nuclear proliferation serve the foreign policy purposes of deterring attacks by conventionally-superior enemies and affording additional diplomatic weight in order to force concessions and material aid in international negotiations. Domestically, the nuclear program serves as a symbol of national pride and military strength, thereby legitimizing the military’s position of privilege in the regime while maintaining the continued support of the nation’s nuclear establishment and military bureaucracy, both of which are fundamental to regime survival. Furthermore, the international aid acquired through North Korea’s foreign policy can be allocated to pacify its deprived population, diverted to other regime priorities such as energy production, agricultural development and infrastructure improvements, or used to free up other state resources for military use. In the absence of international negotiations, the military must manufacture crises in order to create a bargaining situation in which other states can appease the DPRK by means of aid.
The songun system thus traps the DPRK in a self-perpetuating cycle in which the military must remain in a privileged position to maintain regime legitimacy and survival. This privileged position itself requires the use of threats, aggression and nuclear brinksmanship to bring international partners to the negotiating table, where coercive bargaining tactics are used to secure international aid and concessions. The international assistance is then used to maintain the economically unsustainable songun system, which allocates a disproportionate share of national resources to the military while retarding economic development and fostering a culture of repression and militarism. In this way, songun is fundamental to explaining North Korean foreign policy.
This paper works from the assumption that survival is the primary objective of the Kim regime. It begins with a brief history of Kim Jong-il’s assumption of power and implementation of political and military reforms. It then discusses the system of songun in detail, describing how the military exercises influence in all areas of North Korean society and politics. This is followed by an analysis of how songun drives Pyongyang’s foreign policy, notably its development and proliferation of military nuclear technologies and its use of aggression and nuclear brinksmanship to create bargaining situations conducive to winning major concessions and international largesse. The analysis will include foreign policy examples since the mid-1990s. Finally, this paper will situate the relationship between songun and Pyongyang’s foreign policy in the contemporary East Asian security environment, notably amidst elevated tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the uncertain process of leadership succession in the DPRK. It will explore the formulation of American foreign policy toward the DPRK from the perspective that the maintenance of songun, not external threats, is the primary motivator for continued North Korean nuclear development.
Kim Jong-il’s Assumption of Power and Reforms
Kim Jong-il became Supreme Leader in 1994 during a time of crisis: the regime was divided among numerous factions; persistent economic crises and food shortages had left the masses in squalor; a series of natural disasters had ravaged the country; and the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the DPRK of its main source of aid while undermining the credibility of the country’s Stalinist ideology.7 His father, Kim il-Sung, was convinced that the allegiance of the KPA was needed to ensure the maintenance of the regime and the legitimacy of Kim Jong-il as his successor. Kim Jong-il initiated a campaign of reorganization that reshuffled the military bureaucracy, purged potential competitors in the regime and laid the groundwork for a new generation of military leaders. He also began to move authority away from the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), which was the central organizing force for ruling the country during Kim Il-Sung’s leadership, and toward the military, notably by enhancing the power of the National Defense Commission (NDC). The profound nature of this shift should not be underemphasized, as the ascendancy of the military came to permeate every aspect of political and social life in the country.8
This transformation of power culminated in constitutional amendments that formalized the NDC as the supreme national decision-making body at the 10th Supreme People’s Assembly in 1998. In the process, Kim Jong-il proclaimed the military to be the foundation of socialism and the forefront of the revolution, NDC officials came to outrank Politburo and Secretariat officials, and military men replaced KWP members in Kim’s personal entourage.9 Under Kim il-Sung the KWP exercised control over the armed forces and the flow of information to the Supreme Leader went through the party bureaucracy from the KPA to the KWP’s Central Military Committee (CMC). But after 1998, Kim Jong-il had a more direct relationship with the military and the role of the CMC in military policy has diminished.10
Songun: The Civil-Military Relations of North Korea
The reforms implemented by Kim Jong-il mark the beginning of songun in North Korea. By prioritizing military institutions over those of the party and the government, songun essentially used the army to secure Kim’s succession.11 The stature and influence of the KPA has grown under songun while simultaneously dispersing power within the KPA by means of multiple checks on competing interests within the military system, thereby enabling Kim to more securely control the military. Kim’s control is enforced through a number of carrots and sticks. He is able to offer carrots such as defence budget increases (despite economic crises), material benefits and privileges to the high command, and promotions among senior officer corps. Sticks include overlapping command structures, institutionalized check and balance mechanisms, increased surveillance of the military by security services, and intensified ideological indoctrination of the KPA.
