[Global NK Commentary] The Future of the North Korean Nuclear Issue in a Multipolar System

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Changes in the Nature of the North Korean Nuclear Issue in the Post-Unipolar Era

To analyze the changes in U.S. policy toward North Korea today, one must first consider the changes in structural conditions that have occurred between the early post-Cold War period, when the North Korean nuclear issue emerged, and 2022. Two particularly important variables concerning the North Korean issue are the rise of a multipolar system in global power distribution and the fact that North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons has become almost a foregone conclusion.

First, the nature of the North Korean nuclear issue has fundamentally changed as the world has entered a period of transition in global power balance, and North Korea is also shifting its grand strategy in response to the new structural conditions. For the past 30 years of the post-Cold War era, the North Korean nuclear issue was defined as a problem of a rogue state challenging the U.S.-led liberal international order. In other words, North Korea was characterized as a pariah outside the civilized world, violating the standards of civilization and the major norms of the international community established by the United States. From this perspective, the mutuality of the security dilemma inherent in U.S.-North Korea relations was not considered. Because the prevailing view was that North Korea should be punished for violating the norms of the liberal international order, it has not been considered a legitimate negotiating partner. Furthermore, solutions to the problem pursued included economic sanctions and, more actively, regime change.

However, in the process of transitioning to a multipolar system, the essence of the North Korean nuclear issue is shifting from a matter of liberal international norms such as WMD non-proliferation or the preservation of the NPT regime to a certain extent as part of the geopolitical chess game between the U.S. and China. The fact that North Korea resumed the launch of a variety of missiles, including ICBMs, breaking its moratorium since March 2022, and even went so far as to launch ballistic missiles south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) for the first time since the division of the peninsula in November of the same year, yet a UN Security Council resolution condemning it failed to pass due to opposition from China and Russia, was highly symbolic in this regard. It signaled the erosion of non-proliferation norms in the security domain, one of the core elements of the post-war U.S.-led liberal international order, and the emergence of a situation where the logic of great power competition, rather than these norms, is determining the future of the North Korean nuclear issue.

The Kim Jong Un regime itself is also reassessing its problems in the context of the return of great power politics and modifying its strategy, for example, by emphasizing the advent of a "new Cold War" or the "accelerating transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world," and mentioning the need for military buildup in line with changes in the regional military balance beyond the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, as revealed by U.S. intelligence, North Korea is actively seeking to form a new anti-U.S. united front, such as by providing artillery shells to Russia, which is struggling in the war in Ukraine. Thus, the North Korean nuclear issue is not only a matter to be dealt with through sanctions and punishment by the international community, but it is also transforming into an object of conflict and negotiation in the politics of great powers within the East Asian region. North Korea also shows a willingness to actively participate in this geopolitical game by consolidating the alliance of China, North Korea, and Russia, confronting the U.S. and South Korea. In summary, North Korea is likely to confidently carry out various provocative acts in the future, relying on the backing of China and Russia, and even if it conducts a seventh nuclear test, the mechanism of additional sanctions by the UN Security Council may not function properly.

Dim Prospects for North Korean Denuclearization

Second, North Korea not only declared the de facto completion of its nuclear armament in 2017 with a certain amount of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles such as ICBMs, but has also taken a path completely distant from the goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula since the collapse of the Hanoi Summit in early 2019. The "frontal breakthrough struggle" adopted in December 2019 is still ongoing, with a hardline stance actively confronting both South Korea and the United States. In particular, starting with a series of missile tests from early 2022, North Korea has clearly adopted an offensive posture to achieve de facto nuclear-weapon-state status, following its own timetable and without being bound by the promises made during the Trump administration.

For instance, on January 20, 2022, Kim Jong Un instructed to "promptly review the issue of resuming all activities that were temporarily suspended, by comprehensively reconsidering the confidence-building measures taken proactively and preferentially." Then, on March 24, after breaking the moratorium it had imposed on itself by launching the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile again, Kim Jong Un declared on April 25 that "measures to further strengthen and develop our state's nuclear capabilities at the maximum rapid pace will continue to be taken," adding, "While the fundamental mission of our nuclear capabilities is to deter war, if a situation we never desire arises on this land, our nuclear weapons cannot be confined solely to the mission of preventing war." Finally, on September 8, the Supreme People's Assembly adopted the decree "On the Policy of Nuclear Weapons of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," proclaiming a highly aggressive nuclear doctrine to the domestic and international community, implying preemptive nuclear strikes and a "strategy of asymmetric escalation."

In September 2022, Kim Jong Un not only defined nuclear weapons as "state property" in his policy speech to the Supreme People's Assembly, asserting they could not be a "bargaining chip," but also identified the U.S. goal of North Korean diplomacy as regime change. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to expect serious negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea, or between North and South Korea, for the time being. Therefore, North Korea is expected to remain closed off for a while, waiting for regime change in South Korea and the United States on one hand, and on the other hand, accelerating the development and production of essential strategic and tactical means for national security in accordance with the second five-year plan for the defense industry revolution, seeking a favorable position for arms control negotiations rather than denuclearization.

