North Korea’s Strategic Goals and Policy towards theUnited States and South Korea
Sue Mi Terry, Ph.D.
Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Abstract
Pyongyang under the Kim dynasty has pursued three broad andconsistent strategic goals: (1) The pursuit of nuclear weapons program inorder to gain international acceptance of the North as a bona fide nuclear
weapons state; (2) securing a peace treaty in an effort to remove U.S.
forces from the Korean Peninsula; and, (3) reunification with South
Korea on its own terms—the ultimate if increasingly unrealistic
objective. To achieve these goals, the North has followed a policy ofbrinksmanship with the U.S. and South Korea: provoke when
Washington or Seoul seem preoccupied, up the ante in the face ofinternational condemnation, and pivot back to a peace offensive, whichusually ends with some form of dialogue and negotiation, culminating,finally, in concessions for the North. This article reviews in detail how
such policies have been pursued by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim
Jong-un. It shows that, while there have been changes in North Korean
policy, they have been primarily tactical not strategic—the North haschanged how it pursues its goals (sometimes using military forces, atother times covert actions, or even negotiations), but it has remained
consistent in its objectives. Not even the regime’s literal bankruptcy has
convinced the regime to change course, and for good reason: suchbrinkmanship tactics have paid off for the North by making possible theregime’s survival for more than sixty years. Kim Jong-un, accordingly,
has continued this strategy. This article ends by suggesting how the U.S.
and South Korea should deal with the North’s militaristic foreign policy.
In brief, the two allies need to break the cycle of provocation by making
clear they will no longer reward North Korea’s destabilizing behavior
while pursuing a longer-term goal of their own.
Keywords: North Korea, South Korea, U.S. foreign policy, Kim Il-sung,
Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-Un, “military-first” politics, North Korean
strategy and policy, nuclear negotiations, nuclear weapons, proliferation,
peace treaty, unification

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Introduction
Any examination of North Korea’s policies toward Washington andSeoul must begin with the realization that North Korea is without equalin this world—the unique political system its leaders, Kim Il-sung and
Kim Jong-il have built (and one that Kim Jong-un is now continuing) is
the sole Communist-Confucian hereditary dynasty and the world’s mostcultish, isolated, and nationalistic nation. North Korea has a repressive,
totalitarian system that keeps hundreds of thousands of its citizens
confined to slave-labor camps while all others are in constant terror by
the secret police and informants in their midst. It has the distinction of
having gone from an industrialized state in 1945 to one where famine is aconstant danger, making this the world’s only industrialized/urbanizedpeacetime economy that has suffered constant and persistent widespreadfamine. As perhaps the most militarized society in the world, North
Korea possesses the world’s largest military in terms of manpower anddefense spending proportional to its population and national income. It
also has the most distorted economy in the world, a country that spends
billions of dollars in armaments while at the same time watching its
people starve. Living standards among the North Koreans citizens areamong the lowest in the world (North Korea’s 2012 GDP per capita,
based on purchasing power parity, estimated by the Central Intelligence
Agency as 197th in the world).1 In short, North Korea is an unparalleledmodel of failure in contemporary history.
Yet, ironically, North Korea also remains the most influential
regional political actor in the world proportionate to its economy andterritory because of its formidable military power and its cunning andshrewd foreign policy, which is particularly skillful in its management ofWashington and Seoul. The North Korean regime has survived for sixty
years by relentlessly pursuing the development of nuclear weapons,ballistic missiles, and other forms of military power that hold South
Korea—and its other neighbors—hostage. North Korea continues to
employ its nuclear blackmail and brinksmanship strategies, including test
firings of weapons and carefully-controlled attacks on South Korea, towrest concessions from the U.S., South Korea, China, and other statesthat are far more powerful. The most recent examples of the North’s
destabilizing behavior include the sinking of Cheonan in March 2010,
the shelling of Yeonpyong island in October 2010, and a third nuclear
test in March 2013.

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Both the U.S. and regional powers lack an effective response to the“North Korean problem,” in no small part because our understanding of
the inner workings of the “Hermit Kingdom” is rather poor. As David
Sanger recently wrote in the New York Times, “the black hole of North
Korea intelligence gathering is getting blacker”—at a time when the
United States has “learned to conduct drone strikes with increasing
accuracy in Pakistan and direct cyberweapons at specific nuclear
centrifuges deep under the Iranian desert, its understanding of North
Korea’s leadership and weapons has actually gotten worse.”2 Indeed,
Korea scholars, intelligence analysts, and policymakers can’t agree on
simple questions such as: Who is really in charge in North Korea? How
firmly has Kim Jong-un consolidated his power? What exactly is on theminds of the inner circle, including Kim Jong-un himself? And what isthe extent of the North’s nuclear and missile capabilities? In addition topoor intelligence, as B. R. Myers notes in The Cleanest Race, we lack afundamental understanding of the North’s ideology and mindset, and too
often project our Western values and “common sense” onto North
Koreans and try to understand the North through our own lenses rather
than theirs.3
Such a dearth of information and lack of understanding of the North,particularly about the inner workings of the North Korean leadership,
therefore often leads to misreading of the North’s intentions andcapabilities. In particular, both the so-called “engagement” and“hardline” camps of Korea watchers engage in wishful thinking, with theformer expecting that the North will dismantle its nuclear weapons
program if not for Washington’s “hostile policy” and the latter being put
in the position of waiting for an “imminent” regime collapse which has
been forecast for decades.
Kim Jong-un: Change or Consistency?
Such misguided analysis in both camps of Korea watchers wasparticularly evident in the aftermath of Kim Jong-Il’s sudden death on
December 17, 2011. The “engagers” hoped and expected to see a shift inNorth Korea’s foreign and domestic policy toward greater moderation,
democracy, and free market policies under the elder Kim’s hand-picked
successor, his third and youngest son, Kim Jong-un. Hopeful Korea
watchers fixated on a photo of Kim Jong-un as an 11-year-old with abratty grin (shockingly, the only photo that was available outside ofNorth Korea until the young man came to power) and a few recollections

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by Kim Jong Il’s former sushi chef, who writes by the pen name Kenji
Fujimoto, to glean any information about the inexperienced leader. On
the other end of the spectrum, Korea watchers were equally passionate in
declaring that “North Korea as we know it is over” with the death of Kim
Jong-il.4 Respected Korea watcher and former White House official
Victor Cha, for example, wrote in the New York Times two days after
Kim Jong Il’s death that “whether it comes apart in the next few weeks
or over several months, the regime will not be able to hold together after
the untimely death of its leader, Kim Jong-il.”5
As it turns out, neither scenario came to fruition. Nearly two years
since Kim Jong-il’s demise, the world is still waiting for any meaningfulchange in the North’s hardline domestic and foreign policies, while Kim
Jong-un remains firmly entrenched in power. The young dictator now
occupies all of the leading state, party, and military positions, and has put
confidants in other key posts, removing several prominent military
officers from their commands. The only changes associated with Kim
Jong-un’s regime have been cosmetic and superficial. North Korean
women wearing high heels, sleeveless shirts, even miniskirts, and various
Disney characters (in a violation of international intellectual propertylaws) are dancing on a North Korean stage. Wrapping himself in the
mantle of his grandfather, Kim Jong-un has been exercising more handson leadership than his father, embracing public speaking and comfortably
frolicking with school children. He seems to enjoy riding rollercoasters
with his young and attractive wife, who sports a designer handbag. Kim
the third is also a huge fan of basketball. The eccentric former NBA star
Dennis Rodman, who came to Pyongyang as part of a stunt arranged by atelevision show, is the only American with whom has the young Kim
chosen to spend any significant time. Kim Jong-un has even recently
proposed an international basketball tournament involving both Koreas;
China, and Japan.6
In fact, the prospects of more meaningful changes in North Korea’s
behavior were dashed by the failure of the February 29, 2012, “LeapDay” agreement. The ink of this deal to freeze Pyongyang’s nuclear andmissile programs in exchange for food aid was hardly dry when the
North launched a satellite in a clear violation of that agreement as well asof several United Nations Security Council resolutions.7 Combined witha string of provocations since December 2012, including a long-range
rocket launch in December 2012 (the second one that year), a third
nuclear test in February 2013, amplified rhetoric against Washington and