Authority for command and control of the armed forces and the power to declare war, issue mobilization orders in an emergency, promote senior military officers, and oversee defence construction work was transferred to the NDC Chairman (Kim). The CMC maintained responsibility for the administration of the armed forces, the implementation of the party’s military policies, the development and production of munitions, and interaction with critical KWP defence-oriented institutions, especially in regards to procurement. Below the CMC, the Ministry of the Peoples’ Armed Forces (MPAF) and the General Staff began to oversee the day-to-day operations of the armed forces.12
To truly appreciate how profoundly songun has pervaded life in the DPRK, one must go beyond the organizational structure of the KPA. The logic of songun is simple enough: North Korea needs a military government capable of ensuring the survival of a functional political system. However, songun has broken with traditional socialist ideals in which the labourer and the farmer are the main forces of revolution and has replaced them with the armed forces as the driving force behind socialist revolution, economic development, and national security.13 Regime propaganda has instilled in the North Korean people the belief that all parts of society must be transformed commensurate with the structure of the army. This propaganda has helped create a culture in which the troops come before the proletariat and a belief that it is solely because of songun and the KPA that peace has persisted on the Korean Peninsula despite the imperialism and aggression of the United States.14 The rapid rise of the military in everyday life and the siege mentality propagated through its indoctrination indicates that the Kim regime has been functioning in a perpetual state of emergency. Songun provides the regime with a self-sustaining ideological and organizational structure that legitimises the allocation of vastly disproportionate national resources to the military.15
North Korean Defence Spending
The pervasiveness of songun in North Korea is clearly shown by the Kim regime’s defence spending. North Korea is the most militarized country in the world, with 1.1 million troops out of a total population of 23 million people.16 Details on its actual defence spending are opaque, but observers estimate that the Kim regime spends between $1.7 and $6 billion, or between fifteen and thirty per cent of its gross domestic product, on its military on an annual basis.17 These figures alone are not, however, representative of the wider military economy, which commands preferential allocation of the DPRK’s materials, resources, and manpower. Some economists estimate that the military economy encompasses as much as seventy-five per cent of all activities in the North Korean economy.18 This includes military control of a number of powerful trading enterprises that incorporate entire production and supply chains for railways, mines, farms, fisheries and textile factories, provide manpower for infrastructure projects,19 and manage the domestic distribution of food, uniforms and weapons.20 It should be noted that, by means of its productive activities in so many sectors, the KPA is also adding value to the economy beyond its security role.21 These facts serve to once again illustrate, however, the centrality of the armed forces in North Korean society and politics. The privileged position enjoyed by the military within the songun system necessitates what La Trobe University’s Benjamin Habib calls ‘social triage’, in which large segments of the population are denied access to food and basic services in order to ensure adequate provision for the military.22
The Suryong System: Direct Rule by Kim Jong-il
Despite its ascendancy in North Korean society, the military is not a monolith and does not control the overall decision-making process of the regime. Songun must be understood as a pragmatic reorganization of military and political power in order to maintain Kim’s position and legitimacy as Suryong, or Great Leader, for which the support of the armed forces and security agencies is required. By placing the NDC at the zenith of the leadership structure, promoting and assigning loyal political allies to key military posts, securing control over different factions in the high command, and ensuring exclusive access to information via both formal and informal channels, Kim is able to monitor the military’s senior leadership and maintain ultimate control over national decision-making.23 This is known as the Suryong System, in which the KWP, the KPA, and the government are merely tools for policy implementation, while Kim himself is the ultimate policymaker.24
The final guarantee of Kim’s absolute power is a parallel military force of approximately 189,000 designed to guard against a coup or internal subversion. The paramilitary force consists of the 50,000-strong Guard Command that reports directly to Kim and engages in surveillance of high-ranking officials, the 70,000-strong Pyongyang Defense Command responsible for countercoup defense and protection of the capital, and the Military Security Command that acts as a counterweight to the highest political apparatus in the military and provides additional surveillance of senior military and political officials.25
Potential for Reform
