NORTH KOREAN FOREIGN RELATIONS 

IN THE POST–COLD WAR WORLD

Samuel S. Kim

April 2007

This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined 

in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the 

public domain, and under the provisions of Title 17, United States 

Code, Section 105, it may not be copyrighted.

Visit our website for other free publication downloads

http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/

To rate this publication click here.
ii

*****

The views expressed in this report are those of the author 

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the 

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. This report is cleared for public release; distribution 

is unlimited.

*****

Research for this monograph was completed in October 

2006.

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be 

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War 

College, 122 Forbes Ave, Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. 

*****

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications are available 

on the SSI homepage for electronic dissemination. Hard copies of 

this report also may be ordered from our homepage. SSI’s homepage address is: www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil.

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail 

newsletter to update the national security community on the research of our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and 

upcoming conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research 

analysts. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please 

subscribe on our homepage at www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.

mil/newsletter/.

ISBN 1-58487-290-X
iii

FOREWORD

North Korea’s foreign relations are a blend of contradiction and complexity. They start from the incongruity between Pyongyang’s highly touted policy of 

juche, or self-reliance, and North Korea’s extended and 

heavy reliance on foreign aid and assistance over the 

6 decades of its existence. This aid—both military and 

economic—in the first 4 decades came from China, the 

Soviet Union, and communist bloc states; in the past 

2 decades, this aid has come from countries including 

China, South Korea, and the United States.

In this monograph, Dr. Samuel Kim examines 

North Korea’s foreign relations with China, Russia, 

Japan, the United States, and South Korea during the 

post-Cold War era. He argues that central to understanding North Korea’s international behavior in the 

21st century is the extent to which the policies of the 

United States have shaped that behavior. Although 

some readers may not agree with all of Dr. Kim’s interpretations and assessments, they nevertheless will find 

his analysis simulating and extremely informative.

This publication is the fifth in a series titled “Demystifying North Korea,” the products of a project directed 

by Dr. Andrew Scobell. The first monograph, North Korea’s Strategic Intentions, written Dr. Scobell, was published in July 2005. The second monograph, Kim Jong 

Il and North Korea: The Leader and the System, also written by Dr. Scobell, appeared in March 2006. The third 

monograph, North Korean Civil-Military Trends: Military-First Politics to a Point, written by Mr. Ken Gause, 

appeared in October 2006. The fourth monograph, 

North Korea’s Military Conventional and Unconventional 

Military Capabilities and Intentions (forthcoming March 
iv

2007), was written by Captain John Sanford (USN) and 

Dr. Scobell. Future monographs will examine North 

Korea’s economy and assess future scenarios. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to make this monograph publicly available.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
v

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

SAMUEL S. KIM is an adjunct professor of political 

science and senior research scholar at the Weatherhead 

East Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York. 

He previously taught at the Foreign Affairs Institute, 

Beijing, China, as a Fulbright professor (1985–86); and 

at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New 

Jersey (1986–93). Dr. Kim is the author or editor of 22 

books on East Asian international relations and world 

order studies, including his most recent publications, 

The International Relations of Northeast Asia (editor; 

Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) and The Two Koreas and 

the Great Powers (Cambridge University Press, 2006). 

He has published more than 150 articles in edited volumes and leading international relations journals, including American Journal of International Law, International Interactions, International Organization, Journal of 

Peace Research, World Politics, World Policy Journal; Asian 

Survey; Asian Perspective; China Quarterly; and Journal of 

East Asian Studies. Dr. Kim holds an M.I.A. and Ph.D. 

from Columbia University.
vi

SUMMARY

Any attempt to understand North Korean foreign 

relations in the post–Cold War world is to be confronted with a genuine puzzle of both real-world and theoretical significance. On the one hand, in the post–Cold 

War era North Korea—officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)—has been 

seen by many as a failed state on the verge of explosion 

or implosion. On the other hand, not only has North 

Korea survived, despite a rapid succession of external 

shocks—the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the end of 

both the Cold War and superpower rivalry, and the 

demise of the Soviet Union—all on top of a series of 

seemingly fatal internal woes, including spreading 

famine, deepening socialist alienation, and the death 

of its founder, the “eternal president” Kim Il Sung. But 

with its nuclear and missile brinkmanship diplomacy, 

it has become a focus of regional and global prime-time 

coverage. 

Paradoxically, Pyongyang seems to have turned its 

weakness into strength by playing its “collapse card,” 

driving home the point that it is anything but a Fourth 

World banana republic that would disappear quietly 

without a big fight or a huge mess, a mess that no outside neighboring power would be willing or able to 

clean up. In fact, not only has North Korea, the weakest of the six main actors in the region, continued to 

exist, but it has also catapulted itself to the position of 

primary driver of Northeast Asian geopolitics through 

its strategic use of nuclear brinkmanship diplomacy. 

From this transformed geopolitical landscape emerges 

the greatest irony of the region: today, in the post–Cold 

War world, North Korea seems to have a more secure 
vii

sovereignty itself, while posing greater security risks 

to its neighbors, than has ever been the case in recent 

history.

The starting premise of this monograph is that for 

all the uniqueness of the regime and its putative political autonomy, post–Kim Il Sung North Korea has been 

subject to the same external pressures and dynamics 

that are inherent in an increasingly interdependent and 

interactive world. The foreign relations that define the 

place of North Korea in the international community 

today are the result of the trajectories that Pyongyang 

has chosen to take—or was forced to take—given its 

national interests and politics. In addition, the choices 

of the North Korean state are constrained by the international environment in which they interact, given its 

location at the center of Northeast Asian geopolitics in 

which the interests of the Big Four (China, Russia, Japan, and the United States) inevitably compete, clash, 

mesh, coincide, etc., as those nations pursue their course 

in the region. North Korea per se is seldom of great importance to any of the Big Four, but its significance is 

closely tied to and shaped by the overall foreign policy 

goals of each of the Big Four Plus One (South Korea). 

Thus North Korea is seen merely as part of the problem or part of the solution for Northeast Asia. 

On the basis of historical and comparative analysis 

of the conduct of North Korean foreign policy, especially the turbulent relations with the Big Four plus the 

relationship with South Korea, the main objective here 

is to track, explain, and assess North Korea’s foreign 

policy behavior in the post–Cold War and post–Kim Il 

Sung era, using a behavior-centered approach. What 

is most striking about post–Cold War North Korean 

foreign policy is not the centrality of the Big Four but 

rather the extent to which the United States has figured 
viii

in the major changes and shifts in Pyongyang’s international behavior. North Korea has sought and found 

a new troika of life-supporting geopolitical patrons in 

China, South Korea, and Russia, and also a new pair 

of life-supporting geo-economic patrons in China and 

South Korea, even as America’s dominant perception 

of North Korea has shifted significantly from that of a 

poor nation in need of a life-support system to that of 

an aggressive nation representing a mortal threat. As if 

in fear of the DPRK’s “tyranny of proximity,” however, 

all three of North Korea’s contiguous neighbors—China, Russia, and South Korea—have tended to be reluctant to support Washington’s hard-line strategy.

Although the future of North Korea is never clear, 

the way the outside world—especially the Big Four 

plus Seoul—responds to Pyongyang is closely keyed 

to the way North Korea responds to the outside world. 

North Korea’s future is malleable rather than rigidly 

predetermined. This nondeterministic image of the future of the post–Kim Il Sung system opens up room for 

the outside world to use whatever leverage it might 

have to nudge North Korean leaders toward opting for 

a particular future scenario over another less benign in 

the coming years.
1

NORTH KOREAN FOREIGN RELATIONS 

IN THE POST–COLD WAR WORLD

INTRODUCTION

To understand North Korean foreign relations in 

the post–Cold War world is to be confronted with a 

genuine puzzle of both real-world . On the one hand, 

in the post–Cold War era North Korea—officially 

known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 

(DPRK)—has been seen by many as a failed state on the 

verge of explosion or implosion. This dire assessment 

stems from the troublesome fact that the country has 

encountered a rapid succession of external shocks—the 

crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the end of both the Cold 

War and superpower rivalry, the demise of the Soviet 

Union and international communism, Moscow-Seoul 

normalization, and Beijing-Seoul normalization—on 

top of a series of internal woes, including the death 

of its founder, the “eternal president” Kim Il Sung, a 

downward spiral of industrial output, food/energy/

hard currency shortages, shrinking trade, and deepening systemic dissonance, with the resulting famine 

killing at least 3–5 percent of the population in the 

latter half of the 1990s. 

Thus for the first time since the Korean War, the 

question of the future of North Korea—whether it 

will survive or collapse, slowly or suddenly—has 

prompted a flurry of debates and has provoked many 

on-the-fly pundits and soothsayers of one kind or 

another in the United States. Many of these predicted 

that in the wake of Kim Il Sung’s death, the DPRK 

would collapse within 6 months; or that in less than 3 

years, Korea would have a German-style reunification 

by absorption. 
2

The popularity of this “collapsist” scenario also 

has been evident in the policy communities of some of 

the neighboring states. In 1994 and 1995, for example, 

South Korean President Kim Young Sam jumped on the 

collapsist bandwagon when he depicted North Korea 

as a “broken airplane” headed for a crash landing that 

would be followed by a quick Korean reunification. 

The specter of collapse has even prompted behindthe-scenes efforts by the U.S. Department of Defense 

(DoD) to coordinate contingency planning with South 

Korean and Japanese allies. At a summit meeting held 

on Cheju Island in April 1996, leaders of South Korea 

and the United States jointly agreed to promote a twoplus-two formula, the Four-Party Peace Talks, even as 

they privately predicted that the collapse in the North 

could come as soon as 2 or 3 years.1

 Such endgame 

speculation on the future of post–Kim Il Sung North 

Korea has become a favorite diplomatic sport.2

At the turn of the new millennium, which many 

predicted North Korea would not survive to see, not 

only does the socialist “hermit kingdom” still exist, but 

with its nuclear and missile brinkmanship diplomacy, 

it has become a focus of regional and global primetime coverage. The new consensus in South Korean 

and American intelligence communities in early 2000 

was that North Korea would survive at least until 

2015.3 Paradoxically, Pyongyang seems to have turned 

its weakness into strength by playing its “collapse 

card,” driving home that it is anything but a Fourth 

World banana republic that would disappear quietly 

without a big fight or a huge mess, a mess that no 

outside neighboring power would be willing or able 

to clean up. In addition, North Korea has catapulted 

itself into the position of a primary driver of Northeast 

Asian geopolitics through its nuclear diplomacy. Thus 
3

emerges the greatest irony of the region: today, in the 

post–Cold War world, North Korea seems both to enjoy 

a more secure sovereignty and pose greater security 

risks to its neighbors than has ever been the case in 

recent history.

The premise of this monograph is that for all 

its uniqueness as a state and its putative political 

autonomy, post–Kim Il Sung North Korea has been 

subject to the same external pressures and dynamics 

that are inherent in an increasingly interdependent and 

interactive world. The foreign relations that define the 

place of North Korea in the international community 

today are the result of trajectories that Pyongyang has 

chosen to take—or was forced to take—given its national 

interests and politics. In addition, the choices of the 

North Korean state are constrained by the international 

environment in which they interact, given its location 

at the center of Northeast Asian (NEA) geopolitics in 

which the interests of the Big Four inevitably compete, 

clash, mesh, etc., with each other in various issue areas 

as these nations pursue their self-determined courses 

in the region. North Korea, per se, is seldom of great 

importance to any of the Big Four. Its importance is 

closely keyed to and shaped by the overall foreign 

policy goals of each of the Big Four. North Korea is 

thus seen merely as part of the problem or part of the 

solution for Northeast Asia. 

Rather than examining North Korean foreign 

relations strictly in the material terms of strategic 

state interests, balance of power, nuclear arsenals, 

and conventional force capabilities, it is important to 

question how instances of conflict and cooperation 

might be redefined in terms of conflicting and 

commensurable identities. Traditional realist national 

security approaches cannot escape the reactive (and 
4

self-fulfilling) consequences of a state’s security 

behavior for the behavior of its adversary. The issue 

of North Korea’s nuclear program can never be settled 

without addressing the country’s legitimate security 

needs and fears in strategically credible ways.4

 This is 

not to say, however, that force ratios and trade levels 

do not matter, but rather that the contours of North 

Korean foreign relations are shaped by far more 

fundamental considerations. 

This monograph consists of four sections. The first 

depicts in broad strokes sui generis regional (“near 

abroad”) characteristics for a contextual analysis 

of North Korean foreign relations in the post–Cold 

War era. The second examines the complex interplay 

of global, regional, and national forces that have 

influenced and shaped the changing relational patterns 

between North Korea and the Big Four Plus One. The 

third assesses Pyongyang’s survival strategy in both 

the security and economic domains. Finally, the fourth 

briefly addresses the future prospects of North Korea’s 

relations with the Big Four Plus One. 

THE “NEAR ABROAD” ENVIRONMENT, 

OLD AND NEW

In these early years of the new millennium, there is 

something both very old and very new in the regional 

security complex surrounding the Korean peninsula. 

What remains unchanged and unchangeable is 

the geographical location of North Korea, which is 

tightly surrounded and squeezed by no less than five 

countries—the Big Four and the southern rival, South 

Korea (the “Big Four plus One”). As Jules Cambon 

wrote in 1935, “The geographical position of a nation 

is the principal factor conditioning its foreign policy—
5

the principal reason why it must have a foreign policy 

at all.”5

Of course, geography matters in the shaping of 

any state’s foreign policy, but this is especially true for 

the foreign policies of the two Koreas and their three 

neighboring powers. A glance at the map and a whiff 

of the geopolitical smoke from the latest (second) U.S.–

DPRK nuclear standoff suggest why Northest Asia 

(NEA) is one of the most important yet most volatile 

regions of the world. When it comes to the dream of a 

Eurasian “Iron Silk Road,” North Korea’s hub position 

makes China, Russia, South Korea, and even Japan more 

receptive to upgrading its dilapidated transportation 

infrastructure. It is hardly surprising, then, that each of 

the Big Four has come to regard the Korean peninsula as 

the strategic pivot point of NEA security and therefore 

as falling within its own geostrategic ambit.6

 Indeed, 

North Korea’s unique place in the geopolitics of NEA 

remains at once a blessing, a curse, and a Rorschach 

test.

The world’s heaviest concentration of military and 

economic capabilities lies in this region: the world’s 

three largest nuclear weapon states (the United States, 

Russia, and China), one nuclear ambiguous state 

(North Korea), three threshold nuclear weapon states 

(Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan), the world’s three 

largest economies on a purchasing power parity basis 

(the United States, China, and Japan),7

 and East Asia’s 

three largest economies (Japan, China, and South 

Korea). It was in NEA that the Cold War turned into a 

hot war, and the region, lacking any nonaligned states, 

was more involved in Cold War politics than any other 

region or subregion. Even with the end of the Cold War 

and superpower rivalry, the region is still distinguished 

by continuing, if somewhat anachronistic, Cold War 
6

alliance systems linking the two Koreas, Japan, China, 

and the United States in a bilateralized regional security 

complex.

NEA is more than a geographical entity. Although 

geographical proximity is important, defining East Asia 

or especially NEA in these terms alone is problematic 

because any strictly geographical approach would 

obscure rather than reveal the critical role of the United 

States in Northeast Asian international relations.8

 NEA 

is considered to be vitally important to America’s 

security and economic interests, and the U.S. role 

remains a crucial factor (perhaps the most crucial) in 

the regional geostrategic and geo-economic equations. 

The United States, by dint of its deep interest and 

involvement in Northeast Asian geopolitics and geoeconomics, deploys some 100,000 troops in the AsiaPacific region, concentrated mostly in Japan and South 

Korea.9

As this might suggest, the divide in NEA between 

regional and global politics is blurred substantially, 

if not completely erased, for several reasons. First, 

the region is the “strategic home” of three of the five 

permanent members of the United Nations Security 

Council (UNSC), which are also three of the five 

original nuclear weapon states shielded by the twotiered, discriminatory Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 

regime. Second, Japan, Greater China, and South Korea 

alone accounted for about 25 percent of the world gross 

domestic product (GDP) in 2000. As of mid-2005, NEA 

is home to the world’s four largest holders of foreign 

exchange reserves: Japan ($825.0 billion), China ($711.0 

billion), Taiwan ($253.6 billion), and South Korea ($205.7 

billion).10 In addition, Japan remains the world’s second 

largest financial contributor to the United Nations 

(UN) and its associated specialized agencies. Finally, 
7

the rapid rise of China’s economic power and related 

military power has given rise to many debates among 

specialists and policymakers over how much influence 

Beijing actually exerts in NEA and what this means for 

U.S. interests as well as an emerging Northeast Asian 

order.11

The structural impact of power transition and 

globalization seems to have accentuated the 

uncertainties and complexities of great power politics 

in the region. The centripetal forces of increasing 

economic interaction and interdependence are 

straining against the centrifugal forces tending toward 

protection of national identity and sovereignty, not 

to mention the widely differing notions of conflict 

management in NEA. In the absence of superpower 

conflict, the foreign policies of the two Koreas and the 

Big Four are subject to competing pressures, especially 

the twin pressures of globalization from above and 

localization from below. All are experiencing wrenching national identity difficulties in adjusting to post–

Cold War realignments, and all are in flux regarding 

their national identities and how these relate to the 

region as a whole. 

Thus policymakers in Pyongyang—no less than 

scholars and policymakers elsewhere—are challenged 

by a unique and complex cocktail of regional 

characteristics: high capability, abiding animus, deep 

albeit differentiated entanglement of the Big Four in 

Korean affairs, North Korea’s recent emergence as 

a nuclear loose cannon, the absence of multilateral 

security institutions, the rise of America’s unilateral 

triumphalism, growing economic integration and 

regionalization, and the resulting uncertainties and 

unpredictability in the international politics of NEA. 

Regional cooperation to alleviate the security dilemma 
8

or to establish a viable security community is not 

impossible, but it is more difficult to accomplish when 

the major regional actors are working under the long 

shadows of historical enmities and contested political 

identities. 

NORTH KOREA AND THE BIG FOUR PLUS ONE

China and North Korea.

Without a doubt, China holds greater importance in 

North Korea’s foreign policy than the DPRK holds in 

Chinese foreign policy. China’s potential trump cards 

in Korean affairs are legion, including demographic 

weight as the world’s most populous country, 

territorial size and contiguity, military power as the 

world’s third-largest nuclear weapons state after the 

United States and Russia, veto power in the UNSC, new 

market power as the world’s fastest growing economy, 

and the traditional Confucian cultural influence with 

strong historical roots. 

Moreover, in describing relations between the 

People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) and the 

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the term 

“bilateral” is somewhat of a misnomer. Since the end 

of the Cold War and the demise of global socialist 

ideology, Sino-North Korean relations have developed 

with a constant eye toward both South Korea (ROK or 

Republic of Korea) and the United States. While the 

relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang remains 

a special one, its unique characteristics are now defined 

by China’s use of its connections with the DPRK for the 

maintenance of domestic and “near abroad” stability 

rather than for any grander ambitions.

Political and Diplomatic Interaction. During the Cold 

War, North Korea’s geostrategic importance and its 
9

proximity to China and the Soviet Union made it easier 

for Pyongyang to cope with the twin abandonment/

entrapment security dilemmas. With the rise of the 

Sino–Soviet dispute in the late 1950s and the eruption 

of open conflict in the 1960s, Kim Il Sung made a virtue 

of necessity by manipulating his country’s strategic 

relations with Moscow and Beijing in a self-serving 

manner. He took sides when necessary on particular 

issues, always attempting to extract maximum payoffs 

in economic, technical, and military aid, but never 

completely casting his lot with one over the other.

In the 1980s, however, the PRC and DPRK were on 

separate and less entangled trajectories. If the central 

challenge of post-Mao Chinese foreign policy was 

how to make the world congenial for its resurgent 

modernization drive via reform and opening to 

the capitalist world system, then Pyongyang’s top 

priority, at least in the 1980s, was to contain, isolate, 

and destabilize South Korea in the seemingly endless 

pursuit of absolute one-nation legitimation and Korean 

reunification on its own terms. The 1983 Rangoon 

bombing (in which 17 members of South Korean 

President Chun Doo Hwan’s delegation were killed) 

and the 1987 mid-air sabotage of a Korean Air jetliner 

(which claimed the lives of all 115 people aboard) 

brought into sharp relief the vicious circle of the politics 

of competitive legitimation and delegitimation on the 

Korean peninsula.

During the long Deng decade, Beijing’s Korea policy 

evolved through several phases—from the familiar 

one-Korea (pro-Pyongyang) policy, to a one-Korea 

de jure/two-Koreas de facto policy, and finally to a 

policy of two Koreas de facto and de jure. The decision 

to normalize relations with South Korea, finalized in 

August 1992, was the culmination of a gradual process 
10

of balancing and adjusting post-Mao foreign policy to 

the logic of changing domestic, regional, and global 

situations.12 The Sino–ROK normalization was made 

possible by the mutual acceptance of differences in 

political identity following China’s long-standing 

Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and Seoul’s 

Nordpolitik, which called for the improvement of interKorean relations as well as South Korea’s relations with 

socialist countries in conformity with the principles of 

equality, respect, and mutual prosperity, irrespective of 

political and ideological differences. Ironically, but not 

surprisingly, the greater challenge has been to China 

and the DPRK in adjusting their socialist identities in 

the post–Cold War (and post-Socialist) world.

Perhaps because of the lack of change in Pyongyang’s international course, Beijing did not pursue a 

truly active geostrategic engagement as part of its approach to the Korean peninsula after the normalization of relations with the ROK. Instead, it more or 

less followed Deng Xiaoping’s foreign policy axiom of 

“hiding its light under a bushel,” not placing itself on 

the front lines of the Korean conflict. While the 1992 

two-Koreas decision was arguably the most significant 

reorientation of post–Cold War Chinese foreign policy 

in the Northeast Asian region, it did not signal a greater 

Chinese conflict management role in regional or global 

politics. China’s hands-off approach was demonstrated 

particularly in the 1993–94 U.S.-DPRK nuclear standoff, 

when Beijing played neither mediator nor peacemaker 

for fear it might get burned if something went wrong. 

The Chinese repeated the familiar refrain that “the 

issue was a direct matter between the DPRK and the 

three sides—the International Atomic Energy Agency 

(IAEA), the United States, and the Republic of Korea.”13 

This “who me?” posture reflected a cost-benefit 

calculus intended to keep the PRC out of harm’s way 
11

while still holding both Pyongyang and Seoul within 

its Sinocentric circle of influence in East Asia. Even 

after Pyongyang’s alleged confession of the existence 

of a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program, China 

persisted in its risk-averse posture toward the nuclear 

issue on the Korean peninsula. 

Security Interaction. All of this changed, and changed 

dramatically, in the heat of the second U.S.-DPRK nuclear confrontation in early 2003. China suddenly 

launched an unprecedented flurry of mediation 

diplomacy. While the idea of a nuclear-free Korean 

peninsula is important, for the Chinese leadership and 

most Chinese strategic analysts, the survival of the 

North Korean regime and the reform of North Korea 

are China’s greatest challenge and prime objective, 

respectively.14 Growing fears of the potential for 

reckless action by the United States and North Korea 

as they engage in mutual provocation—which could 

trigger another war in China’s strategic backyard—

have served as the most decisive proximate catalyst for 

Beijing’s hands-on conflict management diplomacy. 

There were other catalysts for the shift, including 

China’s own enhanced geopolitical and economic 

leverage, the steady rise of regional and global 

multilateralism in Chinese foreign policy thinking and 

behavior, and the creeping unilateralism under the 

Clinton administration that expanded under the Bush 

administration. In short, the unique confluence of both 

proximate and underlying factors—greater danger, 

greater stakes, and greater leverage—explains why 

Beijing was spurred into action in early 2003.

With its conflict management resources, both diplomatic and economic, China has clearly made a heavy 

investment in prompting the Six-Party process toward 

a negotiated solution or at the very least in averting its 

collapse. From the beginning, China’s mediation-cum-
12

conflict management diplomacy required shuttle/

visitation diplomacy—and aid diplomacy—to bring 

the DPRK to a negotiating table in Beijing. From early 

2003 to late 2005, senior Chinese officials have stepped 

up shuttle/visitation diplomacy on a quarterly basis. 