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Seoul, restarting of the Yongbyon nuclear complex and the withdrawalof North Korean workers from the South-Korean funded Kaesong joint
industrial park, we can now conclude with some confidence that the Kim
Jong-un regime appears to be pretty much bent on continuing thestrategies and policies that have worked for the North in past decades.
North Korea’s Three Goals
The questions that this article will seek to address these: What arethese strategies and policies? And what goals are the North trying toachieve in pursuing these strategies and policies?
The highest priority of the North Korean state has always been its
own survival in the face of what it perceived, and still perceives today, as
an extremely hostile security environment, a perception exacerbated by
the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and its client states between
1989 and 1992. The regime also operates according to certain
ideological assumptions which have not changed much since 1948. It
believes that the North is the true representative of the Korean people,
that the government in the South is a puppet regime backed by anantagonistic United States, that the continued U.S. presence on the
Peninsula constitutes a severe threat to the very existence of North
Korea, that the South Korean people (as opposed to their government)
would welcome unity with their Northern brethren and would be much
more sympathetic towards the North were it not for the indoctrination by
their government and U.S. propaganda, and that, ultimately, the North’s
position will prevail because it is morally virtuous and will gain support
from the people of the North and South. These principles have led theNorth to assume that it must have a strong defense at all costs, given
American and South Korean hostility; that this defense is not justmilitary but also ideological, that is, the people of North Korea must be
protected from any ideological infection of the U.S. or South Korean
capitalism; and that continuing tension on the peninsula remains an
indispensable means to both keep control of its own population and deal
with the North’s enemies in Washington, Seoul, and elsewhere.
More specifically, Pyongyang under the Kim dynasty has pursued
three broad and consistent strategic goals: (1) pursuing a nuclear
weapons program in order to gain international acceptance of the North
as a bona fide nuclear weapons state; (2) securing a peace treaty in aneffort to remove U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula; and, (3)reunifying with South Korea on its own terms—the ultimate if

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increasingly unrealistic objective.
Let us look more closely at each of these goals in turn.
The First Goal: A Nuclear-Armed State
The primary goal of the North Korean state today is gaining
international acceptance as a legitimate and full-fledged nuclear power,
because its leaders are convinced that no other nation, not even asuperpower such as the United States, would dare attack or evensignificantly undermine a state armed with the ultimate weapon. To thisend, Pyongyang has relentlessly and systematically pursued nuclear
weapons in the face of international condemnation. The North seespossessing nuclear weapons as essential for its national identity andsecurity, and for achieving power and prestige on the international stage.
The North’s pursuit of a nuclear program cannot be explained away as
only a defensive reaction to external threats and stimuli, viz., the“hostile” policies of Washington and Seoul.
Furthermore, North
Korea’s long history of nuclear development, culminating in its firstnuclear test in October 2006, strongly suggests that it can neither becajoled nor persuaded into giving up its nuclear arsenal. This shouldhardly be surprising. While a few states have voluntarily ended nuclear
programs or given up nuclear arsenals (e.g., South Africa, Libya, Brazil,
Kazakhstan and Ukraine), typically following regime change, otherstates—namely Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel andthe United States—continue to cling to their arsenals despite lobbying fordisarmament, while Iran is working feverishly to acquire its own arsenalin spite of punishing international sanctions. North Korea is firmly in thelatter camp. It is highly unlikely to negotiate away its nuclear weapons
program, regardless of what political or economic concessions areoffered.
Jonathan Pollack demonstrates with ample historical evidence andrigorous analysis that the North Korean leadership did not embark on the
nuclear path on a whim, nor does it treat nuclear weapons as simply abargaining chip.8 In fact, the germination of Kim Il-sung’s nuclear
aspirations dates back to the 1950s9 when North Korean scientists gained
basic nuclear knowledge by cooperating with Soviet and Chinese nuclear
scientists and engineers.10
The North’s more serious nuclear
development efforts began in earnest during the mid-1960s when
Moscow supplied North Korea with advanced nuclear reactor
technology, including assisting with the construction, starting in 1965, of

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an eight megawatt research reactor located near the town of Yongbyon.11
The North’s overall nuclear program expanded at a rapid rate in the
1970s and 1980s, when it began accumulating what we would call today“sensitive nuclear technologies,” including spent fuel reprocessing
techniques, plutonium, and the development of facilities for the
fabrication and conversion of uranium. The North built a significant
nuclear complex, including a second five-megawatt reactor near
Yongbyon, in the 1970s and 1980s.12
A number of external events likely reinforced the North’s desire to
pursue nuclear weapons, including the May 16, 1961, military coup thatbrought staunchly anti-Communist Park Chung-hee to power in Seoul,
thereby accentuating the North’s fear of the South; the Cuban Missile
Crisis of October 1962, which made Kim Il-sung distrustful of Russian
security guarantees after the Soviet Union betrayed Fidel Castro bywithdrawing its nuclear missiles from Cuba in an effort to improve
relations with the United States;13 and, the possibility of a WashingtonTokyo-Seoul alliance following the 1965 establishment of diplomatic
relations between South Korea and Japan, which raised the prospect of
yet another powerful state being arrayed against the North. The North’s
thinking regarding the need for nuclear weapons further hardened when
the Cold War came to an abrupt end. With the collapse of the Soviet
Union, whose geopolitical and financial support had sustained the Northfor forty-five years, the North’s geopolitical and economic situation
changed dramatically for the worse. Nuclear weapons thus became aneven more important tool of regime preservation.
Pyongyang threatened to withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty
in March 1993, thus precipitating its first nuclear crisis with Washington.
After lengthy negotiations, the U.S. and North Korea on October 12,
1994, signed the “Agreed Framework” in which the North froze its
plutonium production program in exchange for an American-led
consortium providing ten years’ worth of heavy oil deliveries and thebuilding of two modern, electricity-generating light-water nuclear plants
at an estimated cost of approximately $4 billion.14 (The cover story for
the North’s pursuit of nuclear plants, actually guided by its desire forgeopolitical power, was a purported desire for more electrical power.)
Unfortunately, despite the Agreed Framework, the North continued tostage provocations to extort more benefits from the West.
In 1998, North Korea acknowledged that it was exporting missiles
and then launched a newly-developed, multistage, long-range ballistic