The consolidation of the Songun system with Kim at the top has constrained the DPRK’s ability to carry out reforms, as the military fears that change could lead to civil unrest and disorder. Reforms could have potentially staggering consequences. Economic liberalization would require land re-distribution, de-collectivization, marketization, industrial restructuring, and legal reform, and would likely lead to rampant unemployment.26 The general population would experience a severe period of social turmoil in which the rationing system would be disrupted and travel restrictions would be loosened.27 Economic reform would open North Korea to foreign information, undermine political controls, and unblock avenues for alternative political mobilization.28 There is evidence that the regime’s centralized distribution system is already experiencing problems because a growing number of North Koreans are resorting to informal barter trade, private exchanges, and other economic activities not managed by the regime.29 Even if reform was limited and meticulously overseen by the regime, it would require the reallocation of national resources away from the military and toward the civilian sector. The military already moved to block such a reallocation in 2005, after Kim gave indications that he supported a KWP proposal to readjust the budget to focus more on agricultural development.30
Considering the economic failure of songun, the decrepit condition of the North Korean people, and the accelerating integration of the rest of the world, the Kim regime cannot neglect reform indefinitely, but both the maintenance of the status quo and economic reform pose risks to regime survival. The multiple checks and balances (through cooptation, indoctrination, repression, surveillance and violence) which ensure Kim’s hold on power and the military establishment’s resistance to reform serve to illustrate two points with significant implications for North Korean foreign policy. First, the pervasiveness of militarism in the regime means that Kim must constantly manufacture crises simply in order to maintain the status quo. Second, Kim places primary importance on the survival of the regime and the continuance of his family at the head of that regime.
Songun’s Relationship to North Korean Foreign Policy
North Korea’s foreign policy during the Kim Jong-il era has been marked by aggression, nuclear proliferation, manipulation of international negotiations and, most notably, the refusal to cease development of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear brinksmanship in international relations. There is no doubt that North Korea faces external threats in a geopolitically-significant and rapidly-changing international neighborhood. The country’s foreign policy, obviously, can therefore not be attributed to the songun system alone. This section, however, will illustrate how songun is the fundamental factor that underpins North Korean foreign policy in the twenty-first century.
External Drivers of North Korean Foreign Policy
Foreign policymakers in Pyongyang perceive the United States as an ongoing existential threat to the DPRK. In their view, the United States and other Nuclear Weapon States are flouting their commitment to disarm under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Furthermore, the United States and their allies, especially the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan, have made numerous threats against the DPRK over the last half-century and represent a multidimensional threat to regime security, economic development, and the socialist identity of the state. They also see the United States as having failed to deliver on various agreements made with the DPRK. For example, the United States did not deliver a light-water reactor to North Korea by 2003 as stipulated in the 1994 Agreed Framework and ended heavy fuel shipments to the DPRK in 2002.31According to the regime, it does not matter if the United States had legitimate reasons for making these decisions. What matters is that decision-makers in Pyongyang perceive them to be disingenuous and therefore believe that Washington cannot be trusted. Nuclear weapons, therefore, are a low-cost, critical military instrument that can be used to counter the DPRK’s enemies, notably the United States, South Korea and Japan, which possess a conventional military superiority. North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons also enhances its leverage in international diplomacy, demanding recognition and consideration where there might otherwise be none given.
A deeper analysis of North Korean foreign policy calls into question the true utility of nuclear weapons as an offensive or defensive weapon for Pyongyang. Working from the assumption established above that the Kim regime is rational and prioritizes its own survival above all other considerations, the probability of the DPRK actually using nuclear weapons is quite low. Despite Pyongyang’s provocative rhetoric and threats, it is questionable whether or not North Korea can actually deliver a nuclear payload. Furthermore, it does not possess a second-strike capability, meaning that it is susceptible to complete destruction if its enemies were to retaliate.32 This means that attacking South Korea or Japan with a nuclear weapon is not a serious option for the Kim regime, begging the question: if the external justifications for North Korea’s aggression, nuclear brinksmanship and defiance are strategically toothless, then why does it continue to pursue this foreign policy?