Moreover, these visits have been conducted at levels 

senior enough to require meetings with Chairman 

Kim Jong Il, serving notice to Washington that direct 

interaction with the Chairman is the shortest way 

toward progress in the Six-Party process. The Chinese 

are reported to have made an exceptional effort in the 

fourth round of talks—the most important and extended 

round to date—mobilizing a professional work team of 

about 200 experts from nine departments or bureaus 

in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These diplomats 

all spent day and night working on successive drafts 

of a joint statement of principles, pulling together the 

lowest common denominator among views laid out by 

the six parties in the behind-the-scenes negotiations, 

which included an unprecedented half-dozen bilateral 

meetings between U.S. and North Korean diplomats.15

Caught in diplomatic gridlock and against the 

backdrop of being labeled an “outpost of tyranny” 

by the second-term Bush administration, Pyongyang 

raised the ante of its brinkmanship with a statement 

on February 10, 2005, that it had “manufactured nukes 

for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration’s 

evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the 

DPRK” and that it was therefore “compelled to suspend 

participation in the [Six Party] talks for an indefinite 

period.”16

Pyongyang’s decision to rejoin the Six Party talks 

after a 13-month hiatus can be partially attributed to 

the synergy of Chinese and South Korean mediation 

diplomacy aimed at providing a face-saving exit 

from the trap of mutual U.S.-DPRK creation. This 
13

was particularly important in the wake of the Bush 

administration’s characterization of Kim Jong Il as a 

“tyrant” and U.S. Secretary of Defense Condoleezza 

Rice’s labeling of North Korea as an “outpost of 

tyranny.” Beijing, Seoul, and Moscow have been 

prodding the Bush administration to stop using this 

kind of language and to map out detailed economic 

and security incentives as quid pro quo for North 

Korea’s nuclear disarmament. The implicit withdrawal 

of vilifying rhetoric was quite important in Pyongyang, 

as made evident in an official statement of the DPRK 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 

. . . the U.S. side at the contact made between the heads 

of both delegations in Beijing Saturday clarified that it 

would recognize the DPRK as a sovereign state, not to 

invade it, and hold bilateral talks within the framework 

of the Six Party talks, and the DPRK side interpreted it 

as a retraction of its remark designating the former as 

an “outpost of tyranny” and decided to return to the Six 

Party talks.17

The “words for words” and “action for action” 

approach that North Korea assumed as its negotiating 

stance and that China inferred as group consensus in 

the Chairman’s statement at the end of the third round 

of talks, also provided an incentive for Pyongyang, if 

not for Washington. China was the most critical factor 

in achieving a group consensus in the form of the Joint 

Statement of Principles issued by the participants in 

the fourth round of Six Party talks on September 19, 

2005, the first-ever successful outcome of the on-again, 

off-again multilateral dialogue of more than 2 years. 

This was a validation of the negotiated approach to 

the second nuclear standoff on the Korean peninsula 

that both Pyongyang and Washington have resisted at 

various times.
14

China also may have played a critical backstage role 

in persuading Pyongyang to moderate provocative 

rhetoric or action. China played a further role in 

downsizing Pyongyang’s demand for a nonaggression 

treaty, a demand that initially had called for a security 

pledge or guarantee as well as the removal of the 

DPRK from the U.S. list of terrorist states. However, 

Chinese persuasive power has had very real limits. 

China’s efforts to dissuade North Korea from carrying 

out nuclear or missile tests did not prevent Pyongyang 

from detonating a nuclear device on October 9, 2006, or 

launching a Taipodong II (along with six other missiles 

of different types) on July 5, 2006.

In sum, China’s mediation diplomacy since early 

2003 has been the primary factor in facilitating and 

energizing multilateral dialogues among the Northeast 

Asian states concerned in the nuclear standoff. Whereas 

in 1994 China wanted the United States and the DPRK 

to handle their dispute bilaterally, from 2003 to 2005 

China succeeded in drawing North Korea into a unique 

regional, multilateral setting that Pyongyang—as well 

as Beijing—had previously foresworn in a quest for 

direct bilateral negotiations with the United States. 

Economic Interaction. Chinese–North Korean economic relations over the years are notable in several 

respects. First, Sino-DPRK trade is closely keyed to 

and determined by turbulent political trajectories. The 

Chinese percentage of total North Korean foreign trade 

has fluctuated greatly over the years: (1) 25–60 percent 

(the absolute value was around U.S.$100 million) in the 

1950s; (2) about 30 percent in the 1960s until 1967, after 

which the ratio declined to around 10 percent in the 

wake of the Cultural Revolution; (3) increased to about 

20 percent since 1973 (to the level of U.S.$300–$600 

million); and (4) declined to the 10–20 percent range in 

the 1980s, although its total value had risen to U.S.$3–
15

$4 billion. In the first post–Cold War decade, the 1990s, 

the ratio started at 10.1 percent in 1990 but increased 

dramatically to around 30 percent in 1991 and stayed 

in this range until 1998, even as its total value began 

to decline from $899 million in 1993 to $371 million in 

1999. Nonetheless, due to the renormalization process 

underway since 1999, Sino-DPRK trade registered a 32 

percent increase in 2000 ($488 million) and a whopping 

80 percent increase in the first half of 2001 ($311 

million) after 2 years of consecutive decreases in 1998 

and 1999. 

Despite the dramatic increases in total value, the 

China share declined from 29 percent in 1998 to 20 

percent in 2000, only to start rising again, more than 

tripling from $488 million in 2000 to a new all-time high 

of just more than $1.58 billion in 2005, demonstrating 

the paradoxical effect of the second U.S.-DPRK nuclear 

standoff, which has accelerated Pyongyang’s economic 

isolation due to the reinforced sanctions by Washington 

and Tokyo, while deepening North Korea’s dependence 

on Beijing and Seoul for trade and aid (see Table 1).

Year Exports 

to 

North 

Korea

Imports 

from

North 

Korea

Total 

North 

KoreanChinese 

Trade

Chinese

Trade 

Balance 

with North 

Korea

Percent 

Change in 

North KoreanChinese Trade

1979 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 

1980 374 303 677 +71 N/A 

1981 300 231 531 +69 -22%

1982 281 304 585 -23 +10% 

1983 273 254 527 +19 -10%

1984 226 272 498 -46 -6%

1985 231 257 488 -26 -2% 

1986 233 277 510 -44 +5% 

Table 1. China’s Trade with North Korea, 

1990-2005 (Unit: U.S.$ million) (continued).
16

Year Exports 

to 

North 

Korea

Imports 

from

North 

Korea

Total 

North 

KoreanChinese 

Trade

Chinese

Trade 

Balance 

with North 

Korea

Percent 

Change in 

North KoreanChinese Trade

1987 277 236 513 +41 +1% 

1988 345 234 579 +111 +13% 

1989 377 185 562 +192 -3% 

1990 358 125 483 +233 -14% 

1991 525 86 611 +439 +27%

1992 541 155 696 +386 +14%

1993 602 297 899 +305 +29%

1994 424 199 623 +225 -31%

1995 486 64 550 +422 -12%

1996 497 68 565 +429 +3%

1997 531 121 652 +410 +15%

1998 355 57 412 +298 -37%

1999 329 42 371 +287 -10%

2000 451 37 488 +414 +32%

2001 571 167 738 +404 +51%

2002 467 271 738 +196 +0%

2003 628 396 1,024 +232 +39%

2004 799 585 1,384 +214 +35% 

2005 1,081 499 1,580 +582 +14%

Sources: Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, 

People’s Republic of China at www.moftec.gov.cn/moftec/official/html/

statistics_data; 1996 Diplomatic White Paper Ministry of Foreign 

Affairs and Trade (MOFAT), Republic of Korea (ROK), p. 348; 

1997 Diplomatic White Paper, pp. 396 and 400; 1998 Diplomatic 

White Paper, pp. 481 and 486; 2000 Diplomatic White Paper, p. 

496; 2001 Diplomatic White Paper, p. 483; 2002 Diplomatic White 

Paper, p. 497; available at www.mofat.go.kr.

Table 1. China’s Trade with North Korea,

1990-2005 (Unit: U.S.$ million) (concluded).

Second, as Table 1 indicates, North Korea’s trade 

deficits with China have been chronic and substantial. 
17

During the 27 years from 1979 to 2005, the DPRK has 

enjoyed an annual surplus for only 4 years. Its trade 

deficit has amounted to a cumulative total of $4.68 

billion between 1990 and 2003—imports to the DPRK 

worth $6.7 billion and exports worth $2.1 billion. The 

cumulative total of the trade deficits for North Korea 

amounted to $3.85 billion during the period 1990–

2000, with total imports from China at $5.1 billion and 

total exports to China only $1.3 billion. North Korea’s 

trade deficit is not likely to improve for a long time, 

because it does not have high value products to export 

and because its primary exportable commodities are 

losing competitiveness in the Chinese market. In 2005, 

North Korea’s trade deficit hit an all-time high of $1.1 

billion. 

While China remained North Korea’s largest trade 

partner in the 1990s in terms of total value, Beijing has 

allowed Pyongyang to run average annual deficits 

of $318 million for 1990–1994, $369 million for 1995–

1999, and $423 million for 2000–2005. China’s role in 

North Korea’s trade would be even larger if barter 

transactions and aid were factored into these figures. 

In contrast, South Korea’s trade with China in a single 

year (2004) generated a huge surplus of $20.2 billion.

Although the exact amount and terms of China’s 

aid to North Korea remain unclear, it is generally 

estimated at one-quarter to one-third of China’s 

overall foreign aid. By mid-1994, China accounted for 

about three-quarters of North Korea’s oil and food 

imports.18 Whether intentionally or not, Beijing became 

more deeply involved, playing an increasingly active 

and, indeed, crucial year-to-year role in the politics 

of regime survival by providing more aid in a wider 

variety of forms: direct government-to-government 

aid, subsidized cross-border trade, and private barter 

transactions. 
18

North Korea’s dependency on China for aid has 

grown unabated and has intensified even in the face 

of its hardline policy towards Pyongyang’s rogue state 

strategy. Recent estimates of China’s aid to North Korea 

are in the range of 1 million tons of wheat and rice and 

500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil per annum, accounting 

for 70 to 90 percent of North Korea’s fuel imports 

and about one-third of its total food imports. With 

the cessation of America’s heavy fuel oil delivery in 

November 2002, China’s oil aid and exports may now 

be approaching nearly 100 percent of North Korea’s 

energy imports.19 As a way of enticing Pyongyang to the 

Six Party talks in late August 2003, President Hu Jintao 

promised Kim Jong II greater economic aid than in 

previous years. The Chinese government has extended 

indirect aid by allowing private economic transactions 

between North Korean and Chinese companies in the 

border area, despite North Korea’s mounting debt and 

the bankruptcy of many Chinese companies resulting 

from North Korean defaults on debts.

Despite being Pyongyang’s external life support 

system, especially since November 2002 when the 

United States halted monthly delivery of heavy fuel oil, 

China does not, to its frustration, receive as much North 

Korean gratitude as it would like nor does it wield as 

much leverage as Washington would have us believe, 

precisely because Pyongyang knows that China’s aid 

is in its own self-interest. As one senior Chinese leader 

said to a visiting U.S. scholar in the context of expressing 

China’s opposition to any economic sanctions on North 

Korea, “We can either send food to North Korea or they 

will send refugees to us—either way, we feed them. It 

is more convenient to feed them in North Korea than 

in China.”20 Thus Beijing is cautious to a fault for fear 

of provoking and/or causing collapse in the North 

by withholding too much aid, thereby precipitating 
19

a host of destabilizing social, economic, and political 

consequences.

For the DPRK, the most critical challenge is 

survival in the post–Cold War, post-communist world 

of globalization, and its economic relations with 

China are motivated by this survival goal. To this 

end, Pyongyang seeks increasing amounts of aid as an 

external life-support system, hoping to avoid triggering 

a cataclysmic system collapse. 

While providing the diplomatic and economic 

support to the DPRK that was necessary to infuse 

Kim Jong Il with enough confidence to remain a part 

of the Six Party process, China also has made it clear 

to Washington, Seoul, Moscow, and Tokyo that the 

peaceful coexistence of the two Korean states on the 

peninsula is now in the common interest of all, in 

the face of the alternative of having to cope with the 

turmoil and chaos that would follow a system collapse 

in Pyongyang.

In the face of a growing multifaceted sanctions 

strategy by Washington and Tokyo in recent years, 

especially the September 19, 2005, Joint Statement of 

Principles, Beijing’s multidimensional support for 

North Korea has been greatly accelerated. Sino-DPRK 

trade has more than doubled from $738 million in 

2002 to $1.6 billion in 2005 with China’s share of North 

Korean foreign trade hitting an all-time high of 40 

percent. More significantly, economic ties in various 

forms of investment are now expanding—from basic 

industry to mining exploration, drilling in the sea, and 

various construction projects including a plan to build 

a new mass-transportation bridge from North Korea’s 

border city of Sinuiju to Dandong, China, over the 

Yalu River. Beijing has unmistakably shifted its gears 

from mere life-support aid to developmental aid in late 

2005.
20

Russia and North Korea.

From the late 1950s onward, Kim Il Sung successfully exploited the emerging Sino–Soviet rift, gaining 

independence from both of the two large socialist states. 

Moscow and Beijing each tried to offset the other’s 

influence in North Korea with generous economic 

and military assistance. For a time, Pyongyang sided 

with Mao against the former Union of Soviet Socialist 

Republics (USSR), then tilted toward Moscow in the 

late 1960s during the years of Mao’s Great Proletarian 

Cultural Revolution. Thereafter, North Korea adapted 

adroitly to its two patrons, whose enmity and status 

competition continued through the 1970s and most 

of the 1980s. Moscow’s aim was to keep Pyongyang 

from slipping too close to China; the Soviets did not 

want a new war attempting to reunify Korea.21 Soviet 

diplomatic representatives in Pyongyang became 

accustomed to finding themselves severely isolated in 

an inhospitable environment. 

Regarding influence in Korea, it is likely that Soviet 

leaders believed they labored under a permanent, 

built-in disadvantage when compared with the PRC. 

Nonetheless, because the DPRK proved a useful partner 

in confronting the United States and insulating against 

U.S. troops in South Korea, the USSR continued to 

provide Pyongyang with the technology and products 

that it requested. But Moscow viewed North Korea as 

a functional buffer rather than as a reliable ally.22

Political and Diplomatic Interaction. Moscow’s 

skewed two-Koreas policy started with a bang in 1990 

but ended with a whimper. Ironically, if Moscow was 

the chief catalyst for transforming the political and 

strategic landscape of Northeast Asia, including the 

initiation of mutual recognition and the entry of the 

two Koreas into the UN, Beijing became the major 
21

beneficiary, occupying the pivotal position from 

which it could exert greater influence over Seoul and 

Pyongyang. As if to emulate Beijing’s much-touted 

equidistance policy, since the mid-1990s Moscow 

has retreated significantly from its skewed posture, 

moving toward a more balanced policy as a way of 

reassuring Pyongyang and thus enhancing its leverage 

and resuming its great-power role in the politics of a 

divided Korea. 

When the Kremlin announced in September 1990 

that it would normalize relations with Seoul, the 

DPRK said in a memorandum that normalization 

would imply an end to the DPRK–USSR alliance and 

that North Korea would have “no other choice but to 

take measures to provide for ourselves some weapons 

for which we have so far relied on the alliance.”23 The 

North Koreans even threatened to retaliate against the 

Soviet Union by supporting Japanese claims to the 

South Kuril Islands, and they began referring to ROK–

USSR relations as “diplomacy purchased by dollars.”24

Moscow responded by admonishing the DPRK that no 

matter how hard the USSR tried to help its neighbor, 

it would be difficult to solve its problems until the 

confrontation and arms race underway on the Korean 

peninsula ceased and until the North shed its semiisolation from economic contacts with the majority of 

developed countries.25

The political relationship between Moscow and 

Pyongyang was defined during the Cold War by the 

1961 Mutual Defense and Cooperation Treaty. When 

the Soviet Union dissolved, Russia initially agreed to 

honor the USSR’s extant treaties and commitments, 

although they would be subject to renegotiation. 

Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent a personal envoy 

to Pyongyang to explain Russia’s policy and to probe 
22

North Korea’s reaction. The North Koreans considered 

the 1961 treaty “outdated.” Not only did Pyongyang 

embrace termination of the treaty, but North Korea 

also dismissed Moscow’s reassurances that the Russian 

nuclear umbrella still covered North Korea, implying a 

revision of Pyongyang’s concept of national security.26

What is most striking about Moscow’s relations 

with Pyongyang, therefore, is not that there were 

vicissitudes and fluctuations throughout the 1990s—

for indeed there were many—but that the downward 

spiral of Russia-DPRK relations resulting from a series 

of domestic and external shocks has been reversed and 

put back on a renormalization track since the mid1990s. The period of 1998 to 1999 was a turning point 

in Moscow’s agonizing reappraisal of its perceived 

rapidly worsening international environment and the 

reconstruction of its ruling coalition. The statist balance 

of political elite interests was shattered by the August 

1998 financial crisis in Russia and, more importantly, 

by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)/

U.S. war in Kosovo.27

The Moscow-Pyongyang renormalization process 

clearly gained momentum when Vladimir Putin’s 

vigorous pursuit of realpolitik intersected with Kim 

Jong Il’s new diplomatic opening to the outside world. 

In July 2000, Putin became not only the first Kremlin 

leader ever to visit the neighboring communist country 

but also the first among the Big Four to make an official 

state visit to North Korea. A year later in August 2001, 

Kim Jong Il returned Putin’s visit in a bizarre 6,000-mile 

train trip across Russia to Moscow that inconvenienced 

thousands of Russian rail travelers along the way—it 

took more than a year just to organize it. This was 

part of Kim Jong Il’s coming-out party, evidenced also 

in 2000 by a visit to China in May, an inter-Korean 
23

summit in June, and a visit to Pyongyang by then U.S. 

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October. 

President Vladimir Putin’s vigorous personal 

diplomacy in 2000 and 2001 was a dramatic step not 

only toward bringing Moscow back into the rapidly 

changing Korean peninsular equation in order to 

reassert Russia’s great power identity, but also 

toward countering troublesome American policies. 

The United States loomed large in the second PutinKim summit in Moscow. In the DPRK-Russia Moscow 

Declaration of August 4, 2001,28 both parties addressed 

“international” (read “U.S.”) and bilateral issues. Four 

of the eight points seem designed to send a strong 

message to the United States: “a just new world order” 

(point one); the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) Treaty 

as a cornerstone of global strategic stability (point 

two); a Korean reunification process by independent 

means and without foreign interference (point seven); 

and the pullout of U.S. forces from South Korea as a 

“pressing issue,” regarding which Putin expressed his 

“understanding” (point eight). The remaining points 

have to do with the promotion of bilateral political and 

economic cooperation, especially “the plan for building 

railways linking the north and the south of the Korean 

peninsula [as well as mention of] Russia and Europe 

on the principle of the mutual interests recognized in 

the worldwide practice” (point six). 

This joint declaration was far more muscular and 

provocative than the June 2000 South–North Joint 

Declaration, including as it did trenchant attacks 

against infringement of state sovereignty under the 

pretext of humanitarianism and against the U.S. 

Theater Missile Defense (TMD) and National Missile 

Defense (NMD) programs. The Russian–North Korean 

summit captured global prime-time and headlines 

when Putin revealed that the North Korean leader had 
24

pledged to eliminate his country’s Taepodong missile 

program—a key rationale for NMD—if Western 

countries (meaning the United States) would provide 

access to rocket boosters for peaceful space research. 

Putin also managed to put Kim Jong Il’s “satellites 

for missiles” issue on the agenda of the G-8 summit 

meeting in Japan. 

Since these mutual visits, Kim Jong Il has stayed in 

close touch with Russian representatives in Pyongyang 

and has made visits to the Russian Far East to examine 

the implementation of Russian economic programs.29

In August 2002, Putin and Kim held a third summit 

in Vladivostok.30 There, Putin allegedly assured Kim 

Jong Il that Moscow would not support any U.S. 

efforts to impose a so-called “Iraqi scenario” on North 

Korea and that Russia would not join any anti-DPRK 

international coalition. Moreover, Russia would try to 

help the DPRK distance itself from the so-called “axis 

of evil” and to escape its U.S.-sponsored international 

isolation.31 These commitments are known as the 

“Putin formula.” In connection with the events in Iraq, 

the Russian president stated: “In recent times—and 

there have been many crises recently—Russia has not 

once permitted itself the luxury of being drawn directly 

into any of these crises,” and Putin also promised to do 

everything within his power “to prevent Russia being 

dragged into the Iraq crisis in any form.”32

Security Interaction. New North Korean policy 

toward Russia can best be described as “old wine in 

new bottles.” It is based on shared geopolitical interests, 

especially with respect to hardline U.S. policy and 

the U.S. military presence on the peninsula. It is reinforced by personal chemistry and close ties between 

Chairman Kim and President Putin, and it is cemented 

by interlocking institutional networks connecting 
25

North Korean and Russian bureaucracies at the central 

and local levels.33

A common belief in Russia is that the DPRK is 

a militarily weak state that faces overwhelmingly 

powerful opponents and truly must fear for its own 

survival. Therefore, its efforts are viewed as defensive 

in nature. In the wake of the NATO-led war in former 

Yugoslavia, Russians were predicting that it was only 

a matter of time before the United States took action 

against North Korea.34 Needless to say, George W. 

Bush’s tough policy toward Pyongyang has driven 

Moscow and Pyongyang toward closer ties. Russian 

analysts believe that a more robust Russian presence 

in North Korea could be useful to Pyongyang and to 

the peace process on the peninsula because reinforced 

contacts with Russia would help the DPRK feel more 

self-confident and consequently encourage it to behave 

in a more pragmatic manner in relations with other 

states.35

In general, Russia seeks a multinational arrangement for Korean peace and security, and it supports 

the notion that Korean questions should be resolved by 

the Koreans themselves if possible. Russia opposes 

neither U.S.–North Korean bilateral talks nor four-way 

talks among the United States, China, and North and 

South Korea, although the latter configuration makes 

Moscow feel sidelined. Russia asserts, however, that the 

United States alone cannot untie the “Korean knot” but 

must rely on a multilateral approach to creating lasting 

peace and security in NEA. Russian policymakers 

believe that Pyongyang is genuinely interested in 

reform but is isolated and paranoid; they argue that 

renewed friendship and trust between Russia and North 

Korea will help Pyongyang regain self-confidence and 

engage South Korea bilaterally in a constructive way, 

just as in its international relations.36
26

Russia was a serious supporter of the Six Party 

talks on the nuclear standoff. According to Alexander 

Zhebin, Russia was invited to join the Six Party talks at 

Pyongyang’s insistence: 

Some observers considered it a foreign-policy “failure” 

that Russia was not invited to the trilateral meeting in 

Beijing in April 2003, so when the DPRK decided to ask 

Russia to take part in the Six Party talks on August 27–

29, 2003, in Beijing, this was welcomed in Russia as “a 

positive step” with a certain feeling of relief.37

At times, however, the Russians oversold their case, 

as when a deputy foreign minister declared, “Without 

taking Russia’s interest into account, [resolution of a 

nuclear crisis] is almost impossible.”38 Russia has tried 

to build up its relevance by enhancing its leverage in 

Pyongyang, mostly by proposing to involve North 

Korea in its plans to develop a Northeast Asian energy 

network. North Korea, however, usually detects the 

transparency of such schemes. 

The on-again, off-again nuclear talks have allowed 

Russia to pursue its goal of working with both North 

and South Korea. In January 2003, South Korean officials 

asked Moscow to persuade North Korea to rescind 

its decision to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation 

Treaty (NPT). Putin sent his deputy foreign minister 

to Pyongyang to deliver a message to Kim Jong Il 

on how to resolve the nuclear crisis. The proposed 

package included nuclear-free status for the Korean 

peninsula, a security guarantee for the DPRK, and a 

resumption of humanitarian assistance and economic 

aid to North Korea.39 The proposal never got off the 

ground, and both the United States and the ROK view 

China as the real key player in terms of influencing 

the Pyongyang regime. The Three Party and Six Party 

talks on the nuclear issue all therefore have been held 
27

in Beijing. Remembering its exclusion from the 1994 

Agreed Framework and from the Korean Energy 

Development Organization (KEDO), Russia offered 

to build a nuclear power plant in North Korea as part 

of an effort to diffuse the crisis, and a Russian power 

company proposed constructing a power line from 

Vladivostok to Chongjin.40

Once the Six Party talks got underway in August 2003, 

Moscow proposed a package solution in close alignment with Beijing’s approach. Russia’s solution was 

based on the principles of a stage-by-stage process and 

parallel synchronized implementation of coordinated 

measures by the concerned parties.41 Russian officials 

have spoken out repeatedly for a peaceful, negotiated 

resolution of the crisis; they have warned of the dangers 

of a military solution; they have rejected sanctions or other 

pressure as counterproductive; and they have opposed 

referring the North Korean nuclear issue to the UNSC. 