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rocket over the main island of Japan. The Clinton administration
responded by saying that this should not derail the deal with the Northand affirmed its intention to send 400,000 tons of food aid worth almost$200 million to the North. At the same time Washington raised concerns
about the huge underground complex being built in Kumchang-ri, North
Korea, which was suspected of being a covert nuclear-weapons site.
U.S. diplomats demanded access to the site, a demand that Pyongyang’s
representatives loudly and strenuously resisted. The North finally agreed
in early 1999 to allow inspection of the site after the U.S. promised
700,000 tons of further food aid.15 It turned out that North Korea’s
actions had been an elaborate charade—by the time inspectors arrived at
Kumchang-ri, there was nothing to see save a hole in the ground. The
North did continue working on nuclear weapons, just not at this site.
Northern officials finally and brazenly admitted their covert uraniumenrichment program in an October 2002 meeting with a visiting
American delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.16
In fact, far from stopping the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile
programs he had inherited from his father, Kim Jong-il, whose rulebegan in earnest in 1994 after the death of Kim Il-sung, accelerated theprograms he had inherited. As Jonathan Pollack aptly puts it, the North’s
nuclear capabilities are thus part of the legacy that Kim Jong-ilbequeathed to his young son, Kim Jong-un, much as Kim Il-sungmandated the building of a nuclear infrastructure that he then passed to
Kim Jong-il.17
Kim Jong-il’s acquisition of nuclear weapons was another tool for
cultivating the military’s support, which Kim needed to solidify his
position and ensure his power. Kim Jong-il consolidated his grip throughthe introduction of songun or “military-first” politics, which prioritized
the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in the affairs of state and allocatednational resources to the military first. Kim Jong-il in essence co-opted
the military by bestowing on it policy influence and prestige, as well as alarge share of the national budget (between 25 percent and 30 percent ofGDP).18 Kim’s “military first” approach was codified in 1998 in arevised constitution which granted the military primacy in the Korean
government and society.19 As part of the “military-first politics,” whichhave guided both domestic policy and international interactions with
Washington and Seoul since 1997,20 nuclear weapons were important tobolster the North’s deterrence against adversaries with far superior
conventional military forces.21 While the North froze its plutonium

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program in 1994, it began in earnest to pursue the enrichment of uranium
instead. Pakistan, through its former top scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan,
supplied key data, stored in compact discs, on uranium enrichment inexchange for missile technology between 1990 and 1996, both before
and after the signing of the Agreed Framework.22 (A. Q. Khan himself
claimed that the North gained access to Pakistan’s nuclear technology inthe late 1990s by paying bribes to Pakistan’s senior military officials.23
Former President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz
acknowledged in 2005 that Khan had provided centrifuges and theirdesigns to North Korea.24)
Why has the North been willing to endure international opprobrium
and crippling sanctions to pursue nuclear weapons? Aside from theobvious strategic benefits of deterring the U.S. and South Korea, whichhave powerful conventional forces poised along the DMZ, the possessionof nuclear weapons has been an important tool of internal legitimacy forthe regime. Nuclear weapons have provided the Kim regime with an
ideological rallying point and a point of national pride, both of which
justify the deprivations ordinary citizens suffer to support the military
and the state. Nuclear weapons also dramatically raise the North’s clout
in world affairs, allowing an impoverished and otherwise insignificant
state to be treated as a regional and even global power.
North Korea’s first nuclear test in October 2006, for example,
painted the George W. Bush administration into a corner. While thenuclear test yielded a strongly-worded United Nations Security Council
resolution, it also triggered a change of heart in the administration. In
response to stinging criticism that his “hardline” policy in the first term
had led to the North testing its first nuclear weapon, President Bushchose to abandon an effective policy of financially squeezing the North
Korean elites' cash flows which began with the imposition of sanctions
on Macao-based Banco Delta Asia (BDA). The U.S. Treasury ordered
U.S. companies and financial institutions to cut links with BDA, where
the North reportedly kept $25 million in various accounts.25 After easing
the BDA sanctions, the Bush administration then negotiated a nuclear
agreement with the North in February 2007 and even went as far as toremove North Korea from the state-sponsored terrorism list and toresume food aid in 2008, at the cost of straining the U.S. relationshipwith its closest regional ally, in Japan.
Hoping for a similar concession from the Obama administration, theNorth subsequently conducted a second nuclear test on May 2009 andInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XVII, No. 2

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yet another one in March 2013, which, by some assessments, was twoand-a-half times larger than the previous test, with a yield between fiveand fifteen kilotons.26 The North followed the third nuclear test by
declaring that its nuclear weapons were “not a bargaining chip” andwould not be relinquished, even for “billions of dollars.”27
In sum, North Korea has pursued nuclear weapons for a multitude ofpressing reasons since its founding and even at the cost of considerable
risk, isolation, and sanctions. It would seem most unlikely, then, that the
Kim Jong-un regime would negotiate away an instrument that was longperceived to offer possible dominance in its struggle against the South—
and to guarantee protection and ultimately survival in the face of global
hostility.
If he needed any more justification, Kim Jong-un’sdetermination to maintain nuclear weapons has only been enhanced by
the example of Libya where the West first convinced Moammar Qaddafi
to abandon his WMD program and then backed a revolt, which
overthrew and killed Qaddafi.
The Second Goal—A “Peace Treaty”
Along with securing the international acceptance of the North as afull-fledged nuclear weapons power, another important priority for
North Korea has been, and continues to be, securing a peace treaty with
Washington. Contrary to the claims of regime apologists, the mostimportant rationale behind the North’s insistence on signing such atreaty with its longtime foe is not the desire for peace per se, but, rather,
the desire to evict U.S. troops from South Korea, which in turn will
enable the achievement of its third and ultimate objective—
reunification on its terms.
The Korean War ended with a ceasefire signed on July 27, 1953,
after prolonged negotiations. It has never been replaced by a formal
peace treaty.28 The armistice was signed by North Korean and Chinese
military leaders on one side, and, on the other, by the U.S-led United
Nations command. No South Korean representatives signed theagreement, which was always intended as a temporary measure, not alasting political settlement. The armistice, which set up a 2.5 mile (4kilometer) Korean Demilitarized Zone along the 38th parallel, wasdesigned to “insure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts ofarmed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement was achieved.”29
The armistice also included a recommendation that within three monthsof its taking effect, negotiations should be held to speed the withdrawal

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of all foreign forces from Korea.30 Sixty years after the signing of this“temporary” agreement, it is still in place, even if the North now claims
that it will no longer abide by its terms—as Pyongyang has announced
at least six times in the past.31 There have never been meaningfulnegotiations of the removal of all foreign troops from the peninsula.
While Chinese troops long ago left North Korea of their own accord,
the U.S. continues to base 28,500 military personnel in South Korea.
North Korea’s desire for a permanent peace treaty, leading to thewithdrawal of U.S. troops, first resurfaced in a meaningful way on July4, 1972, with the release of the North-South Joint Communiqué, thefirst document agreed upon by both North and South Korea following
the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1945. The two countries agreed
in principle to seek national unity through negotiations without
interference from outside powers (read: the U.S.).32 The Communiquéalso pushed the North-South dialogue to a new level, with both sides
agreeing to cease slandering one another, to renounce armed
provocations, to begin various forms of exchanges, and to set up a
hotline between Seoul and Pyongyang. Soon thereafter, however, theNorth and South clashed over the interpretation of the key provisions of
this document.33 By June 1973, inter-Korean dialogue had become
again deadlocked and, in the next two years, North-South contacts weredowngraded and eventually terminated.
The North attempted in November 1973 to circumvent the South
Koreans by trying to conclude a peace treaty through direct
negotiations with the U.S.34 Appealing directly to the Americans forpeace talks, the North Korean government sent letters to the U.S.
Congress in which it proposed direct bilateral negotiations to replace
the armistice with a peace treaty and suggested that the first phaseshould involve the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and the dissolution of
the United Nations Command which unites U.S. and South Korean
troops under a single command structure headed by an American
general.35 The U.S., predictably, did not rise to the bait, but in
subsequent years since the North has made repeated demands for apeace treaty with the United States. North Korea has steadfastly
insisted on the dissolution of the UN Command and a complete
withdrawal of U.S. forces from the South so that the two Koreas mayachieve independent, peaceful reunification by themselves without theinterference of “external powers.” As recently as May 29, 2013, theNorth has called for the replacement of the armistice with a formal