Domestic Drivers of North Korean Foreign Policy
The answer lies in North Korea’s civil-military relations as manifested in the songun system. Put simply, North Korea’s foreign policy, and specifically its nuclear brinksmanship, is a last resort to guarantee the survival of the Kim regime and the songun system upon which it depends. North Korean aggression and defiance, as exemplified by refusal to cease the development of an independent military nuclear capability, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials, armed attacks on South Korean citizens and ships, and the use of a ‘nuclear card’ to extract unreasonable concessions in international negotiations, is central to the maintenance of songun. In a vicious cycle, songun is central to North Korean aggression and defiance in its foreign policy. This factor has led some observers to conclude that the Kim regime is unlikely to seriously consider denuclearization.33
The fundamental role that the maintenance of the songun system plays in calculating foreign policy can be explained by three factors. First, nuclear weapons consolidate support for the Kim regime by bringing prestige to the military despite economic crisis, widespread hunger, and crippling poverty. Nuclear weapons help to placate the masses because the regime uses propaganda to portray its nuclear deterrent as a critical tool that brings the country international praise, obstructs American imperialism, protects the country from its enemies and, perhaps most importantly, justifies the disproportionate allocation of national resources to the military. Nuclear weapons also reinforce the loyalty of the military itself by making it a member of an exclusive international nuclear ‘club’. As the primary stakeholder in the songun system, it is imperative that the military maintains a degree of public authority and prestige commensurate with its position of privilege and power within the regime.
Second, nuclear weapons serve the parochial bureaucratic interests of other institutions within the songun system, notably the DPRK’s nuclear establishment and important groups within the party and military bureaucracy. North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle is essential to the political economy of the state and political legitimization of the songun system. Because of the decades of nuclear research and development and the bureaucratic interests that have been empowered over that time, it has become an entrenched element of the regime. The Second Natural Science Institute, working in collaboration with the Academy of Sciences and the Second Economic Committee’s Fifth Machine Industry Bureau, is responsible for research and development, while the Nuclear Chemical Defence Bureau in the MPAF oversees defensive measures against nuclear, chemical and biological attack and exercises command and control of the nuclear inventory.34 Meanwhile, the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center employs over 3,000 personnel.35 These institutions have been allocated priority national resources under songun36 and represent a powerful and vested interest that benefits from the status quo and, by extension, a belligerent foreign policy and nuclear strategy.
Third, the nuclear brinksmanship and weapons development that has defined North Korean foreign policy has been essential to securing the international aid needed to avoid economic crisis and provide the economic inputs required to sustain the songun system. In international negotiations over its nuclear program, the DPRK utilizes coercive bargaining tactics. Unable to legitimately withstand international pressure to disarm, Pyongyang’s negotiators engage in disruptive tactics risky enough to provoke a reaction and precipitate an international crisis. Negotiators from other countries are then intimidated into accepting an outcome that benefits the DPRK while undermining their own foreign policy priorities.37 For example, in the first round of the Six-Party Talks involving the Obama administration in 2009, amid hopes that the new American president would take a more cooperative course than the Bush administration, the DPRK ended any such hopes. As Jonathan Pollack summarizes,
Pyongyang’s expectations posited the negation of U.S.-Asia Pacific security strategy and the outright marginalization of long term U.S. allies. North Korean officials were claiming that nuclear weapons provided the DPRK essential equivalence with the U.S. and other nuclear powers, while relegating the ROK and Japan to lesser political and strategic status… the North’s new stance was inherently unacceptable to any U.S. administration. Pyongyang was signalling its intent to consolidate its nuclear status, not to pursue a credible negotiated deal.38
North Korea’s persistent use of such tactics has led some observers to conclude that Kim Jong-il never had any genuine intention to relinquish North Korean nuclear weapons despite twenty years of negotiations, including the Six-Party Talks.39
Indeed, the DPRK has not made any substantive concessions that would have limited or reversed its development of nuclear weapons. It has merely used international negotiations as a platform to secure international aid vital to sustaining the songun system. North Korea’s nuclear program provided additional diplomatic leverage by allowing the country to manufacture crises in order to force concessions. Stephen Haggard of the University of California (San Diego) and Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimate that international aid constituted approximately 37 percent of the DPRK’s gross national income between 1996 and 2005.40 Others estimate that North Korea’s ‘nuclear extortion’ has generated more than $6 billion since the late 1990s in the form of food, fuel, fertilizers, development assistance, and direct cash payments.41
What is particularly inimical about North Korea’s international bargaining tactics is that once aid is secured, the Kim regime uses it to reinforce the songun system. Aid is managed and distributed by the military, so it takes the first and largest portion of the shipment upon arrival, and only after other factions in the regime receive their proportion is the remainder distributed to the general population. Because the military has access to both formal and informal markets, it sells these commodities on the private market and thereby generates large profits. Furthermore, aid shipments allow the military to redirect money that would otherwise be spent on food procurement toward other spending priorities that help to stabilize the regime, such as energy production, agricultural development and infrastructure improvements.42 The management and distribution of international aid acquired through coercive bargaining is exemplary of the vicious cycle that sustains the songun system. Military influence dictates an aggressive and disingenuous foreign policy that intimidates other countries into providing aid which is used to reinforce the military’s privileged position in the political-economy.