Russian observers have warned that pressure is likely 

to backfire by cornering Pyongyang and increasing its 

sense of insecurity. Moreover, Moscow has volunteered 

to help provide North Korea with international security 

guarantees as well as energy assistance.42

Sensing that its strategic importance to Russia is 

growing under President Putin, Pyongyang hopes that 

Russia will be able to assist in solving several of its problems by providing or creating (1) de facto protection 

against possible military threats from the United States; 

(2) Russian backing in bargaining with Washington 

over nuclear and missile matters; (3) U.S. interest in 

accommodating North Korean demands and requests 

as a means of countering Russian influence with the 

DPRK; (4) renewed Russian military aid, including 

spare parts for existing weapons and hardware as well 

as new, more technologically advanced armaments; (5) 

Russian participation in the modernization of industrial 
28

facilities built by the Soviet Union during the early Cold 

War period; (6) reliable long-term deliveries of Russian 

oil and gas; and (7) facilitating cooperation with the 

DPRK by countries of the former Soviet Union.

Russia’s involvement in the Six Party talks in 

2003–06 was cautious but committed. Although China 

played the frontline role, ensuring that the talks got off 

the ground and continued, Russia also came to play an 

important supporting role. Ranking Russian diplomats 

described China as a “locomotive” driving the Six 

Party dialogue, whereas Russia’s role was to play 

“whisper diplomacy.”43 Russia and China did work 

to coordinate strategically during summit meetings in 

early 2004; both countries stated their desire to keep 

North Korea nuclear weapons free.44 In 2003, Russia 

abstained from an International Atomic Energy Agency 

(IAEA) vote on whether to send the North Korean 

nuclear issue to the UNSC, effectively announcing 

its preferred support for the Six Party format and for 

continued negotiation. During the third round of talks, 

Russia joined with China and South Korea in offering 

to supply energy—in the form of fuel oil—to North 

Korea in exchange for the DPRK halting any further 

development of its nuclear programs. Throughout the 

talks, Russia continued to supply modest food aid to 

North Korea and to have meetings with North Korean 

representatives.

Economic Interaction. Ironically, while Russia was 

angling with South Korea in the mid-1990s for loans 

and debt relief, Russia’s logic for continuing to pursue 

relations with the DPRK in the same period revolved 

around hopes of receiving payments on debts owed to 

Moscow by Pyongyang. Pyongyang had announced its 

refusal to repay a (estimated at $U.S.3-5 billion) when 

Yeltsin announced his intention not to renew the 1961 

treaty and to halt weapons and technology transfers. 
29

Although Russia traditionally has been North Korea’s 

main supplier of equipment, petroleum products, 

timber, coal, fish, and marine products, approximately 

70 percent of North Korea’s estimated $4 billion debt 

to Russia originates from unpaid-for weapons.45

In the wake of President Putin’s visit to Pyongyang, 

North Korea is becoming increasingly active in economic contacts with Russia, which was exactly what Putin 

had hoped would result from the summit meeting. 

DPRK authorities have requested Russian assistance in 

the reconstruction of a number of facilities built by the 

Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. The problem is that 

the DPRK does not have money to pay for the services, 

insisting on barter deals and low-interest credits 

instead. However, the Russian government, as it faces 

persistent economic and financial hurdles, cannot agree 

to such conditions. Barter is unlikely because of the 

Russian market economy and the fact that government 

authorities cannot force Russian companies to accept 

goods they do not need or want—although there were 

reports of a developing intra-Russian barter economy 

in the mid-1990s.46

The DPRK has presented a list of goods it could 

export to Russia in exchange for Russian goods and 

services, but Russian officials say that most of the items 

on the North Korean list are of no interest to Russian 

companies. One possible way out of the predicament is 

to have South Korean banks and firms provide credits to 

the DPRK to exchange for Russian technical assistance. 

Perhaps the most revealing part of the DPRK–Russia 

Moscow Declaration of August 4, 2001, is embodied 

in point five: “In order to carry out a series of bilateral 

plans, the Russian side confirmed its intention to use 

the method of drawing financial resources from outsiders

on the basis of understanding of the Korean side.”47 In 

other words, Moscow and Pyongyang are now looking 
30

to Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo to foot the bill. 

Attempts are currently being made to find interested 

parties in the ROK.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang has asked Russian authorities to set aside logging areas for DPRK workers in 

the Russian Far East. Russia needs help with its timber 

industry, particularly given increased demand from 

China, and North Korean wages are very low. There 

was even some speculation in the Russian news 

media following the summit that Putin had allowed 

Pyongyang to write off $50 million of its debt by 

providing free labor to timber camps in the Russian 

Far East.

The presence of approximately 12,000 North 

Korean workers in the Russian Far East already has 

created problems not only because they have sought 

political asylum, but also because they have become 

involved in illegal activities such as smuggling and 

drug trafficking.48 The Russian press also has reported 

North Korean involvement in counterfeiting and 

poaching. In addition to the migrant workers from 

North Korea, the Russian Far East saw the return there 

in the 1990s of ethnic Koreans who had been forcibly 

relocated under the Stalin regime. Native Russians met 

the returning Koreans with hostility.

Nonetheless, Russia is the only country that 

might be able to absorb a North Korean workforce 

that is increasingly without jobs in North Korea. At 

the regional level, cooperation is growing between 

North Korea and the Russian Far East; since the Soviet 

period, North Korean workers have been involved in 

timber projects in the region, and more recently they 

also have been active in construction and agriculture. 

North Korean workers help fill a labor shortage in a 

region experiencing a population outflow, particularly 

of working-age inhabitants. In April 2001 Moscow and 
31

Pyongyang apparently agreed in principle to settle the 

pestering debt issue through a labor-for-debt swap 

deal, whereby North Korea would cover $5.5 billion in 

Soviet-era debt during the next 30 years by supplying 

workers who would toil unpaid in Russian labor camps 

across Siberia. About 90 percent of Pyongyang’s debts 

to Moscow was covered in such a manner in 2000, to 

the tune of $50.4 million.49 At this rate, it would take 

109 years to pay off Pyongyang’s debts to Moscow.

On the whole, DPRK–Russian economic ties do not 

look very promising, and the development of serious 

investment and trade relations will likely need to 

involve South Korea. Russians complain that the DPRK 

still wants to build economic relations “along the lines 

of the old Soviet–DPRK model of getting things free-ofcharge.” On a brighter note, cultural cooperation has 

resumed in recent years. Russian performing artists 

are again touring in Pyongyang, and North Korean 

students can again be found in Russian schools50 (see 

Table 2).

Still, Moscow seems excited about the geo-economic 

opportunities resulting from increasing inter-Korean 

economic cooperation, particularly the prospect of 

rail links across the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which 

Russia hopes would create a new trans-Siberian freight 

route linking South Korea to Europe via North Korea 

and the Russian Far East. The difficulty is in leveling 

the playing field of the highly asymmetrical Moscow–

Pyongyang–Seoul economic interdependence by 

integrating and reconciling Russia’s technical knowhow and natural resources, North Korea’s labor, and 

South Korea’s capital—as well as Russia’s debt to 

Seoul ($1.8 billion) and Pyongyang’s debt to Moscow 

(about $3–$5 billion)—in a mutually beneficial and 

complementary way. 
32

Year

Exports 

to North 

Korea

Imports 

from North 

Korea

Total North 

KoreanRussian Trade

Russian Trade 

Balance with 

North Korea

Percent Change 

in North KoreanRussian Trade

1990 1,315 908 2,223 +407

1991 194 171 365 +23 -84%

1992 277 65 342 +212 -6%

1993 188 39 227 +149 -34%

1994 100 40 140 +60 -38%

1995 68 16 84 +52 -40%

1996 36 29 65 +7 -23%

1997 67 17 84 +50 +29%

1998 57 8 65 +49 -23%

1999 48 2 50 +46 -23%

2000 43 3 46 +40 -8%

2001 64 5 69 +59 +50%

2002 77 4 81 +73 +17%

2003 116 3 119 +113 +47%

2004 205 5 210 +200 +76%

2005 224 8 232 +216 +9.3%

Sources: 1997 Diplomatic White Paper, Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

and Trade (MOFAT), Republic of Korea (ROK), pp. 396, 401; 1998 

Diplomatic White Paper, pp. 481 and 486; 2000 Diplomatic White 

Paper, p. 497; 2001 Diplomatic White Paper, p. 484; 2002 Diplomatic 

White Paper, p. 497; available at www.mofat.go.kr; KOTRA at www.

kotra.or.kr; ROK Ministry of Unification.

Table 2. Russia’s Trade with North Korea, 1990-2004

(Unit: $U.S.1 million).

In order for this dream of an Iron Silk Road to come 

true the Russian way, however, Moscow would have 

to overcome some major obstacles, including the huge 

cost ($9 billion); Russia’s economic weakness; China’s 

relative advantage in connecting its own railway to the 

inter-Korean Seoul-Sinuiju line (Kyongui Line), which 

would make it the gateway for cargo travel from Asia 

to Europe; North Korea’s ongoing economic crisis and 

unpredictable behavior; and the politics of ideological 

and regional fragmentation in South Korea. Fearing 

that the new rail projects would diminish the role of Sea 

of Japan ports that depend on trade with South Korea, 
33

some Russian officials from the territory northeast of 

Vladivostok are opposed to the development of a new 

Russian-Korean rail corridor.51

Regional relations provide only a short-term basis 

for economic relations, especially through contracts for 

North Korean guest workers, but the expanded North 

Korean presence in the Russian Far East has raised 

new concerns about Pyongyang’s involvement in 

nuclear smuggling, the heroin trade, and counterfeiting 

activities in Russia. Russian–North Korean regional 

cooperation will accelerate with the progress of major 

development projects such as that on the Tumen River, 

the Kovyktinskoe gas pipeline, and the inter-Korean 

railway, but such progress will depend on the ability 

to attract considerable outside investment, especially 

from Japan but also from South Korea and China.

Russia’s ability to influence North Korea is related 

in no small degree to its struggle to adjust its national 

identity. In the early 1990s, Russia was concentrating 

on becoming a respected, democratic member of the 

Western community. The United States and Europe 

were seen as the main political and ideological allies 

of postcommunist Russia, the principal source of 

economic aid, and the model for Russian development. 

This vision drove the Russian Federation and the 

DPRK apart. Yet, with its difficulties in implementing 

and consolidating Western-style reforms and the threat 

of NATO expansion, Russia came to suffer pangs of 

disillusionment with the West and began to emphasize 

security concerns in its foreign policy, which became 

increasingly conservative and nationalistic. In this 

milieu, North Korea found more favor and solidarity 

with the Kremlin. The Korean peninsula resumed 

prominence in Russian eyes, and Russia’s involvement 

in North Korea—but perhaps not yet its influence over 

Pyongyang—began to renew itself.
34

Japan and North Korea.

Political and Diplomatic Interaction. From the time it 

regained sovereignty in 1951 until the end of the Cold 

War, Japan made little effort to normalize ties with 

North Korea. There was negligible political or economic gain to be had by establishing official diplomatic 

relations with Pyongyang, and it appeared that the lack 

of political relations was not impacting the economic 

ties that did exist. Japan was firmly enmeshed in the U.S. 

alliance structure in East Asia and did not want to upset 

the balance by pursuing relations with the communist 

DPRK. Japan therefore had scant incentive to deviate 

from the policy of nonrecognition. In addition, in 1955 

the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan 

(Chongryun in Korean or Chosen Soren in Japanese) 

established itself as a pro-North Korean organization 

and thereby became a de facto embassy for Pyongyang, 

representing North Korean interests in Japan through 

lobbying and occasional protest activities.

Once Japan had signed the 1965 normalization 

treaty with South Korea, Pyongyang had less desire 

to pursue normalization, given its opposition to crossrecognition of the two Korean states and its insistence 

on regarding diplomatic ties as tantamount to absolute 

international legitimation. With a debt of hundreds of 

millions of dollars owed to Japan from trade relations, 

Pyongyang also was apprehensive over the prospect 

of finding itself at a bargaining table where it might 

be called on to pay such a debt (estimated at $530 

million, with Pyongyang initially defaulting from 1972 

to 1975). 

In the late 1980s, the confluence of the Gorbachev 

revolution in Soviet foreign policy, Seoul’s Nordpolitik, 

and Beijing–Moscow renormalization began to under-
35

mine the deep structure of Cold-War politics in NEA 

in general and on the Korean peninsula in particular. 

In July 1988, newly elected South Korean President 

Roh Tae Woo promulgated Nordpolitik, a major policy 

initiative aimed at improving inter-Korean relations 

by expanding South Korean political, economic, and 

cultural ties with the Soviet Union, China, and other 

socialist states. It also urged Tokyo and Washington 

to develop better relations with North Korea. When 

Gorbachev formulated a new Asia-Pacific strategy, 

one of the most interesting and groundbreaking ideas 

was Soviet recognition of Seoul, which was achieved 

in 1990, paving the road to Sino–ROK normalization 

2 years later. The United States had relaxed its rigid 

North Korea policy in 1988, creating space for its allies 

to undertake more flexible foreign policies toward the 

DPRK. 

North Korea, in turn, was watching the financial and 

political support by its socialist allies recede. In the late 

1980s and early 1990s, Japan was viewed as being on 

a trajectory to surpass the United States as the largest 

economy in the world and so seemed a ripe target for 

a North Korean state badly in need of support in the 

form of foreign capital and technology transfer. Japan, 

for its part, wanted to be sure that it was in place to 

play a leadership role in the emerging Northeast Asian 

order.

Tokyo and Pyongyang, in fact, were both shocked 

by the outcome of the Soviet–South Korean summit 

meeting held in San Francisco in June 1990, though 

for different reasons. The DPRK was shocked by 

the defection of the rapidly disintegrating socialist 

superpower (the Berlin wall had fallen on November 

9, 1988) from its one-Korea policy and sought to 

compensate for the diplomatic setback with its own 
36

surprise normalization. Japan, shocked by the success 

of Seoul’s Nordpolitik and its ability to reach out to the 

USSR and the PRC, felt compelled to act in the name of 

regional leadership.

Given the ups and downs of inter-Korean 

diplomacy, the possibility of either a Korea suddenly 

reunified under terms favorable to increasingly 

powerful South Korea or a desperate North Korea 

lashing out with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 

seemed very real. Japan therefore found it increasingly 

difficult to be a bystander in inter-Korean relations that 

now had the potential to directly impact Japan or to be 

the driving force of new and uncertain international 

developments throughout the Asia-Pacific region. 

Japan had to contemplate the possibility either of 

another destructive inter-Korean war, which this time 

would probably involve Japan directly, or of a sudden 

reunification with uncertain ramifications.52

Therefore, on September 28, 1990, the leaders of 

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) delegation 

joined with the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) delegation 

and the DPRK’s Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) to sign 

a joint declaration agreeing to hold normalization talks. 

The most important but controversial provision of the 

eight-point joint declaration stated that Japan should 

compensate North Korea not only for the damage 

caused during the colonial rule, but also for the “losses 

suffered by the Korean people in the 45 years” since 

World War II. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

then conducted a rearguard delaying action for years. 

After the eight rapid-fire rounds of talks between 

January 1991 and November 1992, both Pyongyang 

and Tokyo backed away from holding any additional 

talks. With the signing of the 1994 Agreed Framework 

between the United States and North Korea, Pyongyang 
37

began probing into whether Japan might welcome 

additional talks, but it received only a lukewarm 

response. LDP leader Watanabe Michio failed to restart 

the talks, and the 1995 and 1996 editions of Japan’s 

White Paper on Defense still listed North Korea as the 

“major destabilizing factor” with regard to East Asian 

security. 

Three new rounds of talks were held from April 

to October 2000 in Tokyo, Pyongyang, and Beijing, 

respectively. The ninth round in April involved 

discussions of Japan’s colonial history and North 

Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens during the 

1970s and 1980s. Japan suspected that North Korea 

had abducted 11 Japanese citizens from coastal towns 

across the archipelago and in Europe. In August, at the 

10th round of talks, North Korea reportedly agreed 

to stop demanding “reparations” and to discuss 

“compensation” instead; Japan offered a $200 million 

loan and $300 million of economic cooperation aid, as 

opposed to “compensation.” Japan also emphasized 

the importance of solving the abduction issue, as 

the chief Japanese negotiator pointed out that any 

normalization treaty to come out of the talks would 

need the approval of the Diet, which would not be 

forthcoming without public support that would be 

contingent in turn on resolution of abduction issue. At 

the 11th round of talks, Japan offered 500,000 tons of 

rice53 and a very large economic package, as quid pro 

quo for North Korea’s moderation of the missile threat 

and satisfactory resolution of the abduction issue.54

North Korean negotiators rejected the offer, and the 

talks collapsed in only 2 days, with no mention of a 

date for the next round of normalization talks.

These normalization talks again fell apart because of 

their failure to resolve two major issues: North Korea’s 
38

demand for compensation and Japan’s demand for 

accountability on the abduction of Japanese citizens. 

North Korea persisted in its denial of any knowledge 

about the abduction issue, while refusing to accept the 

Japanese proposal to offer economic aid rather than 

reparations. In view of the uncompromising positions 

taken by both sides on these issues at the normalization 

talks, it became evident that the settlement of these 

thorny issues would require a high degree of political 

compromise between Tokyo and Pyongyang, probably 

achieved as a package deal rather than through the 

piecemeal approach.

Despite the Japanese sinking of a North Korean spy 

ship in December 2001, the year 2002 under Koizumi’s 

leadership witnessed some progress in relations 

between Japan and North Korea. Japanese and North 

Korean Red Cross delegations met in Beijing in April 

and agreed that North Korea would conduct a “serious 

investigation” into the matter of “missing” Japanese, 

and in mid-August the first details of abducted Japanese 

citizens began to emerge from North Korea. In addition, 

Pyongyang expressed a willingness to accept Japan’s 

economic aid instead of insisting on “reparations.” 

Against this background, Japan announced on 

August 30, 2002, that Koizumi would visit North 

Korea on September 17 for a summit meeting with 

Kim Jong Il. Koizumi’s decision apparently reflected 

his determination to normalize relations with North 

Korea, and the historic visit aroused high expectations 

for a normalization breakthrough. The United States, 

in contrast, on learning about the surprise visit, is said 

to have put inordinate pressure on Japan not to move 

too fast on normalization talks.55

In Pyongyang, at the first ever Japanese–North 

Korean summit, both sides gave ground on bilateral 
39

issues. Kim Jong Il acknowledged North Korea’s 

responsibility for abducting Japanese nationals and 

offered an apology. Providing information about new 

abductees about whom Japan had not asked, North 

Korea revealed that out of 13 abductees, eight had died 

and five were still alive. Koizumi demanded that North 

Korea continue its investigation into the cases, return 

those who were alive, and take measures to prevent 

such activities in the future. Kim pledged not to engage 

in such an act again, saying that Pyongyang already 

had punished those responsible. The talks ended with 

a joint declaration in which Japan promised “economic 

assistance” in the form of grants, long-term soft 

loans, and humanitarian assistance via international 

organizations, while North Korea promised compliance 

with international law, pledging to take appropriate 

measures so that regrettable incidents that took place 

under the abnormal bilateral relationship would never 

happen in the future. Both countries agreed to fulfill 

“all related international agreements” pertaining to 

nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula.

To placate enraged public opinion, Japan 

dispatched an official delegation to collect further 

information concerning the fate of the Japanese 

abductees. Pyongyang told the Japanese team that all 

eight had died from “illness and disasters” and had 

not been the victims of foul play. However, there were 

inconsistencies in the North Korean story that further 

aggravated Japanese families. The Koizumi government arranged for the five surviving abductees to 

return to Japan for a 2-week visit in October. Before the 

end of their visit, Japan announced that it had decided 

to extend the stay of the five abductees indefinitely so 

as to enable them to decide their future freely.

Following the summit, the 12th round of Japanese–

North Korean normalization talks was held in Kuala 
40

Lumpur, Malaysia, on October 29–30, 2002. At these 

talks, it quickly became evident that there was a wide 

chasm between Japan and North Korea on several key 

issues. The North Korean delegation rejected Japan’s 

demand for the settlement of the abduction issue, 

contending that it had been resolved at the Pyongyang 

summit when Kim Jong Il offered an apology with a 

promise to prevent recurrences. Furthermore, North 

Korea insisted that it was cooperating with Japan in 

investigating details surrounding the deaths of the 8 

deceased abductees. North Korea also accused Japan 

of breaking its promise to return the five abductees 

to Pyongyang after a 2-week home visit in Japan and 

demanded that Japan keep its promise to pave the way 

for the resolution of the issue; the Japanese delegation 

denounced Pyongyang’s “criminal act of kidnapping.” 

Japan was also insistent that North Korea maintain 

the tenets of the Pyongyang Declaration, submit to its 

responsibilities under the NPT, and not target Japan 

with its Rodong missiles. In response to North Korea’s 

desire to discuss economic cooperation as a priority 

issue, Japan replied that economic aid would come 

only in the aftermath of the normalization of Tokyo–

Pyongyang diplomatic relations. The talks adjourned 

without agreement on the next round of normalization 

talks.

Much of the abductions controversy and the 12th 

round of negotiations came at the same time as the 

reemergence of the North Korean nuclear issue. Thus, 

when Japan–DPRK relations became stalemated after 

the Kuala Lumpur meeting, there was little external 

intervention to push them forward, and there was 

therefore no movement in the normalization talks 

in 2003. In fact, Japan, because of domestic political 

pressure, became increasingly anxious about and 
41

mired in the abduction issue. Despite Japan’s concern 

about North Korea’s nuclear program, the issue of the 

roughly two dozen Japanese citizens abducted by North 

Korean agents in the 1970s for espionage training had 

now come to dominate Japanese policy toward North 

Korea, to the exclusion of all else.56

In early 2004 it became clear that Japan was taking 

preliminary steps toward the imposition of economic 

sanctions against North Korea. This led Pyongyang 

to indicate its willingness to be more flexible on the 

abduction issue. In fact, Pyongyang agreed to allow 

a Japanese delegate to come to North Korea to pick 

up eight family members of the abductees who had 

returned to Japan. Koizumi, desiring to normalize 

diplomatic relations with North Korea before the end 

of his tenure as prime minister in 2006, indicated that 

his visit to Pyongyang should not be ruled out as an 

option.

On May 22, 2004, Koizumi visited Pyongyang to 

hold talks with Kim Jong Il, a second Koizumi–Kim 

summit in the short span of less than 2 years. Kim 

agreed to allow the families of five former Japanese 

abductees to go to Japan for a family reunion and 

promised a new investigation into the fate of other 

abductees. Koizumi emphasized the importance of a 

comprehensive solution to pending security issues, 

including Pyongyang’s development of nuclear 

weapons and missiles. Kim reiterated North Korea’s 

position that Pyongyang had to maintain a nuclear 

deterrent but also stated that his goal was to achieve 

a nonnuclear Korean peninsula. In addition, Kim 

reassured Koizumi that the North would maintain a 

moratorium on missile firing tests. For these diplomatic 

victories, Japan paid richly. Koizumi promised Kim 

250,000 tons of food and $10 million worth of medical 

assistance through international organizations. He 
42

also pledged that Japan would not invoke economic 

sanctions as long as North Korea observed the terms 

of the joint declaration from the first summit. In 

return, Pyongyang merely allowed five children of the 

repatriated abductees to go to Japan with the prime 

minister. 

Most Japanese believed that Koizumi had paid too 

high a price at the second summit, although they gave 

him high marks for bringing home the family members 

of the five surviving abductees.57 In an attempt to 

pressure North Korea to make concessions, in June 

2004 the Japanese Diet took matters into its own hands 

and enacted a law to ban certain foreign ships from 

making port calls in Japan. The law was designed to 

prohibit the entry of North Korean ships suspected of 

being engaged in illegal trafficking of money, drugs, 

counterfeit currencies, and equipment and materials 

used in the production of WMD. At August 2004 

working-level talks, the North Korean delegation 

refused to address the abductees issue in any new 

way and was not ready to engage Japanese negotiators 

on the nuclear issue either. Without a breakthrough 

in resolving either the residual abduction issue or 

Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, the Koizumi 

government decided not to resume normalization 

talks.