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peace treaty in its official paper, Rodong Sinmun, which cited “apressing need to replace the Armistice Agreement, which is a relic of
the war, with a permanent peace regime.”36
Some Korea scholars and watchers of the “engagement” school
have argued that the North is seeking a treaty because it genuinely
wants to mend its relations with Washington. Leon V. Sigal, a key
proponent of the argument that the North’s denuclearization requires
the end to America’s “hostile policy” and a peace treaty to replace thearmistice, summarized this view in a Foreign Affairs article: “TheNorth wants to reconcile with Washington . . . It is inconceivable that
Pyongyang would dismantle its nuclear and missile programs, nevermind its nuclear weapons, without such a treaty.”37 Arguing that “sucha treaty would have immediate benefits,” he writes that it “could reduce
the risk of military clashes on the peninsula.” In another article
advocating a peace treaty, Sigal also said that “to be politicallymeaningful, it would require rectification of land and sea borders—
whether temporary pending unification or permanent—and
normalization of diplomatic, social, and, economic relations. To be
militarily meaningful, it would require changes in force postures andwar plans that pose excessive risks of unintended war on both sides of
the Demilitarized Zone.”38
The problem with this argument is that there is not a shred ofevidence that a peace treaty would be panacea for solving all the
problems created by North Korean policies, ranging from its nuclear
program to human rights concerns. How can we be sure the North
Korean regime would ever abide by any deal it actually signed? How
can we be certain that the North will actually do what it says, even if it
promises to abandon nuclear weapons in return for a U.S. pullout? As
indicated earlier in this article, the North has relentlessly pursued its
nuclear weapons program for six decades, and it views the program as
essential to its very survival. Borrowing a phrase from a conservative
Korea watcher, Nicholas Eberstadt, the North’s “leaders” are firm
believers in situational ethics: Whenever an international security
treaty, agreement or promise looks to constrain the pursuit of their
immediate interests, North Korean leaders will reject it asunacceptable,” as they have since the founding of its republic in 1948.39
Eberstadt is right. The long history of dealing with the North islittered with a string of broken promises and verification problems: theAgreed Framework of 1994, the Perry Process of 1999, the intermittent

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six party talks since 2003, and the list goes on. Also noteworthy is thefailure of South Korea’s experiment with the decade-long “Sunshine
Policy” of 1998 to 2008 (generous and unconditional aid to generate a
modicum of good will from the North). As B. R. Myers put it, “toexpect Washington to succeed with Pyongyang where the South
Korean left failed is to take American exceptionalism to a new
extreme.”40
In fact, the North’s sincerity in pursuit of a peace treaty is to be
doubted, because a real peace with Washington would be problematicfor Pyongyang: How could the North justify its existence if
normalization with the U.S. occurs and it has to abandon theconfrontational anti-Americanism that constitutes one of its lastremaining sources of legitimacy? The real reason North Korea seeks apeace treaty is that it believes a treaty would cause all sides—includingSouth Koreans and Americans—to question the need for a continuationof the US military presence in Korea, leading ultimately to theirremoval, thus making South Korea easier to coerce.
The Third Goal--Reunification
As with the development of the nuclear program and the pursuit of apeace treaty with Washington, reunification on its own terms has also
been a vitally important goal for the North since the regime’s very
inception. As Nicholas Eberstadt noted more than a decade ago in The
End of North Korea, the continued existence of a rival Korean state on ashared peninsula ultimately poses a threat to the North’s legitimacy,
authority, and security.41 North Korean leaders’ figures have thus
consistently upheld the ideal of a unified, self-governing, and socialist
Korea. For the North, unification on its terms would be not only ahighest achievement but the decisive guarantor of the state’s continued
existence.42 Accordingly, the urgent priority accorded to the goal of
unconditional unification has been made clear in the fundamental
documents of both party and state. The preamble to the charter of the
Korean Workers' Party (KWP) declares that its task is to “(en)sure thecomplete victory of socialism in the northern half of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea and the accomplishment of the revolutionary
goals of national liberation and the people's democracy in the entire areaof the country."43 In simple and blunt language, that means kicking U.S.
troops out, dissolving the South Korean government, and communizing
the entire Korean Peninsula by force.

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North Korea's June 1950 surprise attack against South Korea, which
launched the Korean War, was the North’s first effort to reunify thecountry. Kim Il-sung at the time anticipated that his offensive against
the South would reunify the entire peninsula in less than a month.44 The
attack did not, of course, work out well for the North. The Korean War
proved to be a disastrous miscalculation, and cost over a million lives
from all sides.45 Had Mao Zedong not come to Kim Il-sung’s rescue,
North Korea would have ceased to exist.
After the Korean War, Pyongyang prudently decided to shift its
tactics in the pursuit of reunification.46 Indeed, reunification went on the
backburner for about a decade after the Korean War. Between the July
1953 armistice and the Fifth Plenum of the Fourth Korean Workers Party
Congress in December 1962, when a military buildup was formallyembraced, the North’s focus was on rebuilding its war-ravaged
economy.47 In its focus on reconstruction, North Korea secured support
from virtually the entire socialist camp of the 1950s, including China, theSoviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe. China
agreed to leave a huge troop presence in North Korea through the late
1950s, thereby relieving Pyongyang of the burden of onerous military
expenditures and freeing up a large pool of manpower for construction
projects. North Korea’s strategy was successful—it was able to outpace
the South economically during this period (1953-1962).48
Beginning in the early 1960s, however, the changing domestic
environment in the South caused the North to adjust its tactics. In April
1960, South Korean President Syngman Rhee was ousted by a studentled pro-democracy uprising and replaced by a democratic but weak andineffective Chang Myon government. The South’s brief experiment withdemocracy came to an abrupt end when Chang Myon was himself
pushed out of office only a year later, in April 1961, in a coup led byGeneral Park Chung-hee. With Park in power, it soon became apparent
to Pyongyang that his military regime was developing a strong anticommunist posture. In response, the North shifted to a more hostile
policy of seeking “reunification by revolution.”49 The North hoped tospur a socialist revolution in the South that would evict U.S. forces andmake possible peaceful reunification under Pyongyang’s aegis.50 The
North therefore launched a campaign of infiltration, subversion, andterror to subvert the government in Seoul. This secret offensive reacheda peaked in January 21, 1968, with the infiltration by North Korean
commandoes onto the grounds of the South Korean Presidential

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compound, the Blue House, in a failed attempt to kill President Park.51
This was followed two days later by North Korea’s capture of an
American intelligence ship, the USS Pueblo, whose crew was held
captive for nearly a year and only released following an American
apology—swiftly rescinded—for spying on the North.52 The following
year, in 1969, the North shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane, killing
all thirty-one servicemen aboard. Five years later, in 1974, North Korean
agents killed South Korea’s first lady—the current president’s mother—in yet another failed assassination attempt against President Park.
Even as it was pursuing a campaign of subversion in the South, theNorth was also building up its own military forces to create a morefavorable correlation of forces on the Peninsula. In the early 1960s, theKorean People's Army may have had fewer than 400,000 soldiers andprobably did not rise much above that figure before 1972.53 The force
expanded relentlessly over the next two decades, however, so that by thelate 1970s—when Washington and Seoul finally detected the buildup—
the North’s armed forces were apparently approaching the million-man
mark, which amounted to “total war mobilization on a permanent basis, astate of readiness perhaps unmatched in any other contemporary
economy.”54
This extraordinary military effort was designed to put Pyongyang ina position to seize the day if and when another opportunity for forcible
reunification appeared. From the North’s perspective, the events of the
1960s and 1970s—America’s defeat in Vietnam, the 1969 announcementof the "Nixon Doctrine" (that the U.S. would continue to provide a
nuclear umbrella for its allies but not the bulk of their conventional
defense), Jimmy Carter’s determination to withdraw all U.S. troops fromSouth Korea (a pledge finally abandoned in 1979 after the removal offewer than 4,000 troops)—could reasonably have been interpreted as anerosion of American’s ability or willingness to defend Seoul.55
In the early 1970s, there was a thaw in relations between Seoul andPyongyang as the North temporarily moderated its strategy of fomenting
a revolution in the South. In 1971-1973, for the first time in its history,
the North carried out direct, high-level talks with its South Koreancounterparts. This led, as we have already seen, to the issuance of a joint
Communiqué between the two sides, which subsequently became a deadletter.
After the failure of the Communiqué, the North reverted to its policy
of fostering a revolution in the South. On April 18, 1975, immediatelyInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XVII, No. 2