Songun is therefore fundamental to explaining the Kim regime’s aggressive and defiant foreign policy. By prioritizing the military above all other elements of North Korean society, the economically unsustainable songun system has entrenched in the regime a militaristic worldview and made the survival of the Kim regime contingent upon nuclear weapons, manufactured crises and coercive bargaining. This foreign policy in turn reinforces the songun system itself and ensures regime survival while the North Korean masses suffer poverty and hunger, and East Asia is destabilized by nuclear proliferation, armed confrontations, and the perpetual threat of war. From a regional perspective, the status quo represents an unsustainable and increasingly dangerous situation that threatens to bring major powers into conflict and flirts with nuclear catastrophe, and is further exacerbated by the uncertainty surrounding the regime succession in the DPRK.
Conclusion: The Implications of Songun for East Asian Security
Recent North Korean attacks on the ROK and the Obama administration’s “strategic patience” policy of refusing to engage Pyongyang43 have left the Korean Peninsula in an intense standoff. The March 2010 sinking of the South Korean frigate Cheonan by a North Korean torpedo44 and the November 2010 artillery bombardment by the DPRK on South Korea’s Yeongpyeong Island are the latest incidents to elevate tensions in East Asia and harden American, Japanese and South Korean refusal to return to the Six-Party Talks. Even China, the DPRK’s sole ally and main provider of food and fuel, is showing impatience with Pyongyang’s belligerence.45 As Benjamin Habib ominously predicted, “in the absence of negotiations, Pyongyang is likely to engineer crisis situations to create a bargaining situation in which their de-escalation can be bought through aid contributions.”46 The sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeongpyeong Island fulfilled Habib’s predictions and are the latest North Korean foreign policy decisions emanating from the songun system. With internal and external pressure mounting on North Korea, the Kim regime may come to the conclusion that doubling down on its provocative tactics is its only choice in forcing the revival of negotiations and, by extension, the acquisition of international aid to sustain songun.
The impasse is further complicated by a potentially turbulent transfer of power from Kim Jong-il to his son, Kim Jong-un. The 27-year-old son of the Dear Leader was made a four star general on September 27th, 2010 and appeared in public for the first time ever the following day at a KWP delegate conference.47 Little is known about the younger Kim, but observers argue that because he has not made any significant contribution to the DPRK, Kim Jong-un lacks the legitimacy of his father and grandfather. The Kim regime’s provocations of 2010 could be attempts to manufacture tensions with the outside world in order to rally the North Korean people around the new leader. Amid speculation that Kim Jong-il is in poor health, it is possible that power struggles within the regime could break out into the open if the succession proceeds too quickly.48 These international and domestic developments shape the context in which the Kim regime is attempting to maintain the songun system, with significant implications for the major East Asian powers, particularly the United States, that seek to maintain stability in the region while reversing the DPRK’s nuclear development.