It might appear puzzling that Japan has tried as hard 

as it has to normalize relations with North Korea. After 

all, what could it expect to gain from the process? There 

are several things. In the first place, nonnormalized 

relations with North Korea stick out as a reminder of 

Japan’s imperial past, and although there has been a 

recent surge of nationalism in Japan, there is still a desire 

among the Japanese public to wipe its World War II 

slate of guilt completely clean. Economically, Japan is 
43

worried that it might not be able to compete effectively 

on a Korean peninsula where other major powers—

China and Russia—have established diplomatic ties 

with both North and South Korea. In addition, there is 

a concern among some influential leaders of the LDP 

and among Foreign Ministry officials that the collapse 

of North Korea would create enormous economic, 

political, and humanitarian problems for Japan. This 

last concern enhances the possibility that DPRK–

Japan normalization might be an element in a broader 

agreement that incorporates a solution to the North 

Korean nuclear standoff.

Security Interaction. During the Cold War, there 

was very little interaction on security issues between 

Pyongyang and Tokyo. Japan was ensconced in the 

protective shield of the U.S.–Japan alliance system, in 

which the United States did all the heavy lifting while 

Japan pursued a free ride policy that fits more closely 

with mercantile realism, separating economics from 

politics.58 Because North Korea’s development of missile 

and nuclear programs was not yet known, Japan had 

little interest in interacting with the DPRK. Pyongyang, 

at home in its own ideological alliance cocoon with the 

Soviet Union and China, had no compelling strategic 

or ideological reason for diplomatic normalization 

with Japan.

However, as the DPRK’s ballistic missile and 

nuclear programs began surfacing in the early years 

of the post–Cold War era, Japan may have been the 

one country that was more alarmed than was South 

Korea. Although the Kim Young Sam government 

in Seoul was concerned over the advancing ballistic 

missile and nuclear capabilities in the North, ordinary 

South Korean citizens did not appear overly anxious 

or threatened. The Japanese, however, having suffered 
44

the twin blows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 

eve of their surrender during the last days of World 

War II, felt a degree of atomic angst they had never 

experienced during the Cold War.59

Japanese fear became palpable during the nuclear 

crisis of April 1994, when North Korea removed spent 

fuel rods from its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon and 

refused to segregate rods that could provide evidence 

of a plutonium-based nuclear weapon program.60

Japanese leaders let out a sigh of relief when the crisis 

was defused by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s 

June 1994 visit to Pyongyang, where Carter’s meeting 

with Kim Il Sung paved the way for the signing of the 

U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework in October 1994. The 

Japanese 1995 Diplomatic Bluebook, issued after the 

conclusion of the Agreed Framework, distanced Japan 

somewhat from the North Korean nuclear issue. Japan 

saw its main role as one of cooperation: both in the 

newly established international consortium providing 

energy to the DPRK and in the diplomatic realm with 

the United States and the ROK.

However, the 1998 Taepodong missile shock 

galvanized the Japanese government into action on 

long-term plans. Tokyo decided to develop and deploy 

its own spy satellite system to improve its ability 

to monitor—independently of the United States—

developments on the Korean peninsula and elsewhere 

in the Northeast Asian region.61 In March 1999, 

Defense Agency Director General Norota Hosei told a 

Diet defense panel that Japan had the right to make 

preemptive military strikes if it felt a missile attack 

on Japan was imminent.62 Japan therefore decided to 

acquire midair refueling aircraft to enable its Air SelfDefense Force (ASDF) to conduct long-range strike 

missions. Tokyo viewed this as important because 

of Japan’s vulnerability linked to its lack of offensive 
45

military capacities that could deter or counter North 

Korean attacks, capabilities that are possessed by the 

United States and, to a lesser extent, South Korea. 

Finally, the Japanese government authorized the 

Japanese Navy and Coast Guard to pursue unidentified 

ships entering Japanese territorial waters and to use 

force against them if necessary.

The historic inter-Korean summit meeting of June 

2000 drastically changed the political milieu in East 

Asia, and Japan’s relationship with the DPRK improved 

as normalization talks materialized in April, August, 

and October. The dramatic summit diplomacy gave 

some comfort to the Japanese regarding the prospect of 

a more reasonable and responsible North Korea. Food 

aid through the World Food Program (WFP) resumed, 

and the issues of visitations by Japanese nationals living 

in North Korea and the investigation of “missing” 

Japanese citizens were broached. Then, in the wake 

of the October 2002 revelation about North Korea’s 

HEU nuclear weapon program and the outbreak of the 

new nuclear standoff, Japan readily agreed to increase 

funding and research support for the missile defense 

project. Not surprisingly, Japan, as compared with 

Europe and Canada, had few misgivings regarding the 

implications of deploying a ballistic missile defense 

system.63

North Korea’s official news media accused Japan of 

blindly following the United States in pursuing a hostile 

policy toward North Korea. Rodong Sinmun [Worker’s 

Daily] declared that the Korean peninsula’s nuclear 

issue “is not an issue for Japan to presumptuously act 

upon” because it is a “bilateral issue to be resolved 

between the U.S. and North Korea.” The newspaper 

slammed the door on a Japanese role, asserting that 

“Japan is not a party concerned with the resolution of 
46

the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear issue and has no pretext 

or qualification to intervene.”64 In addition, referencing 

national identity issues, it criticized Japan for using 

“various pretexts and excuses to shelve the liquidation 

of its past and deliberately slackened normalizing 

relations” with North Korea.

Following a May 2003 Bush-Koizumi summit 

in Crawford, Texas, Tokyo agreed to become one 

of 11 nations—the one and only Asian country—

participating in the U.S.-led Proliferation Security 

Initiative (PSI) to interdict WMD shipments to and 

from countries such as North Korea. That the emphasis 

is on the DPRK itself and not terrorism in general is 

indicated by the fact that the 2003 Diplomatic Bluebook

lists North Korea ahead of the war on terror and WMD 

as Japan’s greatest diplomatic concerns.

In the summer of 2003, the Japanese parliament 

passed three “war contingency bills” that would give 

the Japanese government new power to cope with 

armed attacks on Japan. Such contingency legislation 

had first been discussed among Japanese conservatives 

some 40 years earlier but was shelved because of the 

possibility that it would violate Article 9 of the Japanese 

constitution. The threat posed by North Korea and 

international terrorism, however, enabled the Koizumi 

government to win the support of the main opposition 

party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), for the 

enactment of this special legislation. The legislation 

enables Japan to deploy the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) 

swiftly by suspending numerous restrictions hindering 

its effective mobilization and operation. Indeed, 

Koizumi has changed Japan’s national security policy 

more than any leader since World War II. In a 5-year 

period from April 2001 to April 2006, the Koizumi 

government was responsible for about 60 percent of the 

national security legislation or revisions enacted since 
47

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces were founded in 1954.65

With regard to the nuclear issue, Japan has (1) called 

for complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement 

(CVID) of the North Korean nuclear programs, (2) 

agreed that discussions on North Korea’s security 

concerns and energy assistance could be advanced 

within the Six Party talks after the DPRK agreed to 

CVID, and (3) asserted that there is no change in Japan’s 

basic positions of settling outstanding issues based 

on the Pyongyang Declaration and the normalization 

of relations in a peaceful manner.66 Japan has also 

continued to pursue defensive military measures, such 

as an effective missile defense system. 

Alongside resolution of the abduction issue, 

there is no question that reduction of Pyongyang’s 

military threat remains atop the list of Japanese 

priorities. Japanese security planners, however, are 

also concerned that a marked deterioration of political 

stabil­ity in North Korea or a military miscalculation 

by Pyongyang would invite great power intervention, 

thereby affecting Japanese interests on the peninsula.67

Japan therefore has an interest in restraining the 

United States, especially in a world in which the 

Bush administration has outlined a national security 

strategy that includes preventive war as a last resort. 

The Koizumi administration, for example, warmly 

welcomed the Bush administration’s October 2003 

offer of a security guarantee for the DPRK.68

Economic Interaction. In general, Japan’s economic 

role is potentially critical in the crisis over North 

Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Most important, 

Japan has promised North Korea, using the 1965 Japan–

South Korean normalization agreement as a model, a 

large-scale economic aid package in recognition of the 

“tremendous damage and suffering” Japan inflicted 

during its colonial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945. 
48

The aid package would go into effect after the two 

countries agree to normalize relations, with Japan now 

linking normalization to a resolution of the abduction 

and nuclear issues. 

Japanese officials are reportedly discussing a 

package on the order of $5–$10 billion, an enormous 

sum considering the small size of the North Korean 

economy, the total gross domestic product (GDP) of 

which is estimated to be $20.8 billion (as of the end of 

2004). There is some fear, however, that a payment of 

this magnitude would serve to prolong Kim Jong II’s 

regime artificially without inducing any behavioral 

changes, or possibly that the funds would be redirected 

to the North Korean military. To capture the money, 

Pyongyang has moved away from demands that the 

package be labeled as “reparations” or “compensation” 

and also has backed off from its periodic insistence 

that Japan provide compensation for harms allegedly 

inflicted since 1945.

There has been little indication of how the 

normalization of relations would impact financial 

flows to the DPRK, and this may ultimately be of more 

importance to North Korean economic development 

than are trade flows. The most likely ini­tial source of 

such financial flows would come from DPRK-friendly 

residents of Japan. Although Chongryun is the most 

active group doing business with North Korea, its 

resources are extremely limited, and its political clout 

has shrunk to near zero. In the event of normalization, 

Korean residents of Japan will play a role as 

middlemen for large firms, and local governments 

and business groups in the coastal areas near North 

Korea are expected to increase their investment in the 

DPRK. But here, too, resources are very limited and, 

in fact, declining. Japanese investors have shown only 

limited interest in multilateral regional development 
49

programs, such as the UN Development Program’s 

Tumen River Area Development Program (TRADP).69

Substantive increases in the form of direct investment 

would have to come from large Japanese firms and 

financial institutions, but this is likely to depend on 

resolution of the DPRK debt issue. Ultimately, North 

Korea will have to prove itself to be a more attractive 

location for investment than China (see Table 3).

Year

Exports 

to North 

Korea

Imports from

North Korea

Total JapanNorth Korea 

Trade

Japanese 

Trade Balance 

with North 

Korea

Percent 

Change in 

Japan- North 

Korea Trade

1990 194 271 465 -77 N/A

1991 246 250 496 -4 +7%

1992 246 231 477 +15 -4%

1993 243 222 465 +21 -3%

1994 188 297 485 -109 +4%

1995 282 306 588 -24 +21%

1996 249 265 514 -16 -13%

1997 197 269 466 -72 -9%

1998 175 219 394 -44 -15%

1999 147 202 349 -55 -11%

2000 207 257 464 -50 +33%

2001 249 226 475 +23 +2%

2002 135 234 369 -99 -22%

2003 92 172 264 -80 -28%

2004 89 164 253 -75 -4%

2005 60 130 190 -70 -25%

Sources: International Monetary Fund (1992, pp. 247, 304; 1993, 

pp. 247, 305; 1994, pp. 265, 326; 1995, pp. 269-270; 1996, pp. 275, 

342; 1997, pp. 342, 347; 1998, pp. 289, 349) and MOFAT (1998, pp. 

396, 401; 1999, pp. 481, 481, 486; 2001, p. 497; 2002, p. 484; 2003, p. 

497), available at www.mofat.gokr and KOTRA at www.kotra.or.kr; 

ROK Ministry of Unification.

Table 3. Japan’s Trade with North Korea, 

1990–2005 (Unit: U.S.$1 million).
50

For the near term, Japanese policymakers seem to 

have quietly concluded that their wisest course is to 

maintain the status quo as long as possible. For Japan, 

the issue of Korean reunification poses a dilemma. 

While a strong, united, and nationalistic Korea could 

pose a formidable challenge or even threat to Japan, the 

continuation of a divided Korea with an unpredictable 

failed state in the North is no less threatening to 

Japan’s security.70 The challenge, therefore, is to 

navigate between the Scylla of a unified Korea, with 

all its uncertainties, potential instability, and new 

challenges, and the Charybdis of a divided Korea, with 

the continuing danger of implosion or explosion in the 

North. 

Hatoyama Ichiro, who became the Japanese prime 

minister in 1955, took the first steps to initiate postwar 

economic ties between Tokyo and Pyongyang. But 

only in November 1962 did Japan and North Korea 

finally begin direct cargo shipments, on a very small 

scale. Trade agreements were signed 2 years later, 

in July 1964, but the impact was small. Economic 

relations between North Korea and Japan were modest 

throughout the 1960s but made a large jump forward 

in the early 1970s. The increase in trade in 1972 and 

1974 was due in part to the recognition by Tokyo’s 

leftist governor Minobe Ryokichi of Chongryun—the 

civil society organization of pro-Pyongyang Koreans 

in Japan—as North Korea’s de facto representative in 

Japan. The group was granted tax-free status.71 At trade 

fairs in Pyongyang, the North Korean hosts purchased 

all Japanese products on display and ordered more, 

but they were not forthcoming with payments for 

the goods. When North Korea defaulted in 1972 on 

payments to the Kyowa Bussan Trading Company—

comprised of 20 large Japanese firms—Japan’s Ministry 
51

of International Trade and Industry (MITI) suspended 

all export credits in 1974. Despite the lack of payments, 

limited trade, usually worth no more than $500 million, 

continued between Japan and North Korea. After 

North Korea announced its Law on Joint Ventures in 

1984, a Mitsui Trading Com­pany subsidiary backed 

a gold mine venture with North Korean residents of 

Japan, and an Osaka-based firm established a cement 

factory in North Korea in 1990.72

Remarkably, in 1993 Japan became North Korea’s 

second largest trading partner after China and soon 

thereafter temporarily became its largest partner. But 

overall trade volume quickly began to decline, largely 

due to the severe deterioration of North Korea’s 

economy, sparked by the withdrawal of Soviet and 

Chinese support in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Bilateral trade has declined for 4 years in a row since 

2002, reaching a 28-year low of $190 million by the end 

of 2005. More stringent Japanese port controls have 

led in part to the acceptance of fewer shipments from 

North Korea, but, more to the point, Japanese firms 

that had been commissioning manufac­ture—textiles 

and electrical machinery—from North Korean plants 

found the DPRK too risky and Chinese alternatives too 

attractive.73 Although trade levels continue to decline, 

the concurrent shrinking of the North Korea economy 

may mean that trade with Japan—particularly exports, 

which generate hard currency—is relatively more 

important to North Korea today than it was in the 

1980s.

Recently a number of local governments have decided to reconsider their policy of making Chongryun 

facilities either partially or entirely exempt from fixedasset taxation.74 Meanwhile, a Japanese government 

crackdown on drug smuggling has caused much of the 
52

North Korean narcotics traffic to be rerouted through 

China.75 In June 2003, Japan ordered its customs and

immigration services and its coast guard to expand 

safety inspections and searches for illicit contraband 

on North Korean cargo and passenger ships. 

At the end of 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi 

indicated his intention to consider imposing sanctions 

on North Korea due to Pyongyang’s failure to respond 

to Japanese requests for quick and thorough action on 

the abduction issue. Although Koizumi maintained 

that his government was not considering immediate 

economic sanctions against North Korea, his chief 

cabinet secretary did not rule out possible sanctions 

in the future “if North Korea makes things worse.” 

North Korea’s reactions to this possibility were 

negative; a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign 

Ministry denounced it as a “wanton violation” of the 

Pyongyang Declaration, warning that Japan would be 

responsible for “all consequences to be entailed by its 

foolish moves.”76

The amended Law on Liability for Oil Pollution 

Damage, which took effect March 1, 2005, amounts 

to a de facto economic sanction on the DPRK. The 

new law bans from Japanese ports all foreign vessels 

weighing more than 100 tons without proper liability 

insurance regarding oil spills. Most DPRK freighters 

are not covered by the required “Protection and 

Indemnity Insurance,” and they in effect will be 

banned from Japanese ports. It is unclear how effective 

these independent sanctions against North Korea will 

be; they could, in fact, result in China gaining much 

more influence over North Korea. Some commentators 

have begun complaining that Japan is forsaking what 

influence it does have in Pyongyang. Amid declining 

Japan–North Korea trade, the value of trade between 

China and North Korea tripled in the 4 years from 
53

2001 to 2004, and it now amounts to one-half of North 

Korea’s overall trade, whereas Japan and North 

Korea are trading only one-fifth as much as at their 

peak of economic relations in 1980. Japan simply 

cannot sanction the DPRK effectively without China’s 

support.

Japan’s economic relations with North Korea extend 

beyond trade and investment. North Korea’s first 

public aid-seeking diplomacy came in May 1995 when 

Pyongyang sent a delegation to Tokyo.77 The pattern 

of Japanese aid reflects developments in the political 

relationship between Tokyo and Pyongyang; shipments 

began in 1995 and 1996 when relations warmed and 

then were suspended after the Taepodong missile launch 

over Japan in 1998 and the spy ship incident in 2001. In 

the face of North Korea’s unwillingness to give up its 

nuclear weapons program, the Koizumi government 

announced that it had ruled out the possibility of 

extending any additional food aid to North Korea 

beyond that agreed on at the Pyongyang summit. 

Japan–North Korea bilateral trade and economic 

relations have declined surprisingly since the end of 

the Cold War. Although the level of trade between the 

countries pales in comparison to that between Japan 

and South Korea, Japan is an extremely important 

source of goods and capital for the DPRK. Japan also 

stands poised to be a major underwriter for economic 

reforms in North Korea. In terms of engaging North 

Korea since the October 2002 nuclear revelation, Japan’s 

possible economic aid has acted as the biggest bunch 

of carrots dangled before Pyongyang in an attempt to 

ensure peace and stability in NEA and also to improve 

inter-Korean relations.

In recent years, however, Japan has put in place 

several laws that limit North Korea’s ability to engage 
54

in either legal or illegal trade with Japan. The problem is 

not economic; rather, the question of abductions weighs 

heavily on Japanese engagement. Many Japanese 

citizens feel an emotional involvement in the fate of the 

abductees, not only driven by a genuine sense of horror 

at the actions of the North Korean government but also 

nurtured for political gain by the LDP.78 Although the 

continuing nuclear issue is also relevant for Japan’s 

normalization of economic and political relations with 

North Korea, it is really the abductions around which 

the public imagination crystallizes. The abductions are 

yet another national identity issue providing a wedge 

in Japan–Korea relations and preventing the expansion 

of contacts. Pyongyang, however, prefers to accuse 

Japan of acting as the “shock brigade” for the U.S.-

led “psychological warfare and blockade operation” 

in regard to its implementation of sanctions.79 Until 

political issues can be settled, it is unlikely that there 

will be any major changes in Japan–DPRK economic 

relations.

The United States and North Korea. 

Without a doubt, the United States remains 

the most dominant external actor on the Korean 

peninsula. Although U.S. primacy at almost any point 

on the globe is widely accepted, the description is 

particularly apt on the Korean peninsula. By dint of 

what it is and what it does, Washington is seen in both 

Seoul and Pyongyang, albeit for different reasons, as 

having become part of both the Korean problem and 

the Korean solution. Nonetheless, in the conception 

and conduct of foreign policy, the United States is 

impacted on and shaped by the changing dynamics of 

its domestic politics and regional and global interests, 

even as local and regional factors have gained greater 
55

saliency in the foreign relations of both Koreas in the 

post–Cold War era.

Both despite and in conjunction with the North 

Korean mantra decrying U.S. imperialism, the United 

States has become central in Pyongyang’s strategic 

thinking and behavior, alternately seen as a mortal 

threat or an external life support system, and sometimes as both. With the demise of the Soviet Union, 

uncertain aid from China, and increasingly close PRC–

ROK relations, the United States has become, for want 

of anything better, the functional equivalent of China 

and the Soviet Union in Pyongyang’s perspective, at 

least until recently. However, whereas the DPRK’s 

specialty during the Cold War was playing its allies 

Moscow and Beijing off against each other to reap 

economic, technical, and military aid, now it must 

seek to achieve the same aid—and also international 

legitimacy, investment, and trade—from a single 

adversary that is increasingly inclined to use force 

rather than favor.80

The Long Road to Normalization. By the end of the 

Cold War, the United States had a working relationship 

with China. The second term of Bill Clinton’s 

presidency would bring about rapprochement with 

Vietnam, 2 decades after the end of the U.S. conflict 

with that country. Few, however, predicted a quick 

normalization of relations with North Korea in the 

post–Cold War years. The intensity of the Stalinist 

state’s political position made such an outcome seem 

unlikely; after all, Pyongyang rhetorically disparaged 

“cross-recognition” of the two Koreas as a move toward 

perpetual division of the peninsula. Furthermore, the 

predictions of Pyongyang’s probable collapse made 

a pursuit of normalization seem like a waste of time. 

Nonetheless, by the late 1990s, as Clinton was preparing 
56

to leave office, normalization seemed to be on the table, 

though events during the Bush administration have 

been far less encouraging.

In the early 21st century, the U.S.-DPRK relationship 

is one of a kind. With the fall of the Soviet Union, 

North Korea is the longest-running political, military, 

and ideological adversary for the United States, and 

vice versa. Few other bilateral relationships in modern 

international relations approach this 60-year history of 

mutual enmity and provocation fueled and sustained 

by seemingly immutable antagonistic identities.

From the end of Korean War hostilities in 1953 until 

the late 1980s, there was no formal diplomatic contact of 

any kind between the United States and the DPRK. With 

the winding down of the Cold War and the consequent 

strategic transformation taking place throughout the 

world, the Reagan administration launched what 

was termed a “modest initiative” to start a dialogue 

with North Korea. Recognizing that Pyongyang’s 

increasing isolation was a dangerously destabilizing 

factor in Northeast Asia, Reagan authorized the State 

Department in the fall of 1988 to hold substantive 

discussions with North Korean representatives in 

neutral settings and allowed nongovernmental visits 

from North Koreans in academics, culture, sports, and 

a few other areas. He also ended the almost-total U.S. 

ban on commercial and financial transactions with 

North Korea by allowing certain exports on a case-bycase basis.81 The George H. W. Bush administration, 

however, did not continue the initiative.

Then on March 11, 1993, the DPRK issued the 90-

day legal notice that it was withdrawing from the NPT, 

which it had signed in December 1985. The withdrawal 

was a response to the demand by the IAEA—backed 

by the threat of an application for UN sanctions—for 
57

special inspections permitting unlimited access at 

any time or place (the first such request ever made 

by the IAEA). The announcement of withdrawal 

created an instant atmosphere of crisis in Seoul, 

Tokyo, Washington, Vienna, and New York, while 149 

countries “issued statements denouncing Pyongyang’s 

intended withdrawal.”82

Despite the prior U.S. agreement on the principle of 

supplying North Korea with two light-water reactors 

(LWRs), the agreement stalled in the hammering out 

of details, dragging on for almost a year. In May 1994 

Pyongyang began removing nuclear fuel rods from 

the Yongbyon reactor without the presence of IAEA 

inspectors. As the matter came before the UNSC, the 

DPRK declared that “U.N. sanctions will be regarded 

immediately as a declaration of war,”83 though Jimmy 

Carter subsequently received Kim Il Sung’s personal 

pledge to freeze the DPRK’s nuclear program. 

Somewhat embarrassed, the Clinton administration 

had no choice but to negotiate with Pyongyang, 

and it began a 4-month process that led to a written 

agreement, officially known as the U.S.-DPRK Agreed 

Framework. Although some hardline opponents of 

this North Korean policy cried “appeasement,” the fact 

is that in the absence of the Agreed Framework, North 

Korea might today have 50 to 100 nuclear weapons, 

rather than 1 or 2 or possibly 6 to 8.84

The Agreed Framework realized in October 1994 

inaugurated a period of limited engagement between 

the United States and the DPRK. As a putative solution 

to the North Korean nuclear issue, the document called 

on the United States and North Korea to implement 

four conditions. To deal with the energy crisis in 

North Korea, the United States was to facilitate the 

construction of two LWRs, with the first one scheduled 
58

for completion by 2003, in exchange for a written 

agreement with the DPRK on the peaceful use of nuclear 

energy. Also, the DPRK was to freeze and dismantle 

the graphite-moderated reactors under construction. 

In addition, the United States would ensure the supply 

of heavy fuel oil at a rate of 500,000 tons annually. The 

United States also pledged that it would not use or 

threaten to use nuclear weapons against North Korea 

(i.e., negative security), and the DPRK was expected 

to engage in dialogue with the ROK. In the pursuit of 

effective international regimes, the DPRK was to come 

into compliance with the NPT and the requirements 

of the IAEA. Finally, the two countries were to move 

toward full normalization of political and economic 

relations, beginning with reduced barriers to trade 

and investment within 3 months of the signing of the 

Agreed Framework. 