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after Vietnam’s unconditional military reunification on communist terms,
Kim Il-sung went so far as to call for a South Korean insurrection while
he was visiting Beijing: “If a revolution takes place in South Korea we,as one and the same nation, will not just look at it with folded arms but
will strongly support the South Korean people. If the enemy ignites war
recklessly, we shall resolutely answer it with war and completely destroy
the aggressors.”56 There are even reports that Kim went so far as to ask
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai for military aid.57
If Kim's pronouncements in Beijing revealed a certain anxiety forreunification, the cause was not hard to find: North Korea was losing its
economic contest against the South. By the 1970s, thanks to Park
Chung-hee’s policies, South Korea was emerging as one of the “tiger”
economies of Asia, while North Korea’s economy was steadily sinking
under the weight of excessive military spending. Meanwhile, the Nixon
administration’s “opening” to China and détente with the Soviet Union
threatened to cut the support that North Korea traditionally had received
from its patrons in Moscow and Beijing.
In the 1980s, the North resorted to high-profile acts of terrorism in a
renewed if futile attempt to undermine an increasingly prosperous andstable South Korean state. On October 9, 1983, the North’s agents
attempted to assassinate President Chun Doo-hwan when he was on an
official visit to Rangoon. Although Chun survived, a bomb blast killed
twenty-one others, including several South Korean cabinet ministers.58
In 1986, North Korean soldiers used an axe to kill two U.S. Army
officers in in the DMZ. The following year, on November 29, 1987,
Northern operatives detonated a bomb aboard Korean Air Flight 858,
killing all 115 people on board.59 South Korea emerged from the decadestronger than ever as seen in its first democratic presidential election in
1987 and the staging of a successful Olympic games in 1988.
If the North’s strategy for reunification was at best a long shot at thestart of the 1980s, by the start of the 1990s it looked increasingly likesheer fantasy. Yet, despite increasingly unpleasant international anddomestic realities, North Korea's leadership seems to have made no
substantive adjustments to its grand strategy, which dated back to the
1940s. Pyongyang evaded anything but hesitant and shallow talks with
the South and instead built up its military at full strength. By 1987, bysome accounts, as many as 1.25 million men may have been armed,
making the North’s military the world's fourth-largest armed service,
behind China, the Soviet Union, and the United States.60 The costs of78

International Journal of Korean Studies • Fall 2013

that commitment were too great for the North’s small economy to bear.
By the mid-1980s, North Korea had entered economic stagnation,
heading for destitution, famine, and decline. Without major economic
reform, North Korea could no longer hope to compete against the South,
much less hope to subsume the South into one socialist state. Sweeping
economic reform, however, would necessarily erode the North Koreanleadership's political and ideological control—and might well set forcesin motion that would eventually undermine the regime and the system.61
The North’s options narrowed even further after the end of the Cold
War—a surprise and a shock for Pyongyang’s isolated leadership.
Particularly dismaying for the North was the demise of Nicolae
Ceausescu, the Romanian ruler with a cult of personality analogous to
Kim Il Sung’s, and the disappearance of East Germany, anothercommunist state sharing a national territory with a Western-styledemocracy. The material consequences of the collapse of the Soviet
Union were even more severe. Russian military shipments to the North
all but ceased and trade between the former Warsaw Pact countries andPyongyang—long an economic lifeline for the regime—all but collapsed.
Beijing continued subsidizing the North but at a reduced level because it
no longer saw itself in competition with Moscow for influence in the
North. In 1992 China even normalized its relations with South Korea.
North Korea was left more isolated than ever, while South Korea now
had good relations with all the great powers of Northeast Asia—the U.S.,
Japan, China, and Russia.
As a result, the North shifted its policy towards the South yet again,
adopting a less hostile tone and soft-pedaling attempts to force
reunification. In September 1991, the UN Security Council approved thesimultaneous entry of both Koreas into the UN. The North and Souththen were able to reach the Agreement on Reconciliation,
Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation on December 13, 1991.
Then-North Korean premier Yon Hyong-muk called the agreement “themost valuable achievement ever made between the South and North
Korean authorities.”62 The North also began an unprecedented flurry of
diplomatic activity with Tokyo in the early 1990s in an attempt tocounter the South’s increasingly successful diplomatic outreach to
Moscow and Beijing.
By the mid-1990s North Korea was battling for its very survival,
effectively postponing all thoughts of reunification on its terms. In late1993, Pyongyang officially conceded that its people faced a "graveInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XVII, No. 2

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situation" but still offered no plausible design for improving theirprospects.63 Kim Il-sung’s death in July 1994 did not seem to alter the
North’s steadfast resistance to economic experimentation, let alone
substantive reform. From 1994 to 1998 North Korea was gripped byfamine that killed several million people and showed the bankruptcy,
quite literally, of its economic system.64
South Korea’s “Sunshine Policy” of 1998-2008, launched byPresident Kim Dae-jung and continued by his successor, Roh Moo-hyun,
did little to improve the North’s internal situation, even though, over thecourse of a decade, Seoul pumped approximately $8 billion in economic
assistance into the North.65 The Sunshine Policy went into eclipse under
President Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013), whose Unification Ministry
called it a failure, stating that a decade of cooperation, cross-borderexchanges and billions of dollars in aid had not changed Pyongyang’s
behavior or improve the lives of North Korean citizens.66 But neither the
discontinuation of the South’s subsidies nor the death of Kim Jong-il has
brought North Korea to the brink of collapse. The state continues tostagger along under Kim Jong-un, who benefits from Chinese subsidies,
the sales of missile (and possibly nuclear) technology, and various
criminal activities such as counterfeiting, drug dealing, and money
laundering.
Given the dismal state that the North is currently in, some may
question whether its leaders still maintain reunification of the Peninsula
under their aegis as a realistic goal. It is hard to know what top leaders
are thinking, but it certainly remains a constant theme of all the
propaganda pumped out by Pyongyang. (As B.R Myers has noted, theonly institution in the country that did not miss a beat during the famine
years in the 1990s was the propaganda apparatus.67) It is doubtful thatthe top leaders, themselves weaned on decades of this propaganda, would
continue to inculcate in their citizens a view to which they did not
subscribe. This may seem deluded to Westerners, but history is filledwith examples of regimes promulgating, and acting upon, ideas at leastas bizarre. Think of Adolf Hitler killing millions in the name of“lebensraum” and Aryan “racial purity,” Mao’s killing millions to enable
China to experience a Great Leap Forward and a Cultural Revolution, or
Pol Pot’s killing over a million people to realize a socialist revolution in
his poor, agrarian country. In point of fact, Pyongyang continues topursue a reunification agenda, and it has some hopes, however faint, thatit may succeed. The U.S. has been drawing down its forces in South