In accepting the pervasiveness of songun and formulating its foreign policy response to North Korea, the Obama administration may need to accept that no combination of carrots and sticks will persuade the Kim regime to de-nuclearize. Considering that economic development would lead to rapid systemic changes and threaten the songun system, the United States cannot offer any package of incentives that are of equal or greater value to the Kim regime as its nuclear program. Similarly, the use of force is not a viable option for the United States because it would cause incalculable instability on the Korean Peninsula, would not be allowed by China and Russia, and could potentially provoke the Kim regime into actually using its nuclear weapons. If the maintenance of the songun system is fundamental to North Korea’s aggression and nuclear development, then the United States possess limited leverage to compel the DPRK to denuclearize.
Any strategy designed to influence the Kim regime must have the support of China. It is North Korea’s most important ally, largest trading partner, and primary source of food, arms and fuel, and therefore has the most leverage over Pyongyang. Beijing has too much at stake, however, to abandon its support for its northeastern neighbour. China seeks to maintain North Korea as a buffer zone between it and South Korea, has significant business and resource interests in the DPRK, and places priority on stability in those regions adjacent to its borders. Furthermore, intervention in the affairs of other states is anathema to China’s foreign policy ideology, while North Korea’s adventurism serves the Chinese purpose of maintaining a perpetual irritant to American interests in East Asia.49 As long as its territorial integrity is maintained, China is willing to put up with the occasional flare-up on the Korean Peninsula.
An American strategy therefore needs to persuade Beijing that the Kim regime is a liability on its northeastern border rather than a strategic asset. Washington should remind Beijing of their mutual interests, such as the containment of North Korea’s nuclear proliferation. Furthermore, the United States needs to show China that a unified Korea would not be harmful to Chinese interests and that North Korean aggression may have the effect of enhancing the American military presence in East Asia and providing South Korea and Japan with incentives to produce nuclear weapons. The United States should also work with China and other East Asian powers to develop contingency plans in the event of armed conflict or regime collapse in North Korea. China needs to be assured that its core interests would not be threatened by regime change in North Korea or reunification of the Korean Peninsula. Only when China effectively enforces sanctions against the Kim regime will the DPRK be squeezed to the point of collapse or denuclearization.
Finally, it may be time for the United States to accept that the Kim regime is likely to endure in the short- to medium-term and engage the DPRK with diplomatic recognition, military confidence-building measures and economic investment without precondition. Although this strategy entails implicitly recognizing North Korea’s nuclear status for the time being, it offers the best means of constraining its use of nuclear weapons while undermining the Kim regime’s isolationist foundation. In time, the engagement would serve the manifold purposes of reducing the DPRK’s threat perceptions, improving the security and control of North Korean nuclear weapons, putting the United States in a position to promote a renewal of South-North economic and political relations, and providing a foothold for exposing North Koreans to the possibilities of economic reform.50 There are obvious political and diplomatic obstacles to this strategy and it conflicts with the American position on human rights and democracy, but partial access to the country is better than further isolation. The Kim regime has shown itself to be remarkably resilient, and it is perhaps better to accept a nuclear North Korea in the short- to medium-term in the hopes of reform and de nuclearization in the long-term, as opposed to cornering an increasingly paranoid Kim regime with nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.
These recommendations may seem discomforting in view of the events of 2010, but the pervasiveness of the songun system suggests that a return to negotiations will not bear fruit. In addressing a problem as intractable as the DPRK has proven to be, untried options must not be eschewed. Continuance of the status quo suggests three potential outcomes: 1) the muddling through of the Kim regime and the maintenance of the songun system, under which the North Korean people will remain in a state of repression and destitution and the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal will continue to grow; 2) armed conflict in East Asia, which would draw in major powers and risk the exchange of nuclear weapons; or 3) regime collapse in the DPRK, turning North Korea into a failed state, which would seriously destabilize the region. As Dr. Cha pointed out in March 2011, “North Korea policy truly is the land of lousy options. The choices are never between good and bad. They are always between bad and worse.”51
ENDNOTES
1 “Freedom in the World 2010– North Korea,” Freedom House, accessed March 19, 2011, http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&country=7853&year=2010.
2 “North Korea Profile, Nuclear Threat Initiative,” accessed March 19, 2011,http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Nuclear/index.html.