Pyongyang was very positive in its assessment of the 

document. North Korea’s chief negotiator, Kang Sok Ju, 

described it as “a very important milestone document 

of historical significance” that would resolve the 

nuclear dispute with finality. The official news media 

in the DPRK called the accord “the biggest diplomatic 

victory” and went to great lengths to describe it as 

an end achieved by the DPRK on its own—that is, 

without pressure or assistance from China: “We held 

the talks independently with the United States on an 

independent footing, not relying on someone else’s 

sympathy or advice, and the adoption of the DPRKU.S. agreed framework is a fruition of our independent 

foreign policy.”85

The Agreed Framework, therefore, served as a 

roadmap for moving U.S.-DPRK relations toward 

normalization, starting with the establishment of 

liaison offices in Pyongyang and Washington (similar 

to the pathway that Sino–American rapprochement 
59

took to full normalization), but because of half-hearted 

implementation of the agreement on the part of the 

United States, very little progress was made. The lack 

of seriousness with which the United States would 

treat the Agreed Framework was made evident when 

the U.S. General Accounting Office stated that the 

Agreed Framework should properly be described as 

“a nonbinding political agreement” or “nonbinding 

international agreement” rather than an internationally 

binding legal document.86 North Korea, of course, had 

anticipated that the signed agreement would be treated 

as a legally binding treaty and has since perceived itself 

as suffering from a double standard of expectations 

regarding implementation.

The Taepodong-I missile test in August 1998 and 

the suspicions about the restarting of plutonium 

processing were accompanied by North Korean 

rumblings about abandoning the Agreed Framework. 

In response, Clinton instructed his former Secretary 

of Defense, William Perry, to conduct a thorough 

review and assessment of U.S. policy toward North 

Korea. The Perry process marked the beginning of 

a sustained effort at the highest levels of the Clinton 

administration to achieve a breakthrough in relations 

with North Korea. The Perry Report, issued in October 

1999, notes the centrality of the Agreed Framework 

and calls for a two-track approach of step-by-step 

comprehensive engagement and normalization along 

with a concurrent posture of deterrence. The report 

also divulges that during the process of exploring 

policy options, a policy of regime change and demise, 

that is, ”a policy of undermining the DPRK, seeking to 

hasten the demise of the regime of Kim Jong Il,” had 

been considered and rejected.87

All of this, however, had much to do with 

the changing correlation of geostrategic forces 
60

in the early post–Cold War years. Amid mutual 

footdragging Pyongyang began to express its concern openly as the 2003 deadline for the delivery of a 

LWR approached. On February 20, 2001, a DPRK 

Foreign Ministry spokesman said, 

If [the United States] does not honestly implement the 

agreed framework, . . . there is no need for us to be bound 

to it any longer. We cannot but consider the existence of 

the Korean peninsula Energy Development Organization 

(KEDO) as meaningless under the present situation 

when no one can tell when the LWR project will be 

completed.88

On June 18, 2001, the same source warned, “The agreed 

framework is in the danger of collapse due to the delay 

in the LWR provision.”89 Soon thereafter, the terrorist 

attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), produced an 

overall shift in U.S. policy from engaging adversaries 

to confronting them.

The footdragging over the implementation of the 

Agreed Framework was due in part to the expectation—

in Seoul no less than in Tokyo and Washington—

that Pyongyang would collapse before the KEDO 

construction program was completed. Yet the delay was 

not all on one side, there also being some North Korean 

footdragging. Six months were wasted on an “identity 

argument” as to what the reactor type was to be called, 

and then a labor dispute shut down the construction 

until workers from Central Asia were brought in by 

KEDO to substitute for the DPRK workforce.

With Bush’s declaration of an “axis of evil” in 

January 2002, the administration’s refusal to certify in 

March 2002 that the DPRK was acting in accord with 

the Agreed Framework (a refusal which threatened 

U.S. funding of KEDO), and finally Pyongyang’s 

revelations of October 2002 regarding a HEU program, 
61

Pyongyang and Washington found themselves at 

loggerheads. After a long delay, Assistant Secretary of 

State James Kelly went to North Korea in early October 

2002 for comprehensive policy discussions.

The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) was 

announced in May 2003, organized around the 

concept of intercepting ships and planes believed to be 

carrying illicit weapons material. Then, in the summer 

of 2003, what were purported to be details of DoD’s 

Korea Plan 5030 were leaked to the press.90 These 

strategic documents were an anathema to Pyongyang, 

which was closely attuned to developing U.S. policy. 

Both DPRK officials and the North Korean media 

had long and assiduously followed the U.S. security 

policy debate and relevant published documents. 

For instance, after the nuclear standoff unfolded in 

October 2002, North Korean statements regularly cited 

President Bush’s inclusion of the North in the “axis of 

evil” and the administration’s preemption doctrine as 

virtual declarations of war that justified the DPRK’s 

withdrawal from the NPT.91

By the end of the first term of the Bush administration, virtually all former U.S. ambassadors to 

the ROK and special envoys to the DPRK (Donald 

Gregg, James Laney, Stephen Bosworth, William 

Perry, Wendy Sherman, and Charles Kartman) had 

criticized the administration’s approach to North 

Korea openly. Charles Pritchard, who resigned as the 

State Department’s special envoy for North Korean 

nuclear issues in August 2003, said, “We’ve gone, under 

[Bush’s] watch, from the possibility that North Korea 

has one or two weapons to a possibility—a distinct 

possibility—that it now has eight or more. And it’s 

happened while we were deposing Saddam Hussein 

for fear he might get that same capability by the end of 

the decade.”92
62

If normalization is to come about, security guarantees for North Korea seem to be a necessary if not sufficient condition. The centrality of the DPRK’s survivaldriven security dilemma is evidenced in comments by 

Pritchard regarding the 2000 U.S. diplomatic trip to 

North Korea:

I am struck by what Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, 

said to Madeleine Albright, former US secretary of state, 

in October 2000. He told her that in the 1970s, Deng 

Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, was able to conclude 

that China faced no external security threat and 

could accordingly refocus its resources on economic 

development. With the appropriate security assurances, 

Mr. Kim said, he would be able to convince his military 

that the US was no longer a threat and then be in a similar 

position to refocus his country’s resources.93

In a 1999 interview, William Perry offered a similar 

assessment: “We do not think of ourselves as a threat to 

North Korea. But I fully believe that they consider us a 

threat to them, and therefore, they see [the Taepodong-I] 

missile as a means of deterrence.”94

Without U.S. engagement, North Korea seems 

destined to receive neither the international aid that it 

needs nor the international recognition that it covets. 

More to the point, without engagement the DPRK is 

likely to maintain its bunker mentality, as evidenced by 

pronouncements such as this one from August 2003:

The Bush administration openly disclosed its attempt to 

use nuclear weapons after listing the DPRK as part of “an 

axis of evil” and a target of “preemptive nuclear attack.” 

This prompted us to judge that the Bush administration 

is going to stifle our system by force and decide to 

build a strong deterrent force to cope with it. Hence, we 

determined to possess that force. . . . It is a means for selfdefense to protect our sovereignty.95
63

Security Interaction. After President Bush’s election, 

a series of radical shifts in America’s military doctrine 

made it increasingly evident that more was going on 

than mere rhetorical posturing: the Quadrennial Defense 

Review of September 2001 called for a paradigm shift 

from threat- to capability-based models; and the Bush 

doctrine of preemption, first proclaimed at West Point in 

June 2002, was officially enunciated and codified in The 

National Security Strategy of the United States of America

in September 2002. The doctrine was implemented in 

Iraq in March 2003.

As noted, North Korea pays very close attention 

to these public policy pronouncements, and it is not 

far-fetched to conclude that the DPRK’s willingness in 

October 2002 to confess having a HEU program was 

inspired by the bellicosity it found in these official U.S. 

policies. While U.S. Secretary of Defense Colin Powell 

was saying in June 2002 that the United States would 

be ready to meet with the DPRK “any time, any place, 

without precondition,” Robert Gallucci, America’s 

chief negotiator for the Agreed Framework, claims that 

the North Koreans interpreted this as a willingness 

on the part of Washington “to meet to accept North 

Korean surrender.”96 In fact, as the United States was 

moving toward talks with the DPRK, in August 2002 

the administration demanded that improvements be 

seen in relations between North Korea and Japan. With 

the second nuclear standoff, the United States has 

declared the Agreed Framework “effectively dead.”97

To resolve the nuclear standoff that began in October 

2002, the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a 

comprehensive and authoritative statement on October 

25, detailing its version of what had actually occurred 

in the Kelly–Kang exchanges behind the scenes a few 

weeks earlier, and also describing the “grand bargain” 
64

offered by the North Korean negotiators to U.S. 

Assistant Secretary of the State James Kelly:

The DPRK, with greatest magnanimity, clarified that it 

was ready to seek a negotiated settlement of this issue 

on the following three conditions: firstly, if the U.S. 

recognizes the DPRK’s sovereignty; secondly, if it assures 

the DPRK of nonaggression; and thirdly, if the U.S. does 

not hinder the economic development of the DPRK. . . . 

If the U.S. legally assures the DPRK of nonaggression, 

including the nonuse of nuclear weapons against it by 

concluding . . . a treaty, the DPRK will be ready to clear 

the former of its security concerns.98

There were no explicit calls for financial compensation 

from the United States. Subsequent North Korean 

pronouncements essentially adhered to the proposals 

outlined in the October 25 statement.

At the first round of the Six Party talks in Beijing 

in August 2003, the DPRK offered a “package 

solution” deal. The DPRK offered to revive the Agreed 

Framework—without specifically referring to it as 

such—and to include a missile deal in exchange for the 

establishment of diplomatic relations with the United 

States and Japan, along with guarantees of economic 

cooperation between the DPRK and Japan and between 

the DPRK and the ROK. Pyongyang suggested that the 

dismantling of its nuclear program was contingent 

on a lessening of U.S. hostility, that a nonaggression 

treaty was the benchmark of this lessening of hostility, 

that such a treaty must be of binding legal force, and 

that action must be taken simultaneously—”word for 

word, action for action.”99 The North Koreans claimed 

that China, Russia, and South Korea were open to the 

package solution, whereas Japan and the United States 

remained focused on their own individual objectives.
65

To solve the nuclear standoff by taking account of 

North Korea’s security concerns, the United States did 

explore the possibility of a multilateral security pact. 

Powell said in October 2003, “It would be something 

that would be public, something that would be written, 

something that I hope would be multilateral.”100

Powell’s staff was drafting sample agreements that he 

hoped would be acceptable to Pyongyang and would 

ease the impasse over its nuclear weapons programs. In 

the same month, President Bush indicated for the first 

time that the United States would offer a multilateral 

security guarantee to be signed by Pyongyang’s 

Northeast Asian neighbors and by Washington. 

Pyongyang responded quickly with a cautiously 

positive reaction. Through its UN mission, North 

Korea said, “We are ready to consider Bush’s remarks 

on the ‘written assurances of nonaggression’ if they are 

based on the intention to coexist with the DPRK and 

aimed to play a positive role in realizing the proposal 

for a package solution on the principle of simultaneous 

actions.”101

In the third round of Six Party talks, held in June 

2004, the United States outlined a denuclearization 

proposal. This proposal seemed like little more than 

a reformulation of the CVID mantra. North Korea 

was required to make the initial concessions without 

any guarantee of reciprocation from the United 

States. Whereas the requirements for the DPRK 

were quite specific, those for the United States were 

more ambiguous. Pyongyang raised the ante of its 

own brinkmanship diplomacy with the February 10, 

2005, statement that it had “manufactured nukes for 

self-defense to cope with the Bush administration’s 

evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the 

DPRK,” and that it was therefore “compelled to suspend 
66

participation in the [Six Party] talks for an indefinite 

period.”102 The Western news media jumped on the fact 

that the announcement also contained North Korea’s 

first public declaration that it had nuclear weapons. 

The February 10 statement generated a flurry of 

intensive “bi-multilateral” consultations, and China’s 

preventive diplomacy with both Koreas reached the 

highest levels. 

On July 9, 2005, North Korea finally agreed to return 

for a fourth round of the Six Party talks later in the 

month. Suggesting there was no behind-the-scenes 

Chinese pressure, the DPRK showcased this breakthrough as stemming from bilateral “negotiations” 

between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher 

Hill (who replaced James Kelly as America’s top 

negotiator at the Six Party talks) and Kim Kye Gwan 

of the DPRK.103 Tellingly, Kim Kye Gwan conveyed 

his government’s definitive and date-specific decision 

to return to the Six Party talks in the course of a 3-

hour dinner meeting with Hill, an event hosted by 

the Chinese in Beijing on the eve of a scheduled trip 

to Pyongyang by Tang Jiaxuan (state counselor and 

former foreign minister) as part of Chinese efforts to 

bridge differences between the United States and the 

DPRK. 

The Bush administration’s sudden escalation 

of verbal attacks on North Korea’s long-known 

counterfeiting, drug trafficking, and other crimes in 

the wake of the September 19, 2006, Joint Statement 

of Principles may have caught some observers by 

surprise, but it was hardly surprising for many others. 

Predictably, the result was to scuttle and replace a new 

round of the Six Party talks with another round of the 

Washington-Pyongyang war of words, as Washington 

and Pyongyang unleashed verbal attacks on each 

other over activities outside the scope of the Six Party 
67

negotiations. North Korea’s human rights abuses and 

criminal activities have been known for years, and yet 

Washington has dealt with these issues apart from the 

Six Party talks because it always considered ending 

North Korea’s nuclear program to be its highest policy 

priority. By the end of 2005, even further delay appeared 

possible in negotiating implementation of the Joint 

Statement of Principles to eliminate Pyongyang’s nuclear 

program through a “words for words” and “action for 

action” process stipulated in the document.104

More to the point, however, both Pyongyang and 

Washington showed little trust toward each other. 

“While in Washington the North Korean nuclear threat 

has been a major issue for the past decade,” as Gavan 

McCormack reminds us, “in Pyongyang the U.S. nuclear 

threat has been the issue for the past 50 years. North 

Korea’s uniqueness in the nuclear age lies first of all 

in the way it has faced and lived under the shadow of 

nuclear threat for longer than any other nation.”105 With 

the coming of the Bush administration, Pyongyang has 

had even more reason to distrust Washington, given 

the way the United States first appropriated North 

Korean national identity by making it a charter member 

of the “axis of evil” and then pursued a hardline policy 

(although this has proceeded in fits and starts due in 

no small measure to America’s ongoing challenges in 

Iraq, the first test case of the Bush doctrine for the three 

charter members of the “axis of evil”).

Economic Interaction. Following North Korea’s 

invasion of the South in June 1950, the United States 

imposed a nearly complete economic embargo on 

the DPRK. During the next 4 decades, the scope and 

specificity of U.S. sanctions steadily expanded. Article 

II of the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework of 1994 stated, 

“Within 3 months of the day of this Document, both 

sides will reduce barriers to trade and investment, 
68

including restrictions on telecommunications services, 

and financial transactions.” In March 1995, the U.S. 

Department of Commerce approved the sale of 55,000 

tons of corn to North Korea by a U.S. grain dealer, 

opening the door to U.S. exports to the DPRK. In the mid1990s, Washington approved a number of transactions 

on a case-by-case basis, including telecommunications 

link-ups, tourist excursions, airline overflight payments, purchases of North Korean magnesite, and 

a grain-for-zinc barter deal.106 Finally, in September 

1999, almost 50 years after the initial export embargo, 

President Bill Clinton announced that the United States 

would ease economic sanctions against North Korea 

affecting most trade and travel, thereby ending the 

longest-standing trade embargo in U.S. history. Many 

items that had previously required a license were now 

eligible for export without a license; certain items on 

the Commerce Control List (CCL) moved from a policy 

of denial status to case-by-case review.

Today, trade and related transactions generally are 

allowed for non–dual-use goods (dual-use goods are 

those that may have both civilian and military uses) if 

a set of overarching conditions is met. To lift all export 

controls applied to North Korea, Pyongyang first 

would have to be removed from the State Department 

list of countries supporting acts of international 

terrorism. The United States also cannot extend 

Normal Trade Relations status—formerly called MostFavored Nation status—to North Korea because of 

the restrictions included in the 1951 Trade Agreement 

Extension Act that prohibited extending such status to 

communist states. Pursuant to the Trade Act of 1974, 

this lack of status also excludes the DPRK from the 

Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). U.S. citizens 

may, however, travel to North Korea, and there are no 

restrictions on the amount of money one may spend in 
69

transit or while there. Assets frozen prior to June 19, 

2000, remain frozen.

Despite the easing of most trade restrictions, trade 

and investment between North Korea and the United 

States has remained virtually nonexistent and also 

highly politicized. As shown in Table 4, U.S.-DPRK 

trade is almost entirely in one direction: the United 

States exports moderate amounts of mostly agricultural 

goods to North Korea and imports virtually nothing 

from the DPRK. South Korea’s trade with the United 

States in a single day in 2005 ($196 million) is almost 

two times greater than the combined total of North 

Korea’s trade with the United States in the 16-year 

period 1990-2005 ($100 million). America’s economic 

sanctions have certainly denied Pyongyang access to 

the world’s largest market, but North Korea has met 

with only limited success in selling its products in 

other markets where no sanctions existed. 

The history of U.S.-Korean relations—especially 

U.S.-DPRK relations, from the General Sherman

incident to the recent standoffs over North Korea’s 

nuclear pursuits—teaches us that the conflict between 

the United States and North Korea often goes beyond 

considerations of power. The U.S.-DPRK conflict has 

deep historical roots born in war and perpetuated 

for more than half a century. The present conflict is 

not simply about nuclear weapons but rather about 

competing worldviews and perceptions of self and 

others. Rhetorically, it is as much about putative good 

and evil as about international security. The war on 

terror that has followed from the 9/11 attacks has 

involved a Manichean lens in which states are either 

with the United States or against it. Because of the 

history of conflict, the DPRK automatically made the 

“against the United States” list. 
70

Year

Exports

to North 

Korea

Imports 

from

North 

Korea

Total 

North 

KoreanU.S. Trade

U.S. Trade 

Balance 

with North 

Korea

Percent Change 

in North KoreanU.S. Trade

1990 0.03 0.0 0.03 0.03 N/A

1991 0.1 0.1 0.2 0 +567%

1992 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 -50%

1993 2.0 0.0 2.0 2.0 +1900%

1994 0.2 0.0 0.2 0.2 -90%

1995 11.6 0.0 11.6 11.6 +5700%

1996 0.5 0.0 0.5 0.5 -96%

1997 2.5 0.0 2.5 2.5 +400%

1998 4.4 0.0 4.4 4.4 +76%

1999 11.3 0.0 11.3 11.3 +157%

2000 2.7 0.1 2.8 2.6 -75%

2001 0.5 0.0 0.5 0.5 -82%

2002 25.1 0.1 25.2 25.0 +4940%

2003 8.0 0.0 8.0 8.0 -68%

2004 23.8 1.5 25.3 22.3 +216%

2005 5.8 0.0 5.8 5.8 -77%

Sources: International Monetary Fund 1992, p. 247; 1993, p. 247; 

1994, p. 265; 1995, p. 269; 1996, p. 275; 1997, p. 347; 1998, p. 280; 

MOFAT, 1998, pp. 396,401; 1999, pp. 481, 486; 2001, p. 497; available 

at www.mofat.go.kr/; KOTRA at www.kotra.or.kr; United States 

Department of Commerce; International Trade Administration at 

www.ita.doc.gov.

Table 4. U.S. Trade with North Korea, 1990-2005

(Units: U.S.$1 million).

In effect, there is a resurgence of national identity at 

the nation-state level, and the divided nation-state of 

Korea is watching its two halves officially move closer 

to one another, while the United States remains a target 

for both appeals and scorn from both of those halves, to 

greater and lesser degrees. The United States now risks 

provoking negative responses from both Korean states 

if it pursues the wrong path, and it risks losing its place 

on the Korean peninsula if it is not proactive enough. 
71

Not since the North Korean invasion of South Korea 

in 1950 after U.S. troops had left the peninsula has 

the question of the U.S. future on the peninsula been 

subject to so many possibilities and contingencies. 

Inter-Korean Relations.

For nearly 2 decades after the “end” of the Korean 

War, the two Korean states talked about and sometimes 

acted out their competing unification visions only 

in the context of the overthrow or replacement of 

one national identity by the other. After the shock of 

President Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, interKorean relations developed in fits and starts, mutating 

through four cycles of dialogue and reconciliation.107

The first cycle, beginning in August 1971, entailed a 

series of seven Red Cross talks held alternately in 

Pyongyang and Seoul over 2 years, culminating in 

a joint communiqué in which both Koreas agreed 

to uphold three principles: (1) unification achieved 

through independent efforts; (2) unification achieved 

through peaceful means; and (3) national unity sought 

by transcending differences in ideas, ideologies, and 

systems. 

The second cycle of talks, running from September 

1984 through February 1986, involved a flurry of 

contacts and exchanges in various functional and 

humanitarian fields; these talks reaffirmed the three 

principles of unification. The third cycle, which began 

in 1990 and was inspired in part by changes in global 

politics linked with the end of the Cold War, was more 

promising than the first two. It jump-started interKorean trade, eased the entry of the two Koreas into 

the UN as two separate but equal member states, and 

led to the drafting of two documents: the North–South 
72

Basic Agreement (officially known as “Agreement on 

Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchanges and 

Cooperation between the South and the North”) and 

the “Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the 

Korean Peninsula.” 

With Kim Dae Jung’s inauguration as ROK president 

in February 1998, South Korea initiated the Sunshine 

Policy of opening to North Korea with a pledge not to 

undermine or absorb the DPRK. The new policy was 

based in part on explicit recognition that undermining 

the DPRK is simply not a viable policy option because 

of the disorder and destruction that would follow 

from a Northern collapse.108 President Kim Dae Jung’s 

repeated pledges that the South has no intent “to 

undermine or absorb North Korea,” thus speaking to 

one of the key remaining fears in Pyongyang, stand out 

as one of the most significant steps toward accepting 

identity difference as an integral part of the gradual 

peace process.109

The Sunshine Policy created the appropriate 

conditions—both in South Korea and in North Korea—

for the historic inter-Korean summit of June 13–15, 

2000, which catalyzed the fourth and most promising 

cycle—indeed, a turning point—of inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation. Without a doubt, the chief 

catalyst for the Pyongyang summit was President Kim 

Dae Jung’s consistent and single-minded pursuit of his 

pro-engagement Sunshine Policy. More than anything 

else, the offer of substantial if unspecified governmental 

aid to refurbish North Korea’s decrepit infrastructure 

was an important causal force behind Kim Jong 

Il’s decision to agree to the summit. Until Kim Dae 

Jung’s Berlin Declaration in March 2000 offering aid 

to the DPRK,110 Pyongyang had taken a two-handed 

approach, attacking the Sunshine Policy as a “sunburn 

policy” on ideological grounds while simultaneously 
73

pursuing a mendicant strategy to extract maximum 

economic concessions. Before the official unveiling of 

the statement in Berlin, Seoul delivered an advance 

text to Pyongyang, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, and 

Washington, demonstrating that the Big Four had little 

to do with the initiation of the summit.

The 2000 Pyongyang summit was most remarkable 

historically because it was initiated and executed by 

Koreans themselves with no external shock or greatpower sponsorship. The previous inter-Korean accords 

had been responses to major changes external to the 

Korean peninsula, such as the 1972 joint communiqué 

after Nixon’s visit to China or the 1992 agreements 

following the demise of the Cold War. The Pyongyang 

summit, the first of its kind in the half-century history of 

politics of competitive legitimation and delegitimation 

on the divided peninsula, generated opportunities 

and challenges for the Big Four as they stepped back 

to reassess the likely future of inter-Korean affairs 

and the implications for their own national interests. 

The dramatic summit also led to some paradoxical 

expectations and consequences.

Suddenly, at least from June to November of 2000, 

the capital city of Pyongyang, the city of darkness, 

became a city of diplomatic light and a primary arena 

for diplomatic influence and competition among the 

Big Four as inter-Korean relations returned to a more 

international field. The notion that the Pyongyang 

summit had improved prospects for melting the 

remnant Cold War glacier on the Korean peninsula 

seemed to have intensified the needs and efforts of the 

Big Four to readjust their respective Korea policies in 

response to rapidly changing realities on the ground. 

The North Koreans viewed and framed the summit, 

although native in origin, as a major concession to the 

United States and as a concrete step taken by the DPRK 
74

to fulfill one of the obligations in the 1994 Agreed 

Framework.111 The United States was then expected 

to make major economic and strategic concessions. 

Pyongyang did its best to exploit the new connection 

with Seoul in order to speed up normalization talks 

with the United States and to gain access to bilateral 

and multilateral aid and foreign direct investment.