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Korea for years, and many Americans question the need to continue
defending a prosperous country like South Korea; the North may imagine
that the remaining troops may be withdrawn too. Moreover, the Northno doubt hopes that it can one day demonstrate its capability to marry anuclear warhead with an intercontinental ballistic missile with the range
to hit the West Coast. If that were to happen, North Korea’s leadership
might imagine that the U.S. could be dissuaded from defending South
Korea and thus allow the North to complete is grand project.
Whatever the actual prospects of unification on North Korea’s terms,
Pyongyang cannot give up the dream which underlies the state’s very
existence. Neither North nor South imagines that the division of thePeninsula will be permanent. It is only a question of who will be incharge when the two Koreas unify: leadership in Pyongyang or Seoul? If
Pyongyang concedes that it will not run a unified Korea, it is implicitly
conceding that Seoul will. This defeatism could prove damaging, evenfatal, to the continued existence of the state—so it will never bepermitted as long as North Korea continues to exist in its present form.
North Korean Foreign Policy Today
For decades, as we have seen, North Korea has been pursuing its
essential objectives—recognition as a nuclear-weapons state, a peace
treaty with Washington, and eventual reunification—through a policy ofbrinksmanship. Its strategy and tactics are by now familiar: provoke
when Washington or Seoul seem distracted, up the ante in the face ofinternational condemnation, and pivot back to some sort of peace
offensive, which usually ends with dialogue and negotiation,
culminating, finally, in concessions for the North. Such brinkmanshiptactics make sense from the North’s perspective. The U.S. and South
Korea both have a long history of making concessions to the North inresponse to its bad behavior. In spite of numerous attacks on its citizens
and leaders, South Korea has seldom retaliated. A recent exception was
the shelling of some North Korean gun positions after the attack on
Yeonppyong, but even that counterattack inflicted no casualties on the
North Korean side. Instead of responding in kind, Seoul has chosen to
give the North billions of dollars in economic aid over the years.
The North, then, must have been surprised when its tried-and-truebrinksmanship tactics failed to yield concessions during President
Obama’s first term. The North, overplaying its hand, initially greeted
President Obama with a series of provocations, while ignoring the new

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president’s stated desire to engage with North Korea and even to meetwith its leader personally. The North’s provocations during the first six
months of the Obama administration included short- and long-range
missile tests, an announcement that it was withdrawing from the SixParty Talks for good, a declaration that it planned to pursue uranium
enrichment program, and a second nuclear test. This did not, however,gain the North any concessions either from Obama or from South
Korea’s conservative new president, Lee Myung-bak. Yet the North
under Kim Jong-un has continued its provocations, apparently in thehopes of being paid to stop.
The current cycle of provocation began with a successful test of along-range rocket used to launch a satellite (the second satellite launch of
the year) on December 2012, followed by the North’s third nuclear test
on February 2013. These tests have moved the North closer to its goal ofdeveloping a viable, long-range, nuclear-weapon delivery system, which
it believes will force the international community to recognize it as abona fide nuclear-weapons state. Along with the increase in weapons
testing has come an escalation in rhetoric, with the North threatening tolaunch a nuclear attack on the United States and South Korea.68 Despite
its continuing financial hardship, the North has even pulled its workers
out of the Kaesong Industrial Complex for a time, an undertaking run
jointly with South Korea which generated, by some estimates, $90
million in hard currency each year.69 Having provoked Seoul andWashington, Kim Jong-un has predictably pivoted toward seeking
negotiations that will result, or so he hopes, in the provision of billions ofdollars in aid. Currently, however, the North has agreed to resume
operations there, evidence of the North’s latest “peace offensive.”70
The strategy, by now, is familiar and shopworn but it remains, atleast to some extent, successful. In spite of not coming close toachieving its second and third policy aims (a peace treaty andreunification), the North has achieved its first aim by emerging as a defacto nuclear-weapons state. More importantly, for all of its economic
and political failures the North Korean state remains standing after morethan sixty years while other totalitarian regimes, from Eastern Europe to
the Middle East, have fallen by the wayside.
Pyongyang’s
brinksmanship policies have never seriously endangered the state’s
continued existence, and they have brought considerable benefits to its
rulers. The Kim dynasty has shown itself to be shrewd, calculating andresilient. If foreign policy is designed to aid a regime’s security, then82

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North Korean foreign policy may be judged a success.
Looking Forward: How to Deal with North Korea
In spite of its impressive and somewhat surprising survival to date,
North Korea’s future is bleak. There is no other country in the world thatis more diplomatically isolated. Even its closest ally and benefactor,
China, is indicating that it is getting less tolerant of the North’s saberrattling. (One sign of Beijing’s displeasure: it recently ordered its statebank to shut down the account of the North’s foreign exchange bank.)
Meanwhile, the North’s most feared and despised enemy, the UnitedStates, is still the world’s single and unrivaled superpower, the rise of
China notwithstanding. In the realm of diplomatic and economic
competition, the North has lost the badly to South Korea, which is often
cited as a successful model of economic and political development to therest of the world. North Korea, by contrast, may be the world’s poorest
nation; it subsists on steadily diminishing foreign economic assistance.
Yet, despite the poor outlook for the North, Kim Jong-un is unlikely todeviate from the policies his father and grandfather have pursued overthe past sixty years.
It remains as unlikely now, as in the past, that the North can be
persuaded to give up its crowning achievement—its nuclear-weapons
program. The North, in the past, has been willing to make agreements tostop its nuclear weapons program, but it has not been willing to keep its
promises. The North repeatedly has shown an ability surreptitiously tocontinue or restart its nuclear-weapons program after extracting the
maximum possible concessions by promising to suspend them.
Many Americans tend to blame the problems of North Korea on
whoever happens to occupy the Oval Office, thinking the president iseither too soft or too hard on Pyongyang. South Koreans exhibit thesame tendency, blaming the North’s actions on supposed mishandlingfrom the Blue House. This is a patronizing view of the North Koreanleadership, and it does not comport with the historical record. The
overriding reality and unpleasant truth is that the North’s leaders cannot
disarm or change and hope to stay in power. The strategic and symbolic
value of the acquisition of a credible nuclear arsenal for the North should
be taken at face value: nuclear weapons equal power and prestige for astate which has few other assets. The North’s provocative actions,
including tests of missiles and nuclear weapons and attacks on South
Korea, are not defensive actions motivated by hostile policies emanating

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from Seoul or Washington but, rather, manifestations of Pyongyang’stime-honed strategy and policies toward Washington and Seoul.
Given this reality, what should be the policies of Washington andSeoul going forward?
Washington and Seoul should begin by realizing that the Northnegotiates with them not to defuse tensions but to manage tensions, tokeep an existing crisis from tipping into all-out war or (equally perilous)
all-out peace, while gaining concessions to ensure the regime’s long-term
survival. Similarly, if and when Washington and Seoul return to thenegotiating table with the North, they should be realistic about theirgoals. The aim of any dialogue should be tactical—to manage therelationship, to keep the North Korean crisis from tipping into all-out
conflict, and to slow down or to cap the North’s nuclear program. Talks
with the North can serve limited but important purposes such as
intelligence gathering, delivering warnings, conveying positions andexploring differences. But Washington and Seoul should abandon the
unrealistic hope that negotiations with the North will lead to its
denuclearization. Even if there is a deal, Pyongyang will never accept
the strict verification requirements needed to make sure that it is keeping
its part of the bargain.
The U.S. and South Korea should make clear to the North that they
will pursue a zero tolerance policy in the face of future provocations.
For decades, North Korea has been taught that it faces virtually no
penalties for its choreographed and calculated acts of provocation. Thatlesson must be untaught by the alliance of the U.S. and South Korea.
The North will have an incentive to discontinue its aggression only when
it knows that it will not pay—and might even trigger devastating
retaliation that could threaten the survival of the regime. Words alone
will not convey a strong enough message to the North. The U.S. andSouth Korea must show they are serious about what they say. To
demonstrate this, they could enhance missile defense systems around the
Korean Peninsula (including in Japan and at sea), introduce more air andnaval assets into the region, and stage more frequent and more robust
U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises, while also enhancing counterproliferation measures including the interdiction of all North Korean
ships and aircraft suspected of complicity in sanctions violations,criminal acts, arms sales, or nuclear and missile proliferation.
Washington and Seoul should also enhance their sanctions regime on the