Signs of Change in U.S. Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula?

The official goal of the Biden administration's North Korea policy, announced on April 30, 2021, remains "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." This adheres to the traditional, single-polar era approach to North Korea policy, which involves imposing sanctions and pressure on North Korea, defined as a violator of international security norms from a liberal hegemonic perspective, and inducing North Korea to abandon its nuclear armament through negotiations. However, the Biden era's North Korea policy, dubbed the "calibrated and practical approach," contrary to the boast that it would be a third doctrine surpassing both Trump's and Obama's approaches, appears to be essentially reverting to the "strategic patience" of the previous administration as evaluated at the end of 2022. Above all, the perception that fundamentally categorizes North Korea as an 'other' based on human rights and democracy persists. In reality, due to issues such as strategic competition with China and the war in Ukraine, there is a lack of energy within the U.S. to seriously address the North Korean nuclear issue. Although gestures are repeatedly made to show an open stance of being willing to engage in any dialogue without preconditions, the reality is that there is a lack of concrete incentives to lure Pyongyang into denuclearization negotiations since the collapse of the Hanoi Summit in 2019.

Consequently, Washington, as seen in the U.S.-China summit last November, is resorting to makeshift measures to bypass the issue, criticizing Beijing for neglecting the resolution of the North Korean problem and threatening to deploy more U.S. military assets in the region. However, the Chinese government, in response, argues that the U.S. should consider North Korea's legitimate security concerns. At this point, it is confirmed that in the early 2020s, the North Korean nuclear issue is increasingly being subsumed as a sub-issue of the hegemonic competition between the two superpowers, and the resolution of the problem is becoming more mired in uncertainty.

Amidst these changed strategic conditions, voices calling for new approaches to the North Korean issue are emerging within the U.S., demanding close observation. Particular attention should be paid to the rise of the realist "arms control school." Realists fundamentally view North Korea as an actor within realism, thus possessing a degree of strategic empathy towards North Korea. In other words, they see North Korea as a normal state in a Hobbesian state of anarchy. In that context, nuclear weapons are simply a rational choice for North Korea in a game-theoretic sense, facing a security dilemma. In a typical anarchic situation, both the U.S. and North Korea are entangled in a security dilemma, necessitating negotiations between them.

The realists' solution to the North Korean issue is coexistence, albeit unpleasant, with North Korea possessing nuclear weapons, similar to how they coexisted with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and with China in the post-Cold War era. They believe this situation can be managed through a balance of terror, maintaining a stable second-strike capability. In other words, their position fundamentally advocates for reaching a certain compromise between the U.S. and North Korea. They consider solutions based on post-Cold War liberalism, such as CVID, FFVD, and regime change, to be impossible, and believe policy should be formulated under the premise that North Korea will continue to possess nuclear weapons. This is because they believe that the final and irreversible solution dreamed of by mainstream policymakers is difficult to achieve and may even lead to dangerous situations by provoking rash actions. They also argue that the U.S. must make certain concessions, such as a declaration of peace, to achieve a compromise. This is essentially an argument that North Korea's security dilemma concerns must be alleviated through such measures.

What is noteworthy here is that Bonnie Jenkins, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, stated in October 2022 at a nuclear policy conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that various discussions could be held with North Korea regarding arms control. Under Secretary Jenkins remarked that "arms control can always be an option if both the U.S. and North Korea are willing to sit down and talk," adding, "We can talk to them not only about arms control but also about threat reduction, traditional arms control treaties, and all other elements of arms control." Of course, the State Department immediately dismissed such notions of arms control negotiations the following day through a spokesperson's briefing, emphasizing that there was no change in the U.S. policy goal of "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." However, despite this denial, the fact that discussions on minor approaches such as arms control, moving beyond the denuclearization paradigm of the past 30 years, have publicly emerged in Washington's official circles is a highly significant event, raising the need to closely track and observe how the discourse landscape in Washington regarding North Korea policy evolves in the future. ■

※ This commentary is the Korean translation of "Divining the North Korean Nuclear Problem in a Multipolar World."

■ Cha Tae-seongHe has been an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Sungkyunkwan University since 2018. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Seoul National University's Department of Diplomacy and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University in the United States. He previously worked as a research fellow at the Security Strategy Center of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a full-time lecturer in the Department of Military Strategy at the Air Force Academy, and a full-time researcher at the Institute for National Strategy at Chung-Ang University. His research includes articles on foreign policy and international political theory such as "Whither North Korea? Competing Historical Analogies and the Lessons of the Soviet Case," "Is Anybody Still a Globalist? Rereading the Trajectory of US Grand Strategy and the End of the Transnational Moment," and "Republic or Empire: The Genealogy of the Anti-Imperial Tradition in US Politics."