In addition to the summit with Kim Dae Jung, the 

infamously reclusive Kim Jong Il also met first with 

Chinese President Jiang Zemin in a secret visit to 

Beijing in May 2000 and then with Russian President 

Vladimir Putin that July, after which he received a 

flurry of diplomatic missions to Pyongyang, including 

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Chinese 

Defense Minister Chi Haotian, and a European Union 

(EU) delegation. By early 2001, however, Pyongyang’s 

high hopes and expectations from the “Clinton in 

Pyongyang Shock” turned into the “Bush in Washington Shock,” with low and ever-diminishing returns. 

Furthermore, while the Joint Declaration speaks 

of economic cooperation and indeed has fostered 

significant growth in that area, it failed to address 

military and security matters, lacking even a general 

statement about working together for tension reduction 

and confidence-building. Pyongyang clearly desired 

to discuss security issues only with the United States. 

Tellingly, Pyongyang has held the administration in 

Washington hostage to the resumption of inter-Korean 

dialogue, at least from January 2001 to August 2002, 

breaching not only the letter and the spirit of the NorthSouth Joint Declaration but also its own longstanding 

party line that Korean affairs should be handled 

without foreign intervention or interference. 

But the significance of the summit should not be 

underrated. It was all about mutual recognition and 
75

legitimation, and it succeeded in no small measure 

in finally bringing the two Koreas down from their 

hegemonic-unification dreamlands to acceptance of 

peaceful coexistence as two separate states. The single 

greatest accomplishment of the summit was to deliver 

a major blow to the fratricidal politics of competitive 

legitimation and delegitimation. Although the two 

Kims symbolically signaled their acceptance of each 

other’s legitimacy through their actions at the summit, 

neither of them enunciated a belief that reunification 

would be coming in the near future. Kim Dae Jung, 

in fact, predicted that it would take 20 to 30 years 

for the divided Korean peninsula to achieve national 

unification, even as North Korea declared for the first 

time to the domestic audience that “the issue of unifying 

the differing systems in the North and the South as one 

may be left to posterity to settle slowly in the future.”112

The Joint Declaration produced by the summit, 

while initially limited in domain, adopted a functional 

“peace by pieces” approach to the Korean conflict.113

In effect, economic relations were anointed as the 

practical pathway for the gradual development and 

institutionalization of a working peace mechanism for 

the two Koreas. The fourth article of the document used 

the term “national economy,” apparently assuming 

an eventual integration of North and South Korean 

economies.114 It is worth noting in this connection that 

for the period from July 1972 to August 2005, covering 

all four cycles of dialogue and cooperation, 47 interKorean agreements were signed, breaking down as 

follows: one during the first cycle; none during the 

second cycle; 13 during the third cycle (December 1991–

July 1994); and 33 during the fourth cycle (April 2000–

August 2005). Inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation 

came to a halt during the first 20 months of the Bush 
76

administration (from January 2001 to August 2002)—

not a single inter-Korean accord was signed—but 

Pyongyang returned to inter-Korean dialogue in late 

August 2002, signing no less than six accords through 

the end of 2003.115

Almost in tandem with the simmering U.S.-

DPRK nuclear standoff and the coming of the Roh 

Moo-hyun government, both the speed and scope of 

inter-Korean talks and cooperation have accelerated, 

and nearly 100 rounds of official government-level 

meetings have been held since the inauguration of 

the “Policy of Peace and Prosperity” by the Roh 

administration in February 2003. Of course, the second 

U.S.-DPRK nuclear standoff could overshadow but 

not reverse some remarkable achievements in interKorean relations in all issue areas from August 2002 

to mid-2006. With the election in December 2002 of 

Roh Moo-hyun, an offspring candidate of the “386 

generation,” North Korea finds “its most cooperative 

South Korean government ever. . . . Roh emphasized 

even more strongly than his predecessor that interKorean economic cooperation would continue and 

that dialogue and economic inducements were the 

best means to bring about positive change in North 

Korea’s behavior.”116 Pyongyang’s view of the state 

of inter-Korean relations also has evolved to such an 

extent that it could confidently declare in its Joint New 

Year (2003) Editorial: “It can be said that there exists 

on the Korean Peninsula at present only confrontation 

between the Koreans in the North and the South and 

the United States.”117

As shown in Table 5, inter-Korean trade registered 

a 5.2 percent decline from 2000 to 2001 but recorded 

a huge 59.3 percent increase from 2001 to 2002 and 

another impressive 51.5 percent increase from 2004 
77

to 2005. In 2005 inter-Korean trade topped $1 billion 

for the first time, sufficing to make Seoul Pyongyang’s 

second largest trade partner after China. In fact, since 

2002, South Korea has become and has remained the 

North’s second largest trading partner, surging ahead 

of Japan. Inter-Korean trade now constitutes 26 percent 

of North Korea’s total foreign trade (but alas, only 0.19 

percent of South Korea’s total foreign trade).

Year

Imports 

from North 

Korea

% 

Change

Exports 

to North 

Korea

% 

Change

Total

trade

% 

change

1989 18,655 69 18,724

1990 12,278 -34.2 1,188 1,621.7 13,466 -28.1

1991 105,719 761.0 5,547 366.9 111,266 726.3

1992 162,863 54.1 10,563 90.4 173,426 55.9

1993 178,167 9.4 8,425 -20.2 186,592 7.6

1994 176,298 -1.0 18,249 116.6 194,547 4.3

1995 222,855 26.4 64,436 253.1 287,291 47.7

1996 182,400 -18.2 69,639 8.1 252,039 -12.3

1997 193,069 5.8 115,270 65.5 308,339 22.3

1998 92,264 -52.2 129,679 12.5 221,943 -28.0

1999 121,604 31.8 211,832 63.4 333,437 50.2

2000 152,373 25.3 272,775 28.8 425,148 27.5

2001 176,170 15.6 226,787 -16.9 402,957 -5.2

2002 271,575 54.2 370,155 63.2 641,730 59.3

2003 289,252 6.5 434,965 17.5 724,217 12.9

2004 258,039 -10.8 439,001 0.9 697,040 -3.8

2005 340,281 31.0 715,472 63.0 1,055,753 51.5

Note: These figures include both transactional and nontransactional (i.e., noncommercial) trade.

Sources: KOTRA at www.kotra.go.kr; ROK Ministry of Unification.

Table 5. South Korean–North Korean Trade, 

1989–2005 (Unit: U.S.$1,000).
78

Trade with South Korea is in general de facto 

economic aid for North Korea, and the ROK has 

become one of the major sources of hard currency in 

the DPRK.118 Beginning in the early 1990s with small 

exchanges of goods, trade, which was essentially the 

functional cornerstone of Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine 

Policy, has continued despite nuclear tensions. Over 

the course of Kim Dae Jung’s and Roh Moo-hyun’s 

presidencies, inter-Korean trade registered a nearly 

five-fold increase from $221 million in 1998 to $1,055 

million in 2005.

One of the key components of this trade is 

processing-on-commission (POC) trade, in which South 

Korean companies export raw materials to the DPRK 

and then import finished or semifinished products. 

This type of trade involves the creation of new jobs in 

North Korea, some degree of technology transfer, a 

fair amount of investment in the North from the South, 

and, most importantly, direct contact between North 

and South Koreans. Many of the POC plants that have 

been established use South Korean machinery and 

supervisors. By 2003, South Korean companies were 

making shoes, beds, television sets, and men’s suits in 

the North.119

In addition, since the mid-1990s, Seoul has 

increased its flows of “nontransactional” trade, which 

is the exchange of noncommercial goods, such as those 

used in the now defunct KEDO reactor projects or for 

humanitarian aid. Nontransactional trade began in 

1995 and has increased to such a degree that it is about 

40 percent of total inter-Korean trade on the average. 

Overall, these increased trading relations are part of a 

program led by the ROK but accepted by the DPRK to 

create functional linkages between North and South in 

the interest of managing conflict, maintaining peace, 

and catalyzing eventual reunification.120
79

Although trade may be growing and increasingly 

impressive, it is investment that will make the most 

difference for the North Korean economy and for 

economic relations in the interests of fostering peace on 

the peninsula.121 Despite the self-reliant juche philosophy that undergirds the DPRK’s national identity, 

the newly-minted Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) 

in North Korea already has attracted attention from 

a number of small- and medium-size companies in 

South Korea. The reconnection of roads and railways 

between the two countries—what President Kim 

Dae Jung characterized as de facto unification—will 

reduce the transaction costs of trade and embed both 

countries in a larger Northeast Asian trading system. 

Pyongyang has recognized the essential need to open 

itself to foreign economic agents and has undertaken 

legal reform to encourage investment and trade. South 

Korea is the most likely source of the funding that can 

revitalize or at least stabilize the DPRK’s economy. 

What many realists dismissed as beyond the realm 

of possibility only a few years ago is now happening, 

as raw materials and finished products are passing 

along and through what was once considered a major 

invasion route.122 This “peace by pieces” functional 

cooperation provides ways of living with identity 

differences on the divided Korean peninsula rather 

than fighting about them.

In addition, cultural and social exchanges, though 

not as revolutionary as some had hoped, have 

continued unabated. Since its opening in November 

1998, the Mt. Kumgang project has increased the 

number of South Koreans who travel to the North. 

With the reestablishment of road and rail links between 

the two Koreas, along with the demining of areas of 

the DMZ around these links, South Korean tour buses 
80

made the first overland tours to Mt. Kumgang in 

North Korea in over 50 years, and the South Korean 

conglomerate Hyundai continued work on industrial 

plants in Kaesong in the North. Civilian exchanges and 

cooperation are surging substantially as well. In 2005 

alone, the number of people who traveled between 

the two Koreas reached 88,341, surpassing the total 

number of people exchanges for the past 60 years. 

The normative and functional spillovers from 

growing inter-Korean dialogue and reconciliation 

can be seen in several noneconomic domains. After 

more than half a century of politics of competitive 

legitimation and delegitimation, the leaders of the proSeoul Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan) and 

the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean 

Residents in Japan (Chongryun) met for the first time on 

May 17, 2006. They issued a joint statement pledging to 

turn their longstanding antagonism into reconcilation 

and cooperation. The joint statement was influenced 

greatly by the declared intentions of their respective 

“home states,” being based largely on the North-South 

Joint Declaration of June 15, 2000. Even in the military/

security domain, rare talks between North and South 

Korean generals in 2004 (the first of their kind) made 

progress on the establishment of naval radio contact to 

prevent firefights like those of 1999 and 2002 and also 

on the discontinuation of propaganda activities against 

each other along the 155-mile-long DMZ. As noted 

earlier, the convergence of the positions of Chinese and 

the two Koreas in the fourth round of Six Party talks 

is a remarkable event defying the conventional realist 

wisdom. Thus in a series of accords and agreements 

reached over the years, especially from 2000 to 2006, the 

relationship between North and South Korea has come 

quite close to that of mutually recognized sovereign 

states.
81

EXPLAINING NORTH KOREA’S SECURITYCUM-SURVIVAL STRATEGY

As is amply made manifest in U.S.-DPRK nuclear 

confrontations and negotiations—and Pyongyang’s 

“package solution” proposal—there remains the 

inseparable linkage of security, development, and 

legitimacy in the conduct of North Korean foreign 

policy. Indeed, three types of crisis—security crisis, 

economic crisis, and legitimation crisis—all frame and 

drive North Korea’s security-cum-survival strategy in 

the post–Kim Il Sung era. 

The Quest for Security.

During the Cold War, Pyongyang’s main security 

concern was not so much to balance against or 

bandwagon with the United States as in coping with 

the twin security dilemmas of allied abandonment 

and allied entrapment. Ironically, it was the SinoSoviet conflict, not the U.S.-Soviet tensions, that most 

enhanced “the power of the weak.” In its security 

behavior, Pyongyang demonstrated a remarkable 

unilateral zigzag balancing strategy in its relations 

with Moscow and Beijing, taking sides if necessary on 

particular issues, while attempting at the same time to 

extract maximum payoffs in economic, technical, and 

military aid, but never completely casting its lot with 

one or the other. 

How can we then explain the paradox of the survival 

of post–Kim Il Sung North Korea in the post–Cold 

War era? The literature on asymmetric conflicts shows 

that weaker powers have engaged in wars against 

stronger adversaries more often than not, and big 

powers frequently lose wars in asymmetric conflicts 
82

(e.g., the Vietnam War).123 According to a recent study, 

weak states were victorious in nearly 30 percent of all 

asymmetric wars in the approximately 200-year period 

covered in the Correlates of War data set. More tellingly, 

weak states have won with increasing frequency as 

the modern era approached.124 Weaker states also 

have initiated many brinkmanship crises that fell short 

of war, a strategy that North Korea has employed 

repeatedly.125

A consideration of multiple and mutually 

interactive influences can help us answer the puzzle 

of Pyongyang’s uncanny resilience and “the power 

of the weak” in the context of the DPRK-U.S. nuclear 

confrontation. Drawing theoretical insight from 

asymmetric conflict and negotiation theory, we may 

postulate that the power balance in an issue-specific 

relationship and the performance of the weaker state 

are affected by four key variables: the weak state’s 

proximity to the strategic field of play; the availability 

to the stronger state of feasible alternatives; the stakes 

involved for both states in conflict and the degree of 

their resolve; and the degree of control for all involved

parties.126

As a weaker state in conflict with a superpower 

and its allies (South Korea and Japan), North Korea has 

relied upon issue-specific and situation-specific power, 

the effectiveness and credibility of which has required 

resources other than the traditional elements of national 

power. North Korea’s proximity to the strategic field 

of play, its compensating brinkmanship strategy, the 

high stakes involved, and its governmental resolve 

and control have all reinforced one another to make 

a strong actor’s aggregate conventional power largely 

less relevant. North Korea has adopted a wide range 

of tactics in and out of the asymmetric conflict and 
83

negotiation processes in order to reduce the opponent’s 

alternatives and weaken the opponent’s resolve and 

control.

The geographical position of the DPRK is one of the 

most compelling and immutable factors in Pyongyang’s 

survival strategy. Since countries can change their 

leaders, systems, policies, and strategies but cannot 

change their location, “geography or geopolitics has 

long been the point of departure for studies of foreign 

policy or world politics.”127 Surrounded by all four 

major powers and its southern rival, North Korea’s 

home turf is the strategic field of play from which it 

exercises its brinkmanship or plays its collapse card. 

Contrary to the conventional realist wisdom, in 

asymmetrical conflict and negotiations the strong state 

does not ipso facto exert greater control than the weak 

state. If a smaller and weaker state occupies territory 

of strategic importance to a larger and stronger state, 

or if the field of play is on the weak actor’s home turf 

(as was the case in the U.S.-Panama negotiations and 

British-Iceland Cod Wars), the weaker state can deploy 

bargaining clout disproportionate to its intrinsic 

coercive potential.128

The ineluctable fact that North Korea is at the center 

of the strategic crossroads of Northeast Asia where the 

Big Four uneasily meet and interact has served rather 

well in bolstering Pyongyang’s control. By dint of its 

proximity to what Peter Hayes called “the fuse on the 

nuclear powder keg in the Pacific,”129 Pyongyang has 

leveled the field of play so as to wield greater control 

than the United States by constantly changing the 

rules of entry and the rules of play in the pursuit of its 

preferred outcome. North Korea’s manifest preference 

for direct bilateral negotiations with the United States 

also is a way of seeking the home court advantage to 
84

maximize its control in the asymmetric conflict and 

negotiation process. 

Consider as well how Pyongyang’s geographical 

position, combined with its military of 1.2 million 

members and its asymmetric military capabilities, 

provides ample fodder for its survival-driven leverage 

diplomacy with South Korea and the United States. 

Some 70 percent of its active force—700,000 troops, 

8,000 artillery systems, and 2,000 tanks—are forwarddeployed near the DMZ. Seoul, where one-fourth of 

South Korea’s 49 million people live and where nearly 

75 percent of the country’s wealth is concentrated, is 

only 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the DMZ and thus 

within easy reach of North Korean jet fighters, armored 

vehicles, Scud missiles, and artillery guns. Within 

minutes, Pyongyang could turn Seoul into “a sea of 

fire,” as it threatened to do in the heat of the first nuclear 

crisis of mid-1994. Any ultimate Allied triumph would 

be a Pyrrhic victory since such devastation would be 

crippling to South Korea.130

Without launching such an armed invasion, 

Pyongyang could still exercise its “negative power” 

or even play its collapse card to spawn instability on 

the divided Korean peninsula. One of the underlying 

rationales for the inauguration of the Kim Dae Jung 

administration’s “sunshine policy” was that potential 

implosion or explosion in the North would put at risk 

South Korea’s recovery from the 1997–98 financial crisis 

by discouraging foreign direct investment inflows. The 

financial crisis served as a wake-up call regarding the 

consequences of North Korea’s prospective collapse. 

Hence, to deter or delay the economic effects of a 

North Korean hard landing as long as possible, the 

sunshine policy became South Korea’s default policy.131

In March 2005 President Roh Moo-hyun publicly 

declared, “We will not be embroiled in any [armed] 
85

conflict in Northeast Asia against our will. This is an 

absolutely firm principle we cannot yield under any 

circumstances.”132

North Korea’s geographical location is also of 

considerable strategic concern to NEA’s Big Four. 

Located at the pivot point of the NEA security complex 

and at the most important strategic nexus of the AsiaPacific region, Pyongyang is capable, by hostility or 

instability, of entrapping any or all of the Big Four in 

a stairstep of conflict escalation these governments 

would rather avoid. If Pyongyang’s brinkmanship or 

Washington’s sanctions or regime-change strategy 

escalate to war, the cost to all parties would be 

exorbitant.

Concomitant to Pyongyang’s survival strategy are 

the limitations of Washington’s issue-specific power 

to pressure Pyongyang and the lack of palatable 

alternatives to negotiation. The twisted logic of a selfstyled juche kingdom is that it is not as vulnerable 

as a normal state to public shaming and the various 

sanction tools of traditional statecraft. The acceptable 

nonnegotiation alternatives available to the United 

States in the resolution of the North Korean nuclear 

and missile issues have remained severely limited. 

The credible threats of surgical military strikes and 

enforceable economic sanctions against Pyongyang 

were considered but rejected because of the Pentagon’s 

objections, Seoul’s vulnerability, China’s veto threat, 

and even Tokyo’s reluctance. William Perry—reflecting 

on his involvement in the emergency national security 

meeting of June 16, 1994, regarding the most serious 

North Korean nuclear brinkmanship crisis of his tenure 

as Secretary of Defense—writes about a third-way 

option for a negotiated deal in the face of the extremely 

limited alternatives available to U.S. policymakers: 
86

“We were about to give the president a [third-way] 

choice between a disastrous option—allowing North 

Korea to get a nuclear arsenal, which we might have 

to face someday—and an unpalatable option, blocking 

this development, but thereby risking a destructive 

nonnuclear war.”133 Given all the constraints on 

America’s issue-specific power, the rise of a costaware foreign policy, and the collapse of a bipartisan 

foreign policy consensus in the 1990s, the U.S.-DPRK 

Agreement of October 21, 1994, could be said to be the 

worst deal, except that there was no better alternative. 

For Beijing—and to a lesser extent for Seoul, Moscow, and Tokyo—Washington’s sanctions diplomacy in 

mid-1994 emerged as a no-win proposition, as it would 

bring about the worst of two possible outcomes. It could 

be ineffective in controlling nuclear proliferation since 

it could only strengthen the determination of the North 

Korean leadership to go nuclear, or it could destabilize 

a North Korean regime that would then dump many of 

its ill-fed, fleeing refugees on China’s northeastern and 

Russia’s far eastern provinces. Thus, paradoxically, 

Pyongyang’s growing difficulties and threat of collapse 

have increased its bargaining leverage relative to its 

weak intrinsic power.

Another consideration regarding leverage in 

asymmetrical negotiations is the matter of relative and 

absolute stakes and resolve. The higher the stakes for 

a state actor in the process of bargaining, the more it 

is willing to commit its resources and the greater its 

resolve to attain a favorable negotiation outcome. The 

issue of stakes may have a crucial part in explaining 

why the weaker North Vietnam ultimately achieved 

victory during the Vietnam War fought on Vietnamese 

turf. Similarly, North Korea has been disadvantaged 

against the United States in the overall correlation of 
87

forces, but there also remained a clear asymmetry in 

survival stakes and resolve favoring Pyongyang—

to wit, Washington’s apprehensions regarding the 

integrity of the NPT regime. Compare America’s 

relatively nonchalant reaction to the nuclear breakout 

states India and Pakistan with U.S. nervousness in the 

face of a Pyongyang bolstered by fear for its survival 

and consequent highest possible resolve. 

Of course, resolve without capability and willingness to use force is the mark of a paper tiger, and as 

such it cannot work in asymmetrical negotiation. With 

the end of the Cold War and with Moscow-Seoul 

normalization, the nuclear card suddenly became a 

very potent lever for North Korea. The DPRK has 

striven to use its nuclear weapons program as an allpurpose, cost-effective instrument of foreign policy. 

For Pyongyang, the nuclear program is a military 

deterrent, an equalizer in national identity competition 

with South Korea (which lacks nuclear weapons), a 

bargaining chip for extracting economic concessions 

from the United States and China, and a cost-effective 

insurance policy for regime survival. International 

uncertainty surrounding actual nuclear capabilities, 

deliberately nurtured by North Korea, has gone a long 

way for that small country. It is through the combination 

of putative military power and the on-again, off-again 

tit-for-tat diplomacy on the part of Pyongyang that it 

has gained not only the upper hand over the forces 

that seek to crush it, but also economic assistance from 

wealthy capitalist countries. All such manna has come 

from the abiding fear of war held by those nations that 

regard North Korea as an enemy.134

To abandon such a military posture, including its 

nuclear capability, would be to leave Pyongyang without the single most important lever in its asymmetric 

conflicts and negotiations with South Korea, the United 
88

States, and Japan. Instead, Pyongyang follows its own 

third way—a maxi-mini strategy, doing the minimum 

necessary to get the maximum possible aid from 

South Korea and other countries without reducing its 

minimum deterrent military power. 

North Korean nuclear and missile brinkmanship 

also illustrates with particular clarity that when the 

enactment of a national identity is blocked in one 

domain, it seeks to compensate in another. From 

Pyongyang’s military-first perspective, developing 

asymmetrical capabilities such as ballistic missiles and 

WMD serves as strategic sine qua non in its survival 

strategy, as well as an equalizer in the legitimacy war 

and status competition with the South. It remains 

one of the few areas in which the DPRK commands a 

comparative advantage in the military balance of power 

with the South. North Korea’s humiliating defeat by 

its southern counterpart in the first-ever naval clash in 

June 1999 further emphasizes its WMD and ballistic 

missiles as a strategic equalizer.

In short, Pyongyang’s proximity to the strategic 

field of play, its high stakes, resolve, and control, 

its relative asymmetrical military capabilities, and 

its coercive leverage strategy have all combined to 

enable the DPRK to exercise bargaining power far 

disproportionate to its aggregate structural power. 

That said, however, Kim Jong Il’s pronounced 

commitment to survival strategy would not stand in the 

way of his demonstrating situation-specific flexibility, 

especially in foreign policy. Indeed, Pyongyang has 

pursued a great variety of coping strategies, such as 

brinkmanship, beggar diplomacy, tit-for-tat cooperative strategy, overseas arms sales, appeals for 

humanitarian aid, and on-again, off-again joint-venture 

projects, to generate desperately needed foreign 

capital.
89

The Quest for Development 

During the long Cold War years, geopolitics and 

ideology combined to make it possible for Pyongyang 

to gain significant economic, military, and security 

benefits from larger socialist allies, especially Moscow 

and Beijing, and to claim thereby that the North Korean 

system was a success. In the late 1950s and much of 

the 1960s, the political economy of North Korea did 

indeed seem headed toward becoming an exceptional 

model of an autocentric, socialist, and self-reliant 

national economy afloat in the sea of the capitalist 

world system. 

Determined not to be outperformed in the 

legitimation-cum-economic war, in 1972 Pyongyang 

launched its first international shopping expeditions 

for capital and technology, accumulating in a few 

years (1972 to 1975) a trade deficit of about $1.3 

billion with non-Communist countries and $700 

million with Communist countries. This was the 

genesis of Pyongyang’s debt trap.135 Hit by the rapidly 

deteriorating terms of trade (the oil crisis and declining 

metal prices), Pyongyang defaulted on its debts in 1975, 

with the dual consequences of effectively cutting itself 

off from Western capital markets and becoming more 

dependent on the Soviet Union than ever before. 