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North. Washington, unilaterally if need be, should hit the North hard by
trying to cut off all the regime’s illicit sources of revenue, especiallydrug-smuggling and currency-counterfeiting, while also expanding
financial sanctions aimed at ending all banking transactions related to theNorth’s weapons trade, and halting most grants and loans. This would
effectively freeze many of the North’s overseas bank accounts, cutting
off the funds that the leadership has used to secure fine cognac, smart
phones, Swiss watches, and fancy flat-screen television sets so valued by
the North Korean leadership. As the BDA case showed, the U.S. can act
effectively to freeze North Korean assets in other countries.
Ideally such measures would be enacted in cooperation with China.
If Washington sustains this vigorous approach, the accumulated pressure
would most likely minimize Chinese obfuscation and may even induce
the Xi Jinping regime to cooperate in protecting the integrity of theinternational financial system. There have been glimmers of hope in thepast year that China may finally get tough with North Korea. But even if
China does not cooperate, the U.S., South Korea, and their allies should
adopt these measures, many of which—missile defense, deployments andexercises, interdiction, covert measures, and sanctions—are beyond
Beijing’s control.
While tightening the noose around North Korea, the U.S. and South
Korea should also take concerted action to bring the crimes against
humanity to the attention of the world. Washington and Seoul’s current
policy of downplaying the dismal human rights record in the worlds most
brutal and cruel landscape is no longer viable. They should combine
efforts to draw global attention to the North’s vast prison camps andother egregious violations of the most fundamental international humanrights standards. A robust international human-rights campaign insupport of the world's most hideously abused population would further
isolate the regime, just as the anti-apartheid campaign did against South
Africa in the 1980s.
This human-rights campaign should be not restricted to the world
outside North Korea—it should also be directed to help the people ofNorth Korea break the information blockade imposed by the state. The
U.S. and South Korea can step up radio broadcasts and other means,some of them covert, to transmit information to North Korea about what
is going on in the rest of the world, developments hidden by government
propaganda. The Kim regime has thus far maintained tight control over
information, conducting an indoctrination campaign to instill blindInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XVII, No. 285

loyalty to the Kim regime. But increasingly, foreign media is becoming
available through the porous China-North Korea border and is slowly
eroding the regime’s monopoly on information. That trend can be
accelerated by concerted action from the U.S. and South Korea.
At the end of the day, the North’s strategies and policies, including
its nuclear policy, will change only if a fundamentally different
leadership emerges. The goal is for these combined steps to begin
affecting the stability of the North Korean system and provide thefoundation for bringing about a different leadership. In the long run,there can be only one happy ending to this long-running saga with theNorth—reunification of the Korean Peninsula as a free and democratic
republic.
Notes:
1

CIA, The World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/kn.html.
2David E. Sanger and Sang-hun Choe, “Intelligence on North Korea, and Its
New Leader, Remains Elusive,” New York Times, May 6, 2013.

3

B. R. Myers, The Cleanest Race (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2011), 8.

4

Victor Cha, “China’s Newest Province?” New York Times, December 19,
2011.

5

Ibid.

6

“North Korea Suggests Regional Basketball Tournament,” Chosun Ilbo, May
29, 2013.
7

Mark Fitzpatrick, “Leap Day in North Korea,” Foreign Policy, February 29,
2012.
8Jonathan Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and International
Security (Routledge, May 17, 2011).

9Ibid, 48.

10

“North Korea’s Nuclear Program,” American Security Project. http://www.
scribd.com/doc/101951837/North-Korea%E2%80%99s-Nuclear-Program

11

Ibid.

12

Ibid.

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13

Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign
Ministry, January 8, 1965. MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 1965, 73. Doboz, IV-100,
001819/1965.
14“The U.S-North Korean Agreed Framework at a Glance,” August 2004.
http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/agreedframework; “Agreement on
Supply of A Light-water reactor Project to the Democratic People’s Republic ofKorea Between the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization and
the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” The Korean
Peninsula Energy Development Organization. http://www.scribd.com/doc/
101951837/North-Korea%E2%80%99s-Nuclear-Program

15

Edith M. Lederer, "US Gets Access To N. Korea Site," AP, 16 March 1999; in
NAPSNet Daily Report, 16 March 1999. www.nautilus.org
16

Paul Kerr, “North Korea Admits Secret Nuclear Weapons Program,” Arms
Control Association. http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_11/nkoreanov02
17

Pollack, No Exit, 184.

18

Marcus Noland, Sherman Robinson, Tao Wang, “Rigorous Speculation: The
Collapse and Revival of the North Korean Economy,” Peterson Institute forInternational Economics; Jon Grevatt, “Analysts reveal ‘real’ North Korea 2009
defense budget,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, January 19, 2011.
19

Under the revised Constitution, which dramatically diminished the role of theParty within the state and increased the functionality of the military rganization,
the National Defense Commission (NDC) has direct control of People’s
Security, the Armed Forces Ministry, and State Security, bypassing both theParty and the Cabinet. Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig, North Korea: Throughthe Looking Glass (Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institute, 2000), 118.

20

Alexander V. Vorontsov, "North Korea's Military-First Policy: A Curse or a
Blessing?" Brookings Institution, 26 May 2006.
21

Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, “North Korea’s Nuclear Politics,” Current
History, September 2004, 273-279.
22“Khan Gave North Korea Centrifuges,” BBC News World, August 24, 2005.

23

Khan also stated that he had personally helped transfer $3 million in gratuities
to senior Pakistan’s military officers. “North Korea Bribed Top Pakistan
Military Officials For Nuclear Secrets, Says Founder of Pakistan’s Nuclear
Bomb Program,” Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/07/
north-korea-pakistan-nuclear-secrets_n_891923.html

24“Khan Gave North Korea Centrifuges,” BBC News World, August 24, 2005.

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87

25

The BDA sanctions were considered a notable use of Section 311 of the USA
Patriot Act to crack down on the use of the international financial system by“rogue states” and “state sponsors of terrorism.” David Lague and Donald
Greenless, “Squeeze on Banco Delta Asia Hit North Korea Where It Hurt,”
International Herald Tribune, January 18, 2007.
26“North Korea’s New Nuclear Test Raises Universal Condemnation,”
NPSGlobal Foundation, May 25, 2009; Rachel Oswald, “North Korean Nuclear
Test More Than Twice as Powerful as Last Blast,” NTI/Global Security
Newswire, February 19, 2013. http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/north-korea-nuketest-estimated-25-times-more-powerful-2009-blast/
27

Sang-hun Choe, “North Korea Vows to Keep Nuclear Arms and Fix
Economy,” New York Times, March 31, 2013.

28

Talks over the armistice agreement started on July 10, 1951. Discussions
were on and off and there were many issues that were difficult to resolve,
including the prisoners of war repatriation. Graeme S. Mount, Andre
Laferriere, The Diplomacy of War: The Case of Korea (Black Rose Books,
2004), 123; William Whitney Stueck, The Korean War: An International
History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 212.
29

“Korean War Armistice Agreement,” Find Law, July 27, 1953.
http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/korea/kwarmagr072753.html

30

Ibid.

31

“Chronology of Major North Korean Statements on the Korean War
Armistice,” Yonhap News, May 28, 2009; “North Korea Ends Peace Pacts with
South,” BBC News, March 8, 2013.

