East Asia Insights
TO WA R D C O M M U N I T Y B U I L D I N GJapan Center for International ExchangeVol. 2 No. 3 | June 2007

Five Myths about Dealing withNorth Korea:
A Japanese Perspective
Hitoshi Tanaka, Senior Fellow, JCIEThe past year has witnessed North Korea conduct a series of missile tests (July) in addition toits first-ever nuclear weapons test (October). UN
Security Council Resolution 1718 used the body’s
strongest censure of North Korea since 1953 tounanimously condemn the DPRK nuclear testand authorize economic and commercial sanctions against the regime. This was followed twomonths later by a resumption of the Six-Party
Talks and mid-January bilateral discussions between the United States and North Korea in Berlin, two developments that effectively paved theway for the most recent phase of talks in Beijing
and the subsequent release of the Six-Party Joint
Statement on February 13.
Almost by definition, the road to a final resolution of the North Korea issue is one fraught withmany challenges. No simple or piecemeal solution can realistically be expected to achieve success. And, when one examines the gravity of thesituation, failure, frankly speaking, is utterly unacceptable. The outcome of this effort, positive ornegative, will have serious consequences for East
Asian security, a region of increasing importancein the post–Cold War era. A breakdown in progress
would have a significant and lasting impact upon
the Nonproliferation Treaty framework, a regime

already teetering on the verge of collapse. ­Whether
or not a soft landing is truly possible will havelong-term implications for determining the role
global governance has to play in handling futureinternational challenges.
With the complications surrounding the Banco
Delta Asia issue, even the fate of measures stipulated in the February agreement remains uncertain. Given the long road ahead, it is worthwhileat this juncture to consider the validity of the following oft-heard critiques of the February JointStatement.

MYTH 1:“The February Joint Statement is merely arehash of the 1994 Agreed Framework.”
In a word: no. The 1994 Agreed Framework was a
result of bilateral negotiations between the UnitedStates and North Korea and ultimately collapsed
due to the lack of a tight monitoring mechanism.
Thirteen years ago, US policymakers assumed
that once an agreement was reached on the issue, both sides would act in good faith and fulfill
their respective commitments. That proved to bea miscalculation, and the world now knows it is a
mistake to have blind faith in any agreement withNorth Korea.

MYTH 3:
“Kim Jong-Il is a totally irrational leader.”The North Korean leadership is arguably the mostsecretive in the world, and it is often difficult tounderstand the thought process driving its decision making. Based on past behavior, however, we
can reasonably assume that there are two primaryforces driving its actions. The first is that the fundamental goal of the leadership is to preserve theregime through the development of nuclear weapons and missile technology that is sufficiently advanced to deter an American military strike. The
second is the belief that without economic reforms,
the regime will collapse from within. In the pursuitof these reforms, leaders have had no choice but todepend on the outside world and gradually begin
a shift toward a more capitalist economic system.
Putting moral judgment aside, if one acknowledges that the leadership places regime survival above
all else, it is not overwhelmingly difficult to understand why the regime behaves as it does. Simply
put, North Korea has sought nuclear weapons andadvanced missile technology for the same reason
that India and Pakistan did: as a deterrent against
hostile action from what it perceives as belligerent
outside forces.
Even if many of the policy decisions the North
Korean leadership has made heretofore can bedeemed “rational,” if the situation were to escalate at some point in the future and the regime
believed its continued existence to be in imminent
danger, it is not outside the realm of possibility
that panic might trump rationality. There are anumber of prominent policymakers who ardently
believe in “rational deterrence theory,” i.e. the philosophy that as long as North Korea only has a few
nuclear weapons there is no chance that it would
actually use one because doing so would resultin a devastating US retaliatory strike. While thistheory may have held true thus far in the postwar
era, it is dangerous to assume its infallibility when
the state in question is an international pariah like
North Korea.
The conventional wisdom of rational deterrence theory suggests that as long as North Korea
does not hand over weapons to terrorist groups,
it does not pose a substantial threat to regional or

The February 13 agreement was achieved within
the framework of the Six-Party Talks and, to put it
simply, although North Korea will continue to play
hardball and engage in brinkmanship for as longas it can, its leadership is well aware that it cannot
afford to go back on its word this time. The Bushadministration has made serious and domesticallycontroversial concessions, and there would be a severe backlash if North Korea were to sabotage theagreement.
In addition to its mechanism for verifying
progress, the agreement is more comprehensive innature than its predecessor, including the establishment of five working groups to deal with issuesof both bilateral and regional concern and a commitment by all parties to negotiate a permanent
peace regime on the Korean Peninsula through aseparate forum. In short, while not a solution inand of itself, the February agreement remains asignificant step in the right direction.