The situation worsened in the late 1980s as 

opportunities to grow through marshaling greater 

resources began to dwindle and as relations began 

to deteriorate with the principal socialist patron, 

Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. This forced Pyongyang to 

become more dependent on other socialist countries 

for support. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the 

subsequent breakup of the Eastern bloc was a major 

macroeconomic shock that ushered in a period of as 

yet unchecked decline.136
90

One of the most telling paradoxes of North 

Korea’s political economy during the Cold War is the 

extent to which Pyongyang successfully managed to 

have its juche (self-reliance) cake and eat it too. As 

an appealing legitimating principle, juche often has 

been turned on its head to conceal a high degree of 

dependence on Soviet and Chinese aid. Between 1948 

and 1984, Moscow and Beijing were Pyongyang’s first 

and second most important patrons, supplying $2.2 

billion and $900 million in aid, respectively.137 Thanks 

to the East-West and Sino-Soviet rivalries during the 

Cold War, Pyongyang was allowed to practice such 

concealed mendicant diplomacy. The collapse of the 

Soviet Union was the most serious shock to socialist 

North Korea, not only for the cessation of aid and the 

virtual demise of concessional trade (dropping from 

56.3 percent in 1990 to 5.3 percent in 2000), but also 

because it delivered a wrenching blow to the muchtrumpeted juche-based national identity. 

North Korea’s economic collapse in the 1990s was 

the inevitable result of Pyongyang’s massive expenditures on military preparedness and the demise of Soviet 

aid and trade. In a contradictory yet revealing manner, 

Pyongyang admitted as much when it attributed the 

failure of the Third Seven-Year Plan (1987 to 1993) 

to a series of adverse external shocks: the “collusion 

between the imperialists and counter-revolutionary 

forces” and the “penetration of imperialist ideology 

and culture” that had accelerated the demise of the 

Second (Socialist) World and the end of Soviet aid.138 As 

much as Pyongyang may blame the economic crisis on 

such external shocks or on natural disaster at home, the 

root causes of the economic crisis are deeply systemic. 

The adverse external circumstances in the early 1990s 

and the bad weather in 1995 and 1996 served only as 

triggering and exacerbating factors.
91

The political economy of post–Kim Il Sung North 

Korea finds itself in a vicious circle: a successful export 

strategy is not possible without massive imports of 

high-tech equipment and plants, which in turn would 

not be possible without hard-currency credits, which 

in turn would not be possible without first paying off 

its foreign debts through a successful export strategy, 

and so on. The defining features of North Korea’s 

external economic relations in the post–Cold War era 

include: (1) the extreme degree to which markets were 

repressed, with the resulting shrinkage of foreign 

trade; (2) a chronic trade deficit; (3) a lack of access 

to international capital markets due to the 1975 debt 

default; and (4) a highly unusual balance-of-payments 

profile that must be financed in highly unconventional 

ways.139

As shown in Tables 6 and 7, Northeast Asia figures 

most prominently in North Korea’s foreign trade, with 

China (40 percent), South Korea (26 percent), Russia 

(6 percent), and Japan (4.8 percent), in that order, 

accounting for more than 77 percent of Pyongyang’s 

total global trade in 2005. The first 5 years of the new 

millennium (2001–05) have brought about significant 

changes in the pattern and volume of North Korea’s 

foreign trade. While total volume increased by 52 

percent (from $2.67 billion in 2001 to $4.0 billion in 

2005), China’s and South Korea’s shares increased 

by 114 percent (from $737.5 million to $1,580 million) 

and 162 percent (from $403 million to $1,055 million), 

respectively. Japan’s share declined from 17.8 percent 

to 4.8 percent ($475 million to $195 million), while 

Russia’s share increased from 2.6 percent to 6.0 percent 

($68.3 million to $213.4 million). 

Seen in this light, Chinese-style reform and opening 

are widely believed to be the most promising way out 

of the poverty trap. Post-Mao China’s record doubling 

of per capita output in the shortest period (1977-87)140
92

Year

Export Import Total

Volume Growth 

Rate (%) Volume Growth Rate (%) Volume Growth Rate (%)

1990 1,733 - 2,437 - 4,170 -

1991 945 -45.5 1,639 -32.7 2,584 -38.0

1992 933 -1.3 1,622 -1.0 2,555 -1.1

1993 990 6.1 1,656 2.1 2,646 3.6

1994 858 -13.3 1,242 -25.0 2,100 -20.6

1995 736 -14.2 1,316 6.0 2,052 -2.3

1996 726 -1.4 1,250 -5.0 1,976 -3.7

1997 904 24.5 1,272 1.8 2,177 10.2

1998 559 -38.2 883 -30.6 1,442 -33.8

1999 515 -7.9 965 9.3 1,480 2.6

2000 556 8.0 1,413 46.4 1,970 33.1

2001 650 16.9 1,620 14.6 2,270 15.2

2002 735 13.1 1,525 -5.9 2,260 -0.4

2003 777 5.7 1,614 5.8 2,391 5.8

2004 1,020 31.3 1,837 13.8 2,857 19.5

2005 3,000 5.0

Sources: ROK Ministry of Unification and Korean Trade 

Association (KOTRA).

Table 6. North Korea’s Foreign Trade

(Excluding North-South Trade), 1990-2005

(Unit: U.S.$ million).

Country

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Trade

Volume

Share

(%)

Trade

Volume

Share

(%)

Trade

Volume

Share

(%)

Trade

Volume

Share

(%)

Trade

Volume

Share

(%)

China 737.5 27.6% 738.0 25.4% 1,022.9 32.8% 1,385.2 39.0% 1,580.3 39.0%

South 

Korea 403.0 15.1% 641.7 22.1% 724.2 23.2% 697.0 19.6% 1,055 26.0%

Thailand 130 4.9% 216.6 7.5% 254.3 8.2% 329.9 9.3% 329 8.1%

Japan 474.7 17.8% 369.5 12.7% 265.3 8.5% 252.6 7.1% 195 4.8%

Russia 68.3 2.6% 80.7 2.8% 118.4 3.8% 213.4 6.0% 232 5.7%

India 157.8 5.9% 191.7 6.6% 158.4 5.1% 135.0 3.8%

Others 702.1 26.3% 663.9 22.9% 572.0 18.4% 541.0 15.2%

Total 2,673.5 100% 2,902.1 100% 3,115.5 100% 3,554.1 100% 4,055 100%

Sources: KOTRA and ROK Ministry of Unification.

Table 7. North Korea’s Top Trading Partners

(Including North-South Trade)

(Unit: U.S.$ million).
93

should serve as inspiration to North Korea to follow 

this path. Yet Pyongyang has issued mixed and 

contradictory signals and statements about post-Mao 

Chinese socialism. In six informal summit meetings 

between 1978 and 1991, Deng Xiaoping repeatedly 

urged Kim Il Sung to develop the economy through 

reform and opening. This only provoked Kim Il Sung’s 

testy retort, “We opened, already,” in reference to the 

Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic and Trade Zone.141 In 

September 1993, however, Kim Il Sung reportedly told 

a visiting Chinese delegation that he admired China 

“for having achieved brilliant reforms and openness” 

while continuing to build “socialism with Chinese 

characteristics.” He also stated that the Chinese 

experience would become “an encouraging factor for 

us Koreans.”142 In a May 1999 meeting with Chinese 

Ambassador Wan Yongxiang in Pyongyang, Kim Jong 

II is reported to have said that he supported Chinesestyle reforms. In return, he asked Beijing to respect 

“Korean-style socialism.”143

The North Korean government admitted in January 

2001 the need for “new thinking” to adjust ideological 

perspectives and work ethics to promote the “state 

competitiveness” required in the new century.144 This 

admission was accompanied by Kim Jong Il’s second 

“secret” visit to Shanghai in less than 8 months (January 

15–20, 2001) for an extensive personal inspection of 

“capitalism with Shanghai characteristics.” These 

developments prompted a flurry of wild speculation 

about juche being Shanghaied and North Korea 

becoming a “second China.” 

Despite North Korea’s seeming determination to 

undertake economic reform and the popular perception 

that Chinese-style reform and opening are the most 

promising way, there are at least five major obstacles. 
94

First, China’s reform and opening came about during 

the heyday of the revived Cold War when anti-Soviet 

China enjoyed and exercised its maximum realpolitik 

leverage, as was made evident, for instance, in Beijing’s 

easy entry into the World Bank and IMF in May 1980. 

Second, China’s economic reforms were tied to a 

political changing of the guard: the ascendancy of Deng 

Xiaoping as the new paramount leader in December 

1978 with the purging of the Gang of Four and Mao’s 

designated heir-apparent Huo Guofeng. Despite much 

speculation to the contrary, Kim Jong Il seems firmly 

positioned to remain in power and even to name his 

successor in the Kim dynasty. Third, unlike post-Mao 

China, North Korea does not have rich, famous, and 

enterprising overseas Koreans to generate the level of 

foreign direct investment that China attracted in the 

1980s. Fourth, the agriculture-led reform process we 

have seen in East Asian transitional economies simply 

may not be available to North Korea, due to the very 

different initial conditions that resemble East European 

economies or the former Soviet Union more than China 

or Vietnam. 

The fifth obstacle has to do with Pyongyang’s 

Catch-22 identity dilemma. To save the juche system 

would require destroying important parts of it and 

also would require considerable opening to and help 

from its capitalist southern rival. Yet to depart from 

the ideological continuity of the system that the Great 

Leader Kim Il Sung (“the father of the nation”) created, 

developed, and passed onto the son is viewed not as a 

survival necessity but as an ultimate betrayal of raison 

d’état. 

Nonetheless, there has been some evidence of North 

Korea’s movement toward a system reform strategy. 

In 1991 the DPRK established the Rajin-Sonbong Free 
95

Economic and Trade Zone, which has since become 

the Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic Zone.145 Pyongyang 

also agreed to participate in the TRADP, and recently 

created the Sinuiju Special Autonomous Region (SAR) 

on the Chinese border and also the Kaesong Industrial 

Complex for cooperating with South Korea. Between 

1992 and 2000, the DPRK wrote 47 new laws on foreign 

investment, and a September 1998 constitutional 

revision mentions “private property,” “material 

incentives,” and “cost, price, and profit” in a document 

that otherwise reads like an orthodox manifestation 

of the DPRK’s juche philosophy.146 During his visit to 

Shanghai in January 2001, Kim Jong Il highly praised 

the Chinese developmental model of reform and 

opening (with Shanghai characteristics). 

On July 1, 2002, North Korea enacted a set of 

major economic reform measures—known as “7.1 

Measures”—with the main emphasis on marketization, 

monetarization, decentralization, and acquisition of 

FDI. Specifically, the DPRK adjusted its system of 

controlled prices, devalued the won, raised wages, 

adjusted the rationing system, opened a “socialist 

goods trading market,” gave farmers a type of property 

right regarding the cultivation of particular parcels of 

land, and extended laws for special economic zones.147

More recently, against the backdrop of growing 

containment and encirclement sanctions by Washington and Tokyo, Pyongyang has found a new pair 

of patrons in South Korea and China, beefing up its 

system-reforming developmental strategy with North 

Korean characteristics. South Korea surged ahead of 

Japan as North Korea’s second largest trade partner in 

2002 and inter-Korean trade hit an all-time high of over 

$1 billion in 2005. South Korea’s aid in various forms 

(rice, fertilizer, tourism, and direct investment in the 
96

Kaesong Industrial Complex) is now estimated to be 

about $1 billion, which is six times the level of 2000.148

Kim Jong Il’s fourth state visit to China from 

January 10 to 18, 2006, coming on the heels of President 

Hu Jintao’s state visit to North Korea in October 2005, 

culminated a series of regular bilateral exchanges of 

visitations and interactions between Chairman Kim 

Jong Il and top Chinese leaders since 2000. These 

exchanges emphasized their shared concerns and 

determination to reconstruct and renormalize the 

relationship on a more solid and stable footing. Even 

though this was an unofficial (secret) state visit, Kim 

Jong Il received the red carpet treatment. All nine 

members of the Politburo Standing Committee of 

the Chinese Communist Party, the most powerful 

political organ of the Chinese system, were mobilized 

to welcome Kim Jong Il in a manner on par with the 

greeting a U.S. president would get. In effect, Beijing 

was showcasing to the outside world, especially the 

United States, its commitment to underwriting near 

abroad (North Korean) stability in order to safeguard 

the conditions for establishing a well-off society at 

home. 

By shifting gears from aid to a deeper system of 

trade and investment, China also is coaxing North 

Korea to follow the post-Mao Chinese style of reform 

and opening. In a short span of 5 years, China’s trade 

with North Korea jumped by a factor of 3.2, from 

$488 million in 2001 to $1.58 billion in 2005. Over 120 

Chinese companies are reported to have moved to 

North Korea to engage in joint ventures in a bicycle 

factory, in the coal and natural resources sectors, and 

in plans to build transportation networks, including a 

new highway from Hunchun to Rajin. 

As if to demonstrate a tit-for-tat cooperative strategy, Kim Jong Il and his entourage (with no military 
97

officers) visited six Chinese cities (Guangzhou, 

Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Wuhan, Yichang, and Beijing) in 

8 days, with a heavy emphasis on visits to industrial, 

agricultural, and educational facilities. For the record, 

and in terms warmer than during previous visits, 

Kim Jong Il is reported to have “provided expressive 

compliments to his hosts on the economic progress 

accomplished over little short of three decades” and 

declared that he had “trouble sleeping at night” during 

his visit because he was “pondering how to apply 

reforms to North Korea to generate the results he 

witnessed in Guangzhou.” In his official toast offering 

thanks to Hu Jintao for arranging the visit, Kim said 

that he was “deeply impressed” by China’s “shining 

achievements” and “exuberant development,” 

especially China’s high-tech sector.149

In the final analysis, any successful medium- and 

long-term coping strategy must be systemic, involving 

the institutional design and implementation of measures that are consistent and congruent across different 

and traditionally disparate areas of policymaking and 

also between domestic and foreign policies. While 

piecemeal tactical adaptations can yield some 

concessions and payoffs in the short run, a series of 

system reform measures pursued swiftly would yield 

both greater benefits and, perhaps, greater dangers. 

CONCLUSIONS 

There is something very old and very new in postCold War foreign relations of the DPRK, affirming the 

old saying, “The more things change, the more they 

remain the same.” As in the Cold-War era, the centrality 

of the Big Four in North Korea’s foreign policy thinking 

and behavior has remained unchanged. Indeed, the 
98

Big Four serve as the most sensitive barometer of the 

general orientation of North Korean foreign relations 

as a whole. To be sure, since 2000 North Korea has 

launched diplomatic outreach, establishing official 

relations with most EU member states, plus such other 

countries as Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Turkey. 

Pyongyang also became a member of the Asean 

Regional Forum (ARF) in 2002, gaining a political 

foothold in Southeast Asia. But few of these efforts 

have moved much beyond diplomatic formalities, and 

few really have concentrated the minds of key foreign 

policymakers in Pyongyang.

Despite or perhaps even because of the greatpower centrality, North Korea’s relations with the Big 

Four Plus One changed dramatically in the post-Cold 

War era, especially since 2000. What is most striking 

about post-Cold War North Korean foreign policy is 

not the centrality of the Big Four but rather the extent 

to which the United States has functioned as a kind 

of force-multiplier for catalyzing some major changes 

and shifts in Pyongyang’s international approach 

to affairs. North Korea has sought and found a new 

troika of life-supporting geopolitical patrons in China, 

South Korea, and Russia and also a new pair of lifesupporting geo-economic patrons in China and South 

Korea, even as the dominant perception of the United 

States has shifted significantly from an indispensable 

life-support system to a mortal threat.

As if to nod to the DPRK’s “tyranny of proximity,” 

however, all three of North Korea’s contiguous 

neighbors—China, Russia, and South Korea—

strongly oppose what these countries perceive to be 

Washington’s goal of regime change. For example, 

the Bush administration’s original plan of forming 

broadest possible NEA united front against the DPRK 
99

on the nuclear issue eventually was turned on its head 

by Beijing’s mediation diplomacy at the second session 

of the fourth round of Six Party talks, culminating in 

the September 19, 2005, Joint Statement of Principles—

the first-ever successful outcome of the on-again, 

off-again multilateral dialogue of more than 2 years. 

China successfully mobilized “the coalition of the 

willing” in support of its fifth and final draft of the Joint 

Statement—especially on the provision of a peaceful 

nuclear program (light-water reactor)—with three in 

favor (China, South Korea, Russia), one opposed (the 

United States), and one abstaining or split in its position 

between the two (Japan), creating an 3 1/2 and 1 1/2 

vote against the U.S. position. 

China, South Korea, and Russia favor North 

Korea’s proposal of a step-by-step denuclearization 

process based on simultaneous and reciprocal (“words 

for words” and “action for action”) concessions.150

By contrast, the Bush administration’s CVID formula 

would require North Korea to reveal and permit “the 

publicly disclosed and observable disablement of 

all nuclear weapons/weapons components and key 

centrifuge parts” before the United States indicates what 

incentives would be offered in return. With the situation 

in Iraq continuing to be a major challenge, the United 

States cannot afford an armed conflict in Northeast 

Asia, and this fact alone increases both North Korean 

and Chinese bargaining leverage in trying to chart a 

nonviolent course through the Six Party process.

Beijing’s commitment to underwrite gradual reform of North Korea as a cost-effective means of averting its collapse as well as establishing a harmonious and 

well-off society (xiaokang shehui) at home was brought 

into sharp relief during Kim Jong Il’s fourth trip to 

China. Expanded life and reform support for North 
100

Korea through direct assistance, a growing trade and 

investment relationship, and a trade deficit that serves 

as de facto aid were signs of China’s determination to 

beef up a series of major economic reform measures 

initiated in the second half of 2002 rather than risk 

system collapse or regime change by the Bush 

administration. Kim Jong Il’s visit also suggests that 

ties between the two socialist allies are becoming ever 

closer, both politically and economically, in tandem 

with the rapid deterioration of Pyongyang’s relations 

with Washington and Tokyo. Adept at playing great 

powers off against each other, Kim Jong Il will no 

doubt use Chinese support to stimulate more aid 

without becoming too dependent on South Korea and 

as a powerful counterweight to the United States and 

Japan. 

One thing that the collapsist school failed to realize 

is that Kim Il Sung’s death actually may have created 

a more stable DPRK. Kim Jong Il’s North Korea differs 

from that of his father, when the dream of unification 

involved the absorption of, not by, South Korea. 

As Georgy Bulychev suggests, “Kim Jong Il . . . is 

neither Nero nor Louis XIV—he thinks about ‘après 

moi’ and wants to keep the state in place, but he also 

understands that it is impossible to do this without 

change.”151 In this context, a change in the regime’s 

strategic paradigm, rather than a change of the regime 

itself, looks more and more like the proper resolution 

to the broad concerns about North Korea’s future.152

As it is easy to say with Korea—and particularly 

with anything involving North Korea—the future of 

North Korea’s relations with the Big Four Plus One 

is unclear. Indeed, it seems more unclear now than 

it did in the early to mid 1990s when a broad swath 

of academics and policy analysts was predicting the 
101

imminent collapse of the North Korean regime and 

the reunification of Korea. The interplay between 

North Korea and the outside world is highly complex, 

variegated, and even confusing. What complicates our 

understanding of the shape of things to come in North 

Korea’s foreign relations is that all countries involved 

have become moving targets on turbulent trajectories 

subject to competing and often contradictory pressures 

and forces. 

That said, however, the way the outside world—

especially the Big Four plus Seoul—responds to 

Pyongyang is keyed closely to the way North Korea 

responds to the outside world. North Korea’s 

future is malleable rather than predetermined. This 

nondeterministic image of the future of the post–Kim 

Il Sung system opens up room for the outside world 

to use whatever leverage it might have to help North 

Korean leaders opt for one future scenario or another 

in the coming years. 

A cornered and insecure North Korea is an 

unpredictable and even dangerous North Korea that 

may feel compelled to launch a preemptive strike, 

igniting a major armed conflagration in the Korean 

peninsula and beyond. For geopolitical, geo-economic, 

and other reasons, Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, and even 

Tokyo would be happier to see the peaceful coexistence 

of the two Korean states on the Korean peninsula than 

to cope with the turmoil, chaos, and probable massive 

exodus of refugees that system collapse would generate 

in its wake.

Despite the gloomy prospects for near-term 

movement on the negotiating front in Beijing, the 

Six Party process offers an opportunity to produce 

something larger than mere resolution of the specific 

issue of North Korea’s nuclear program. Not only is 
102

regional and global multilateralism now an integral 

part of security thinking in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, and 

Tokyo, it also is a useful instrument for the much 

needed conflict management mechanisms in Northeast 

Asia. Therefore we should seize the twin historical 

opportunities of China’s rising multilateralism and 

the Six Party process in the interests of forming and 

institutionalizing a truly Northeast Asian security 

regime. The Northeast Asian states need to expand 

multilateral dialogue and economic integration in 

the interests of building order and solving problems. 

The U.S.-DPRK standoff risks derailing burgeoning 

Northeast Asian regionalism, yet it is this very 

regionalism that will help prevent future spirals like 

that characterizing both nuclear standoffs between the 

United States and North Korea. 

ENDNOTES

1. See Michael Green, “North Korean Regime Crisis: US 

Perspectives and Responses,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 

Vol. 9, No. 2, Winter 1997, p. 7; and “North Korean Collapse 

Predicted,” The Associated Press, March 6, 1997.

2. For a wide array of speculations and analyses on the 

future of post–Kim Il Sung North Korea, see Nicholas Eberstadt, 

“North Korea: Reform, Muddling Through, or Collapse?” NBR 

Analysis, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1993, pp. 5-16; idem, “Hastening Korean 

Reunification,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2, March/April 

1997, pp. 77-92; Kyung-Won Kim, “No Way Out: North Korea’s 

Impending Collapse,” Harvard International Review, Vol. 18, No. 

2, Spring 1996, pp. 22-25, 71; Gavan McCormack, “Kim Country: 

Hard Times in North Korea,” New Left Review, No. 198, MarchApril 1993, pp. 21-48; Dae-sook Suh, “The Prospects for Change in 

North Korea,” Korea and World Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 1993, 

pp. 5-20; Robert Scalapino, “North Korea at a Crossroads,” Essays 

in Public Policy No. 73, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 

1997, pp. 1-18; Jonathan D. Pollack and Chung Min Lee, Preparing 

for Korean Unification: Scenarios and Implications, Santa Monica, 

CA: RAND, 1999; Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea, 
103

Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 1999; Marcus Noland, Avoiding the 

Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas, Washington, DC: Institute 

for International Economics, 2000; Samuel S. Kim, “The Future of 

the Post-Kim Il Sung System in North Korea,” Wonmo Dong, ed., 

The Two Koreas and the United States, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 

pp. 32-58; Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig, “North Korea Between 

Collapse and Reform,” Asian Survey, Vol. 39, No. 2, March/April 

1999, pp. 287-309; Marcus Noland, North Korea After Kim Jong-il, 

Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2004.

3. The Korea Times, February 1, 2000, Internet version.

4. For application of a common-security approach in the Korean 

case, see Samuel S. Kim, “The Two Koreas and World Order,” in 

Young Whan Kihl, ed., Korea and the World: Beyond the Cold War, 

Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 29–65, especially pp. 56–

59; Mel Gurtov, “Common Security in North Korea: Quest for a 

New Paradigm in Inter-Korean Relations,” Asian Survey, Vol. 42, 

No. 3, May/June 2002, pp. 397–418.

5. Cited in Robert A. Pastor, “The Great Powers in the 

Twentieth Century: From Dawn to Dusk,” in Robert A. Pastor, 

ed., A Century’s Journey: How the Great Powers Shape the World, 

New York: Basic Books, 1999, p. 7.

6. Nicholas Eberstadt and Richard J. Ellings, “Introduction,” 

Nicholas Eberstadt and Richard J. Ellings, eds., Korea’s Future and 

the Great Powers, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001, p. 

5.

7. According to the purchasing power parity (PPP) estimates 

of the World Bank, which are not unproblematic, China, with a 

1994 GDP just less than $3 trillion, had become the second largest 

economy in the world, after the United States. By 2003, China’s 

ranking as the world’s second largest economy remained the same, 

but its global national income (GNI)/PPP more than doubled to 

$6,435 billion. See Economist, London, January 27, 1996, p. 102; 

World Bank, World Development Report 1996, New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1996, p. 188; World Development Report 2005, 

New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 256. 

8. The common use of “East Asia” and “Northeast Asia” as one 

and the same had to do with the fact that Asia, in general, and East 

Asia, in particular, are so overwhelmingly Sinocentric. As a result, 

the concept of East Asia “has conventionally referred only to those 

states of Confucian heritage.” See John Ravenhill, “A Three Block 
104

World? The New East Asian Regionalism,” International Relations 

of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2002, p. 174. 