32

Jong-dae Shin, “DPRK Perspective on Korean Reunification After the July 4th
Joint Communique,” North Korea International Development Project, Wilson
Center. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/dprk-perspectives-koreanreunification-after-the-july-4th-joint-communique
33

Ibid.

34

Ibid.

35

“Heo Damn seeks to replace the armistice with a peace treaty and establish
direct contact with the United States to remove American troops from thepeninsula,” Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, SECRET, Urgent, No.
060.180, April 22, 1974, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
Archives of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Matter 220—Relations
with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 1974. http://digitalarchive.
wilsoncenter.org/document/114085

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36

“N. Korea Calls for Replacing Korean War Armistice with Peace Treaty,”
Yonhap News Agency, May 29, 2013.

37

Leon V. Sigal, “Negotiation Can work with North Korea: What the WhiteHouse is Losing by Shunning Pyongyang,” Foreign Affairs, September 21,
2011.
38

Leon V. Sigal, “Replacing the Armistice with a Peace Treaty in Korea,”
Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, March 26, 2013.

39

Nicholas Eberstadt, “A Route to Reining in North Korea,” The Wall Street
Journal, May 5, 2013.
40

B. R. Myers, The Cleanest Race, 169.

41

Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington: the AEI Press,
1999), chapter one.

42

Ibid.

43

Korean Workers Party Charter, Voice of America.
http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/english/2011_01/WPKCharter28SEP10.pdf
44

The North’s decision to invade the South was entirely Kim Il-sung’s initiative,
not the Soviet’s. China also acquiesced to the idea of Korean reunification after
being told by Kim that Stalin had approved the action. Kathryn Weathersby,
The Soviet Role in the Early Phase of the Korean War, The Journal of
American-East Asian Relations 2, No. 4 (Winter 1993): 432; Sergei N.
Goncharov,John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, andthe Korean War (1993); Aleksandr Y. Mansourov, Stalin, Mao, Kim, andChina’s Decision to Enter the Korean War, 16 September – 15 October 1950:
New Evidence from the Russian Archives, Cold War International History
Project Bulletin, Issues 6-7 (Winter 1995/1996): 94-107.
45

Recent scholarship has put the full death toll on all sides at just over 1.2
million. Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Monitoring Trends in
Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths,” European Journal of
Population (2005), 21: 145-166.

46

Yong Soon Kim divides the North’s unification strategy of the early years to
the following timeline: “unification strategy by war, 1948-1953”; “Strategy ofPeaceful Coexistence, 1954-1956,”; “Peaceful Unification Strategy, 19571960”; “Unification strategy by a People’s Democratic Revolution, 1961-1965”;“Unification by Vietnamizatoin, 1966-1976,”; and “a Strategy of Peace Offense,
1977 - .” Yong Soon Yim, “Two Korea’s Unification Policy and Strategy,”International Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XVII, No. 2

89

Occasional Papers/Reprints Series in Contemporary Asian Studies, Number 91978 (21).
47

Eberstadt, on the other hand, divides the North’s unification policy in roughly
three phases: gathering strength (1953-1962), going for broke (1962-1969), anddead end (1980 onward). Eberstadt, The End of North Korea, chapter one.

48

Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, China and Post-War Reconstruction of North
Korea, 1953-1961, North Korea International Documentation Project, Working
Paper #4, Wilson Center, May 2012.

49

Yim, “Two Korea’s Unification Policy and Strategy.”

50

Nodong Shinmun, September 8, 1966.

51

Of the thirty-one members of Unit 124, twenty-nine were killed, one wascaptured, and one was presumed to have escaped back into North Korea.
“January 1968: Assassins Storm Seoul; US Spyship Seized,” The Korea Times,
24 January 2010.
52

Ibid.

53

Federation of American Scientists, Korean People’s Army. www.fas.org/nuke/
guide/dprk/agency/army.htm.

54

Eberstadt, The End of North Korea, chapter one.

55

In early 1975, candidate Jimmy Carter declared that, if elected President, hewould order the withdrawal of all U.S. ground forces from the Korean
peninsula. After he was inaugurated, he moved to keep his campaign pledge,but, by July 1979, only 3,600 U.S. troops had been withdrawn when hegrudgingly announced the suspension of further troop withdrawals. Fred
Hoffman, “Carter’s troop withdrawal decisions—the role of intelligence,”
Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, January-March, 2002. Also see
Eberstadt, The End of North Korea, chapter one.

56

Quoted in Eberstadt, The End of North Korea. Also see “Excerpts from Kim
Il Sung Speech, April 18, 1975”(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DemocraticKampuchea/message/132); Ria
Chae, “East German Documents on Kim Il Sung’s April 1975 Trip to Beijing,”
North Korea International Documentation Project, Wilson Center.
57

Ria Chae, “NKIDP e-Dossier No.7: East German Documents on Kim Ilsung’s April 1975 Trip to Beijing.” North Korea International Documentation
Project. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, May 2012.

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Fall 2013

58

Kim Hyung-jin, “Calls Rise for Review of 1983 Rangoon Bombing by North
Korea,” Yonhap News; Tim Shorrock, “Rangoon Bomb Shatters Korean
Cabinet,” Multinational Monitor, Volume 4, Number 11, November 1983.
59

United Nations Security Council, Verbatim Report meeting 2791, February
16, 1988.
60

Eberstadt, The End of North Korea, chapter one.

61

Ibid.

62

Andrea Matles Savada ed., “North Korea: A Country Study,” Library ofCongress, Federal Research Division. http://onlinelit.harvey.lib.il.us

63“North Korea Admits ‘Grave Situation’,” Washington Post, December 9,
1993. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-978832.html
64

An exact statistical number of deaths during the acute phase of the crisis willprobably never be fully determined. Some estimates are lower between 800,000
to 1.5 million people. W. Courtland Robinson, Myung Ken Lee, Kenneth Hill,and Gilbert M. Burham, “Mortality in North Korean Migrant Households: A
Retrospective Study,” Lancet 293 no 9175 (July 24, 2000); Daniel Goodkind
and Loraine West, “The North Korean Famine and Its Demographic Impact,”
Population and Development Review 27, no 2 (June 2001). In 1998, US
Congressional staffers who visited the country reported a range of estimates
between 900,000 to 2.4 million between 1995 and 1998. “Final report” to U.SHouse of Representatives International Relations Committee, August 11-23,
1998. http://www.tomcoyner.com/kirk_report.htm. Upper estimates range
from two to three million. Noland, Marchus, Sherman Robinson and Tao Wang,“Famine in North Korea: Causes and Cures,” Institute for International
Economics. “North Korea Loses 3 Million to Famine,” BBC, February 19,
1999.

65

Evan Ramstad, “Studies Ponder Reunification . . . Some Day,” Korea
Realtime. http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2010/11/22/studies-ponderreunification-some-day
66“South Korea Formally Declares End to Sunshine Policy,” Voice of America,
updated November 17, 2010.
67

Myers, The Cleanest Race, 7.

68Ewen MacAskill, “US warns North Korea of Increased Isolation if Threats
Escalate Further,” The Guardian, Washington (March 29, 2013); Sanger,
David, “North Korea Issues Blunt New Threats to United States,” New YorkTimes, January 24, 2013; Lim, Benjamin Kang, “North Korea Tells China of
Preparations For Nuclear Test,” Reuters, February 15, 2013; “Korean ArmisticeInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XVII, No. 2

91

Agreement Will No Longer Exist,” Rodong Sinmun, KCNA, March 7, 2013;
Choe Sang-hun, “North Korea Threatens U.S Bases in the Pacific,” New YorkTimes, March 21, 2013.
69

Choe Sang-hun, “North and South Korea Agree to First Official Dialogue inYears, New York Times, A6.
70

Ibid.

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Fall 2013