MYTH 2:“North Korea will never live up to its end of
the bargain.”
It cannot be denied that the North Korean leadership is far from an ideal negotiating partner andhas at times failed to faithfully abide by its agreements in the past. In order to ensure that this does
not happen again, decision makers in the fivenations involved must be sure to not repeat past
­mistakes.
While it goes without saying that full blame forthe problem lies squarely on North Korea’s shoulders, the absence thus far of consistent policy and a
united front among the five parties to the talks hascreated an environment of indecisiveness, allowing the North Korean regime to play other governments off one another to great effect. Above all else,
greater collaboration among the states involved
and cohesion and consistency in policy will be absolutely crucial henceforth. If the five parties post
a united front, North Korea will have no choice but
to honor its commitments. The very survival of its
regime will depend on it.

EAST ASIA INSIGHTSVol. 2 No. 3 | June 2007

global stability. If one looks at the North ­Korean
nuclear question from this perspective, the main
goal of negotiations at this stage seems to be oriented toward ensuring nonproliferation, as opposed to guaranteed denuclearization of thepeninsula. The growing influence of this mindset
is reflected in the February agreement’s call for
North Korea to merely “disable,” as opposed to“irreversibly dismantle,” its nuclear weapons andweapons programs. As the country most likely
to be the target of a North Korean attack, Japancannot accept such a policy and cannot afford toallow even a single weapon to remain in North
Korean hands.

Second, as clearly articulated in the February
agreement, a core component of any comprehensive resolution must be clear progress in normalization talks between Japan and North Korea. The
abduction of Japanese citizens was a clear violation of Japan’s national sovereignty, and the government has a right and obligation to protect thelives and property of its nationals. Amenable topublic sentiment, which at present is vehemently
anti–North Korea, the government cannot proceed without popular support. The costs of anyJapanese financial assistance to North Korea would
ultimately be borne by the Japanese taxpayer, andthe people therefore must be convinced that theirgovernment is not merely handing out rewards forbad behavior.
What Japan has asked North Korea to do is provide verifiable truth about when and where these
Japanese citizens were abducted and—if they havetruly passed away—the manner and date of their
deaths. If the North Korean regime adopts a sincere
attitude toward settling the issue—rather than insisting the issue is already “completely resolved”—
and makes a clear commitment to conducting a
joint investigation, talks on normalization canmove forward.
Resolution of the abductees issue, along withmoves toward normalization of bilateral relations,will be mutually beneficial and go far towardachieving a more permanent peace and stability inthe region.

MYTH 4:“Japan’s continuing insistence on a
resolution of the abductees issue issabotaging the entire process.”
In February, the Japanese government opted outof involvement in the initial 50,000 ton shipment of heavy oil. This decision has led someobservers to ask why Japan has chosen to isolate
itself by insisting on a resolution of the abductees issue as a prerequisite for greater involvement in negotiations. This was followed by theJapan-DPRK working group meeting in early
March, which ended abruptly after the North
Korean delegation stormed out prematurely,
scoffing at Japanese demands for a resolution to
the abductees issue and insisting that it had already been solved.
Many non-Japanese cannot comprehend why
Japan insists on making such a big issue over abductees, particularly in the context of the threat
posed by a North Korean nuclear weapon with thepotential to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens. There are two main reasons for thisstance. First, as stated above, resolution of the nuclear issue can only realistically be achieved in thecontext of a comprehensive solution. The shock ofthe October nuclear test has distracted attention
away from the larger issue, namely the administration of Kim Jong-Il. In many ways, the abductees
issue, like the nuclear weapons program, is merely
a manifestation of more serious and fundamental
deficiencies within the regime.
EAST ASIA INSIGHTSMYTH 5:“The North Korean nuclear issue will neverbe resolved.”
It goes without saying that the February Joint
Statement, while a significant step forward, isonly a transitional agreement and will not resultin a conclusive resolution of the issue in theimmediate future. The North Korean government
has a tendency to retain two lines vis-à-vis its
foreign policy, a “hard line” and a “soft line,” andit is quite likely that it will continue to engage inbrinkmanship. Nevertheless, the relevant parties
must continue to engage the regime with a united
front until it realizes that its interests would bebetter served by following the softer line.
Vol. 2 No. 3 | June 2007

The February agreement can play an importantrole as a strict monitoring mechanism and road­map to resolution of the matter. Denuclearizationof the Korean Peninsula remains a complex issue
and will necessarily involve a long process throughwhich the North Korean regime thoroughly
transforms its policies.
In the meantime, a moment of truth is boundto come: will North Korea make a strategic
decision? At some point in the not-too-distantfuture, the North Korean regime will have tochoose between sticking to its nuclear devices

while the international community piles on harshcountermeasures or denuclearizing and receiving
the international assistance it so badly needs.
Success will require the patient and committed
efforts of all parties involved.

Hitoshi Tanaka is a Senior Fellow at JCIE, and he­previously served as Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan. He was closely involved in negotiations with North Korea under former Prime Minister
Koizumi.

East Asia Insights
East Asia Insights is an occasional newsletter focusing on East Asia community building
from a Japanese perspective.
Published by: Tadashi Yamamoto, President, JCIE
Please direct any comments or questions to eainsights@jcie.or.jp.
Japan Center for International Exchange
www.jcie.or.jp

EAST ASIA INSIGHTS

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© 2007 Japan Center for International ExchangeVol. 2 No. 3 | June 2007