3 Josh Rogin, “So much for consequences for North Korea over ship sinking,” Foreign Policy, July 9 2010, accessed March 19, 2011, http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/09/so_much_for_consequences_for_north_korea_over_ship_sinking.
4 Robert Haddick, “This Week at War: China’s North Korean folly,” Foreign Policy, December 10 2010, accessed March 19, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/10/this_week_at_war_chinas_north_korean_folly.
5 Maurice Johnstone, “Achieving Succession: Transition poses challenges for North Korea,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, November 10, 2010), accessed March 17 2011.
6 Victor D. Cha, “North Korea’s Sea of Fire: Bullying, Brinksmanship and Blackmail,” (testimony before the United States House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, D.C., March 10, 2011).
7 Karoly Fendler, “Songun: On the Past and Present of North Korea’s ‘Military First’ Policy,” Vienna Working Papers on East Asian Economy and Society 2 (2009): 8.
8 Ken E. Gause, North Korean CMR Trends: Military-first Politics to A Point (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2006): v-vi, 2.
9 Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind, “Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea,” International Security 35 (2010): 62-63.
10 Gause, North Korean CMR Trends, 25.
11 Scott Snyder, “Kim Jong-il’s Successor Dilemmas,” The Washington Quarterly 33 (2010): 35-46.
12 Gause, North Korean CMR Trends, vi-vii, 2, 12, 18-19, 25, 27
13 Samuel S. Kim, “North Korea’s Nuclear Strategy and the Interface between International and Domestic Politics,” Asian Perspective 34 (2010): 60, 99.
14 Fendler, “Songun,” 11.
15 Benjamin Habib, “North Korea’ nuclear weapons programme and the maintenance of the Songun system,” The Pacific Review 24 (2011): 57.
16 Gause, North Korean CMR Trends, 10.
17 Habib, “North Korea’ nuclear weapons programme,” 51.
18 Chung-in Moon and H. Takesada. “North Korea: institutionalized military intervention,” in Coercion and Governance, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 357–82.
19 Jonathan D. Pollack, “The strategic futures and military capabilities of the two Koreas,” in Strategic Asia 2005–06: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty, eds. Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills (Seattle & Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2005), 144.
20 Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country (Melbourne, Australia: Scribe, 2004), 190.
21 Habib, “North Korea’ nuclear weapons programme,” 51.
22 Benjamin Habib, “Rogue proliferator? North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle & its relationship to regime perpetuation,” Energy Policy 38 (2010): 2831.
23 Gause, North Korean CMR Trends, 6, 13-17
24 Kap-sik Kim, “Suryong’s Direct Rule and the Political Regime in North Korea under Kim Jong Il,” Asian Perspective 32 (2008): 90-91, 103.
25 Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., Armed Forces of North Korea (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), chap. 7.
26 Marcus Noland, “North Korea’s external economic relations: globalization in ‘our own style’,” in North Korea and Northeast Asia, eds. Samuel S. Kim and Tai Hwan Lee (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 165-94.
27 Habib, “Rogue Proliferator?”, 2831.
28 Scott Snyder, “North Korea’s challenge of regime survival: internal problems and implications for the future,” Pacific Review 73 (2000): 517.
29 Jonathan D. Pollack, “Kim Jong-il’s Clenched Fist,” The Washington Quarterly 32 (2009): 158.
30 Gause, North Korean CMR Trends, 45.
31 Kim, “North Korea’s Nuclear Strategy,” 49-53, 63.
32 Habib, “North Korea’ nuclear weapons programme,” 48-49.
33 Habib, “North Korea’ nuclear weapons programme and the maintenance of the Songun system,” 45-46. 34 “North Korea Profile: Nuclear Facilities Overview,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, accessed March 20, 2011, http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Nuclear/facilities.html.
35 Larry A. Niksch, “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival, eds. Young Whan Kihl and Hong Nack Kim (New York: East Gate Books, 2006): 99.
36 Habib, “Rogue Proliferator,” 2832.
37 Cheon Seongwhun, “North Korea and the ROK-US Security Alliance,” Armed Forces & Society 34 (2007): 16.
38 Pollack, “Kim Jong-il’s Clenched Fist”: 161
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