9. In the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, “Northeast 

Asia” and “the East Asian littoral” are defined as “critical areas” 

for precluding hostile domination by any other power. See United 

States Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 

September 30, 2001, p. 2, at www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr2001.pdf, 

accessed January 15, 2002. 

10. Edmund L. Andrews, “Shouted Down: A Political Furor 

Built on Many Grudges,” New York Times, August 3, 2005, p. C1.

11. See Barry Buzan and Rosemary Foot, eds., Does China 

Matter? A Reassessment, London: Routledge; 2004; Alastair Iain 

Johnston, “China’s International Relations: The Political and 

Security Dimensions,” in Samuel S. Kim, ed., The International 

Relations of Northeast Asia, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 

2004, pp. 65–100; Robert Sutter, China’s Rise in Asia: Promises and 

Perils, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005; and David 

Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 

12. For a detailed analysis, see Samuel S. Kim, “The Making of 

China’s Korea Policy in the Era of Reform,” in David M. Lampton, 

ed., The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of 

Reform, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, pp. 371-

408.

13. “U.5.-DPRK Meeting Welcomed,” Beijing Review, May 17-

23, 1993, p. 7.

14. See Andrew Scobell, China and North Korea: From Comradesin-Arms to Allies at Arm’s Length, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic 

Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, March 2004, p. 14; and 

David Shambaugh, “China and the Korean Peninsula: Playing for 

the Long Term,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2, Spring 2003, 

p. 55.

15. See Edward Cody, “China Tries to Advance N. Korea 

Nuclear Talks,” The Washington Post, July 31, 2005, A23; and 

“China Show Off Newfound Partnership at Six-Party Talks,” The 

Korea Herald, August 5, 2005.

16. For an English text of the DPRK Ministry of Foreign 

Affairs’ statement of February 10, 2005, see KCNA, February 10, 

2005, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2005/200502/news0211.htm, 

accessed July 3, 2005.
105

17. “Spokesman for DPRK Foreign Ministry on Contact 

between Heads of DPRK and US Delegations,” Korean Central 

News Agency, July 10, 2005.

18. North Korea News 724, February 28, 1994, pp. 5–6; The 

Economist, March 26, 1994, p. 39.

19. David Shambaugh, “China and the Korean Peninsula: 

Playing for the Long Term,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, 

No. 2, 2003, p. 46.

20. Quoted in David Lampton and Richard Daniel Ewing, The 

U.S.-China Relationship Facing International Security Crises: Three 

Case Studies in Post-9/11 Bilateral Relations, Washington, DC: The 

Nixon Center, 2004, p. 70.

21. Alvin Z. Rubinstein, “Russia’s Relations with North Korea,” 

in Stephen Blank and Alvin Rubenstein, eds., Imperial Decline: 

Russia’s Changing Role in Asia, Durham, NC: Duke University 

Press, 1997, p. 157. 

22. Nikolai Sokov, “A Russian View of the Future Korean 

Peninsula,” in Tsuneo Akaha, ed., The Future of North Korea, New 

York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 129–46. 

23. Quoted in Andrew Mack, “The Nuclear Crisis on the Korean 

Peninsula,” Asian Survey, Vol. 33, No. 4, April 1993, p. 342. 

24. Rodong Sinmun [Worker’s Daily], October 5, 1990, p. 2.; 

Andrew Lankov, “Cold War Alienates Seoul, Moscow,” The Korea 

Times, September 17, 2004, available at times.hankooki.com. 

25. Evgeny P. Bazhanov, “Korea in Russia’s Post Cold War 

Regional Political Context,” in Charles K. Armstrong, Gilbert 

Rozman, Samuel S. Kim, and Stephen Kotkin, eds., Korea at the 

Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia, Armonk, NY: M. 

E. Sharpe, 2006, pp. 214-226. 

26. Rubinstein, “Russia’s Relations with North Korea,” p. 164. 

27. Celeste Wallander, “Wary of the West: Russian Security 

Policy at the Millennium,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 30, No. 2, 

March 2000, pp. 7–12; “Russia’s New Security Concept,” Arms 

Control Today, Vol. 30, No. 1, January/February 2000, pp. 15–20; 

Philip C. Bleak, “Putin Signs New Military Doctrine, Fleshing Out 

New Security Concept,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 30. No. 4, May 

2000, p. 42.

28. For an English text of the Moscow Declaration, see KCNA, 

August 4, 2001, at www.kcna.co.jp/contents/05.htm.
106

29. Seung-ho Joo, “Russia and the Korean Peace Process,” in 

Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo, eds., The Korean Peace Process 

and the Four Powers, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003, pp. 143–170.

30. It is worth noting in this connection that no other great 

power can match Russia’s summit diplomacy with both Koreas 

in the first 4 years of Putin’s presidency—three summit meetings 

with Kim Jong Il (July 2000 in Pyongyang, August 2001 in Moscow, 

and August 2002 in Vladivostok) and two summit meetings with 

South Korean presidents Kim Dae Jung in February 2001 in Seoul 

and Roh Moo-hyun in September 2004 in Moscow.

31. Alexandre Mansourov, “Kim Jong Il Re-Embraces the Bear, 

Looking for the Morning Calm: North Korea’s Policy Toward 

Russia Since 1994,” in Byung Chul Koh, ed., North Korea and the 

World: Explaining Pyongyang’s Foreign Policy, Seoul: Kyungnam 

University Press, 2004, pp. 239–284.

32. Quoted in Alexander Zhebin, “The Bush Doctrine, Russia, 

and Korea,” in Mel Gurtov and Peter Van Ness, eds., Confronting 

the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from the Asia-Pacific, New York: 

Routledge Curzon, 2005, p. 150. 

33. Mansourov, “Kim Jong Il Re-Embraces the Bear, Looking 

for the Morning Calm,” pp. 282-284. 

34. The DPRK Report, NAPSNET, No. 20, October 1999, p. 1.

35. Ibid., No. 24, p. 6. 

36. Joo, “Russia and the Korean Peace Process.” 

37. Zhebin, “The Bush Doctrine, Russia, and Korea,” p. 143. 

38. Quoted in Elizabeth Wishnick, “Russia in Inter-Korean 

Relations,” in Samuel S. Kim, ed., Inter-Korean Relations: Problems 

and Prospects, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004, p. 126. 

39. Joo, “Russia and the Korean Peace Process.”

40. Wishnick, “Russia in Inter-Korean Relations.”

41. Zhebin, “The Bush Doctrine, Russia, and Korea,” p. 144.

42. Peggy Falkenheim Meyer, “Russo-North Korean Relations,” 

Paper presented at the International Council for Korean Studies 

Conference 2005, Arlington, VA, August 5–6, 2005.

43. Yu Bin, ”China-Russia Relations: Presidential Politicking 

and Proactive Posturing,” Comparative Connections, Vol. 6, No. 1, 

2004, pp. 125-136, available at www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/0401q.

pdf. 
107

44. Ibid. 

45. Rubinstein, “Russia’s Relations with North Korea,” p. 173.

46. See David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of 

Russian Capitalism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

47. For an English text of the Moscow Declaration, see KCNA, 

August 4, 2001; emphasis added.

48. The DPRK Report, NAPSNET, No. 26, p. 2–3. See also 

Elizabeth Wishnick, “Russian-North Korean Relations: A New 

Era?” in Samuel S. Kim and Tai Hwan Lee, eds., North Korea and 

Northeast Asia, New York: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 139–162; 

Wishnick, “Russia in Inter-Korean Relations.” 

49. AFP, August 4, 2001.

50. Georgi Toloraya, “Korean Peninsula and Russia,” 

International Affairs, Moscow, Vol. 49, No. 1, 2003, p. 28. 

51. Wishnick, “Russian-North Korean Relations: A New Era?”

52. See C. S. Eliot Kang, “Japan in Inter-Korean Relations,” in 

Samuel S. Kim, ed., Inter-Korean Relations: Problems and Prospects, 

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 99-101. 

53. The rice would have come from Tokyo’s own reserves of 

Japanese rice, which at the time was 12 times more expensive than 

Thai or Chinese rice. The total value amounted to 120 billion yen, 

more than $1 billion.

54. Victor Cha, “Japan-Korea Relations: Ending 2000 with a 

Whimper, Not a Bang,” Comparative Connections, 2001, pp. 88-93, 

available at www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/0401q.pdf. 

55. Selig Harrison, “Did North Korea Cheat?” Foreign Affairs, 

Vol. 84, No. 1, 2005, pp. 99–110. 

56. David Kang, “Japan: U.S. Partner or Focused on Abductees?” 

The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2005, p. 107.

57. Hong Nack Kim, “Japanese-North Korean Relations Under 

the Koizumi Government,” in Hong Nack Kim and Young Whan 

Kihl, eds., North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival, Armonk, 

NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006, pp. 161-182. 

58. For the mercantile realism interpretation of Japan’s foreign 

policy, see Eric Heginbotham and Richard Samuels, “Mercantile 

Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy,” International Security, Vol. 

22, No. 4, 1998, pp. 171–203. For a greater elaboration of the logic 
108

of mercantile realism, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World 

Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 

59. Kang, “Japan in Inter-Korean Relations.”

60. For a comprehensive discussion of the 1994 nuclear crisis, 

see Leon Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North 

Korea, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998; Young 

Whan Kihl and Peter Hayes, Peace and Security in Northeast Asia: 

The Nuclear Issue and the Korean Peninsula, Armonk, NY: M. E. 

Sharpe, 1997.

61. The satellite system was billed as “multipurpose” and was 

not included in the official defense budget. The decision to acquire 

the satellites required the Japanese government to override a 

Diet resolution of 1969 that limited the use of space technology 

to nonmilitary activities. Two satellites were launched in March 

2003. Kang, “Japan in Inter-Korean Relations,” p. 107.

62. It has come to light recently that Japan had contemplated 

possible preemptive strikes against North Korean military sites in 

1994. Ibid., p. 107. 

63. Ibid., p. 108. 

64. “Japan Intervention in Nuclear Issue ‘Ineffective’—North 

Korean Radio,” BBC-AAIW, January 27, 2003. 

65. The Asahi Shimbun, April 21, 2006, available at www.asahi.

com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200604210152.html.

66. Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Bluebook, 2004, 

Tokyo: Government of Japan, available at www.mofa.go.jp/policy/

other/bluebook/2004/index.html.

67. Tsuneo Akaha, “Japan’s Policy Toward North Korea: 

Interests and Options,” in Tsuneo Akaha, ed., The Future of North 

Korea, New York: Routledge 2002, pp. 77–94.

68. Richard Samuels, “Payback Time: Japan-North Korea 

Economic Relations,” in Ahn Choong-yong, Nicholas Eberstadt, 

and Lee Young-sun, eds., A New International Engagement 

Framework for North Korea? Contending Perspectives, Washington, 

DC: Korean Economic Institute of America, 2004, p. 324. 

69. Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Economic Power and Security: 

Japan and North Korea, New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 133.

70. See Michael H. Armacost and Kenneth B. Pyle, “Japan and 

the Unification of Korea: Challenges for U.S. Policy Coordination,” 
109

in Nicholas Eberstadt and Richard J. Ellings, eds., Korea’s Future 

and the Great Powers, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 

2001, p. 128.

71. Samuels, “Payback Time: Japan-North Korea Economic 

Relations,” p. 319.

72. Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Economic Power and Security: 

Japan and North Korea New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 132.

73. Mark E. Manyin, “Japan-North Korean Relations: Selected 

Issues,” Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 

November 26, 2003; Samuels, “Payback Time: Japan-North Korea 

Economic Relations,” p. 320. 

74. The Japan Times, June 30, 2003.

75. The Tokyo Shimbun, November 25, 2003.

76. Xinhua News Agency, “DPRK Slashes Japan’s Foreign 

Exchange Bill,” January 31, 2004. 

77. Kim, “Japanese-North Korean Relations Under the Koizumi 

Government.” 

78. Samuels, “Payback Time: Japan-North Korea Economic 

Relations,” pp. 331-332. 

79. The Age, Melbourne, June 25, 2003.

80. See Robert Manning, “United States-North Korean 

Relations: From Welfare to Workfare?” in Samuel S. Kim and 

Tai Hwan Lee, eds., North Korea and Northeast Asia, Lanham, MD: 

Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, pp. 61–88.

81. Testimony of Mark Minton, director of the Office of 

Korean Affairs, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 

Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Washington, DC, 

September 12, 1996. 

82. Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, 

Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, Washington, 

DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004, p. 27. This book, written 

by three American participants, easily stands out as the most 

authoritative and comprehensive account of the first North Korean 

nuclear crisis. Wit was in the State Department and Poneman 

with the National Security Council, while Gallucci was American 

chief negotiator in Geneva during the first North Korean nuclear 

crisis. 

83. The Pyongyang Times, June 18, 1994, p. 2. 
110

84. The figure of 50 to 100 nuclear weapons is Perry’s 

extrapolation. See William J. Perry, “It’s Either Nukes or 

Negotiation,” Washington Post, July 23, 2003, p. A23. 

85. Rodong Sinmun [Worker’s Daily], December 1, 1994. 

86. See “Nuclear Nonproliferation—Implications of the U.S./

North Korean Agreement on Nuclear Issues,” GAO Report to the 

Chairman, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. 

Senate, October 1996, GAO/RCED/NSIAD-97-8. 

87. William Perry, “Review of United States Policy Toward 

North Korea: Findings and Recommendations,” October 12, 1999, 

available at www.state.gov/www/regions/eap/991012_northkorea_

rpt.html. 

88. KCNA, February 22, 2001.

89. Ibid., June 18, 2001. 

90. See Bruce B. Auster and Kevin Whitelaw, “Upping the 

Ante for Kim Jong Il: Pentagon Plan 5030, A New Blueprint for 

Facing Down North Korea,” U.S. News & World Report, July 21, 

2003, p. 21.

91. Jonathan D. Pollack, “The United States, North Korea, and 

the End of the Agreed Framework,” Naval War College Review,

Vol. 56, No. 3, 2003, pp. 11–49.

92. Quoted in David Sanger, “Intelligence Puzzle: North 

Korean Bombs,” New York Times, October 14, 2003, p. A9.

93. Charles Pritchard, “A Guarantee to Bring Kim into Line,” 

The Financial Times, October 10, 2003. 

94. Public Broadcast Service interview, Washington, DC, 

September 17, 1999, as provided by NAPSNet, September 30, 1999, 

available at www.nautilus.org/napsnet/dr/9909/Sep20.html#item4. 

95. KCNA, August 29, 2003.

96. “Bush’s Hard Line with North Korea,” New York Times,

February 14, 2002. 

97. CBS News, “Powell: U.S.—N. Korea Nuclear Deal Dead,” 

October 20, 2002, available at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/21/

world/main526243.shtml.

98. See KCNA, “Conclusion of Nonaggression Treaty between 

DPRK and U.S. Called For,” October 25, 2002, available at www.

kcna.co.jp/item/2002/200210/news10/25.htm, accessed November 22, 

2005. See also Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, Crisis on 
111

the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear North Korea, New 

York: McGraw-Hill, 2003, for a “grand bargain” proposal from an 

American perspective.

99. See KCNA, “Keynote Speeches Made at Six-way Talks,” 

August 29, 2003, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2003/200308/

news08/30.htm. 

100. Agence France-Presse, “US Seeks Partners for Multilateral 

Security Pact with North Korea,” October 11, 2003.

101. KCNA, October 25, 2003, available at www.kcna.co.jp/

item/2003/200310/news10/27.htm.

102. For an English text of the DPRK Ministry of Foreign 

Affairs statement of February 10, 2005, see KCNA, February 10, 

2005, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2005/200502/news0211.htm, 

accessed July 3, 2005.

103. See “N. Korea, U.S. Could Spend More Time Alone 

Together,” Chosun IIbo, July 10, 2005.

104. See Donald G. Gross, “U.S.-Korea Relations: The SixParty Talks: What Goes Up Can Also Come Down,” Comparative 

Connections, Vol. 7, No. 4, January 2006, p. 44. 

105. Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea: Pushing North 

Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, New York: Nation Books, 

2004, p. 150. For a similar analysis of U.S. nuclear hegemony in 

Korea, see Peter Hayes, “American Nuclear Hegemony in Korea,” 

Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1988, pp. 351–364; Jae-Jung 

Suh, “Imbalance of Power, Balance of Asymmetric Terror: Mutual 

Assured Destruction (MAD) in Korea,” in John Feffer, ed., The 

Future of U.S.-Korean Relations, New York: Routledge, 2006. pp. 

64-80. 

106. See Nicholas Eberstadt, “U.S.-North Korea Economic 

Relations: Indications from North Korea’s Past Trade 

Performance,” in Tong Whan Park, ed., The U.S. and the Two 

Koreas: A New Triangle, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998, p. 121. 

107. For a more detailed analysis, see Samuel S. Kim, ed., 

Inter-Korean Relations: Problems and Prospects, New York: Palgrave 

Macmillan, 2004.

108. Young Shik Yang, “Kim Dae-jung Administration’s North 

Korea Policy,” Korea Focus, Vol. 6, No. 6, 1998, p. 48.

109. Roland Bleiker, Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of 

Reconciliation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, 

p. xliii.
112

110. For a full English text, see Yonhap News Agency, March 

9, 2000.

111. Article III(3) of the 1994 U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework 

stipulates: “The DPRK will engage in North-South dialogue, 

as this Agreed Framework will help create an atmosphere that 

promotes such dialogue.”

112. Rodong Sinmun [Worker’s Daily], Pyongyang, June 25, 2000, 

p. 6, emphasis added.

113. For the theory of classical functionalism espousing a 

gradual “peace by pieces” welfare-oriented approach to world 

order, see David Mitrany, A Working Peace System, Chicago: 

Quadrangle Books, 1966 [originally published in 1943 as a 

pamphlet].

114. Chung-in Moon, “Sustaining Inter-Korean Reconciliation: 

North-South Korea Cooperation,” Joint U.S.-Korea Academic 

Studies, Vol. 12, 2002, pp. 231–232.

115. See Samuel S. Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, 

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, Table 6.2, pp. 322-

324.

116. Charles K. Armstrong, “Inter-Korean Relations: A North 

Korean Perspective,” in Inter-Korean Relations, p. 40.

117. Joint New Year Editorial of Rodong Sinmun, Joson 

Immingun, Chongnyong Jonwi, “Let Us Fully Demonstrate the 

Dignity and Might of the DPRK Under the Great Banner of Armybased Policy,” January 1, 2003 at www.kcna.comjp/item2003/200301/

news01/01.htm.

118. For a detailed analysis, see Samuel S. Kim and Matthew 

S. Winters, “Inter-Korean Economic Relations,” in Inter-Korean 

Relations, pp. 57-80.

119. James W. Brooke, “Quietly, North Korea Opens Markets,” 

New York Times, November 19, 2003, pp. W1, W7.

120. Ministry of Unification, Tong’il paekso 2005 [Unification 

White Paper 2005], Seoul: Ministry of Unification, February 2005.

121. See Kim and Winters, “Inter-Korean Economic Relations,” 

pp. 72-75. 

122. John Feffer, “Korea’s Slow-Motion Reunification,” Policy 

Forum Online 05-53A: June 28, 2005, available at www.nautilus.

org/fora/security/0553Feffer.html.
113

123. See Andrew Mack, “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: 

The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict,” World Politics, Vol. 27, No. 

2, 1975, pp. 175–200; T. V. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation 

by Weaker Powers, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994; 

Thomas Christensen, “Posing Problems Without Catching Up: 

China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy,” International 

Security, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2001, pp. 5–40.

124. Ivan Arreguin-Toft, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory 

of Asymmetric Conflict,” International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1, 

2001, pp. 93–128.

125. Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature 

of International Crisis, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1981, pp. 57–97.

126. William Habeeb argues that “issue-specific structural 

power is the most critical component of power in asymmetrical 

negotiation.” William Habeeb, Power and Tactics in International 

Negotiation: How Weak Nations Bargain with Strong Nations, 

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, pp. 21, 130. 

127. Pastor, “The Great Powers in the Twentieth Century,” p. 

27.

128. Ronald P. Barston, “The External Relations of Small States,” 

in August Schou and Arne Olav Brundtland, eds., Small States in 

International Relations, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiskell, 1971, p. 

46; and Habeeb, Power and Tactics in International Negotiation, pp. 

130–131.

129. Peter Hayes, Pacific Powderkeg: American Nuclear Dilemmas 

in Korea, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1991, p. xiv.

130. A 1995 RAND Corporation study concluded that there 

existed a “medium likelihood” of North Korea launching an 

attack against South Korea out of desperation. In such a case, there 

would be a “high likelihood” of the use of chemical weapons by 

the North. New York Times, January 28, 1996, p. 10.

131. Scott Snyder, “North Korea’s Challenge of Regime 

Survival: Internal Problems and Implications for the Future,” 

Pacific Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, Winter 2000/2001, p. 522.

132. President Roh’s Address at the 53rd Commencement 

and Commissioning Ceremony of the Korea Air Force Academy, 

March 8, 2005, available at english.president.go,kr/warp/app/en_

speeches/view?group_id=en_ar...
114

133. Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive Defense: 

A New Security Strategy for America, Washington, DC: Brookings 

Institution Press, 1999, pp. 123–124. A footnote for this statement 

explains that Ashton Carter was not present for the meeting 

referred to here, so Perry “tells this story himself,” p. 123.

134. Rodong Sinmun, June 1, 2000, p. 6.

135. Byung Chul Koh, The Foreign Policy Systems of North and 

South Korea, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 

42–43.

136. Marcus Noland, Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the 

Two Koreas, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 

2000, pp. 3-4.

137. Eui-gak Hwang, The Korean Economies, Oxford: Clarendon 

Press, 1993, Table 5.4.

138. See Rodong Sinmun [Workers’ Daily], Pyongyang, May 27, 

1991; February 4, 1992; October 10, 1993; and March 4, 1993.

139. See Marcus Noland, “North Korea’s External Economic 

Relations: Globalization in ‘Our Own Style’,” in Samuel S. Kim 

and Tai Hwan Lee, eds., North Korea and Northeast Asia, Lanham, 

MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, pp. 165–193.

140. World Bank, World Development Report 1991: The Challenge 

of Development, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 12, 

Figure 1.1. 

141. Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Report: South 

Korea and North Korea, 1st Quarter, 1999, p. 40. 

142. North Korean News, No. 702, September 27, 1993, p. 5. 

143. AFP, July 16, 1999.

144. See “21 seki nun koch’anghan chonpyon ui seki, ch’angcho ui 

seki ita” (“The Twenty-First Century Is a Century of Great Change 

and Great Creation”), Rodong Sinmun [Worker’s Daily], January 

4, 2001, p. 2; “Motun muncherul saeroun kwanchom kwa noppieso 

poko pulo nakacha” (“Let Us See and Solve All Problems from a 

New Viewpoint and a New Height”), editorial, Rodong Sinmun 

[Worker’s Daily], January 9, 2001, p. 1.

145. James Cotton, “The Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone 

Experiment: North Korea in Pursuit of New International 

Linkage,” in Samuel S. Kim, ed., North Korean Foreign Relations in 

the Post-Cold War Era, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 

pp. 212–234.
115

146. See Marcus Noland, “Economic Strategies for 

Reunification,” in Nicholas Eberstadt and Richard J. Ellings, eds., 

Korea’s Future and the Great Powers, Seattle: The National Bureau 

of Asian Research and University of Washington Press, 2001, pp. 

191–228.

147. See Marcus Noland, “Famine and Reform in North 

Korea,” Institute for International Economics Working Paper, WP 

03–5, July 2003. 

148. Meredith Jung-en Woo, “North Korea in 2005: Maximizing 

Profit to Save Socialism,” Asian Survey, Vol. 46, No. 1, January/

February 2006, pp. 51-52.

149. Scott Snyder, “China-Korea Relations: Kim Jong-il Pays 

Tribute to Beijing—In His Own Way,” Comparative Connections 

First Quarter, 2006, pp. 110-111.

150. It is worth noting in this connection that the September 19 

Joint Statement embodied many key elements that North Korea 

had first proposed but China emphasized in the Chairman’s 

Statements of the second and third rounds of talks, including most 

notably Principle 5. It states that “the six parties agreed to take 

coordinated steps to implement the aforementioned consensus in 

a phased manner in line with the principle of ‘commitment for 

commitment, action for action’.”

151. Georgy Bulychev, “A Long-Term Strategy for North 

Korea,” Japan Focus, February 15, 2005, available at japanfocus.org/

article.asp?id=222. 

152. In a similar vein, Robert Litwak argues that it is regime 

intention more than regime type that is the critical indicator of 

a country’s decision to go nuclear. See Robert Litwak, “NonProliferation and the Dilemmas of Regime Change,” Survival, Vol. 

45, No. 4, Winter 2003, p. 11.