EAI Asia Security Initiative Working Paper No. 19

Author

Chun, Chaesung is a Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations in Seoul National University. He is now a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo. He is also a director of Asian Security Initiative of East Asian Institute. He is a member of Advisory Committee for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Ministry of Reunification. He received his MA degree from the Seoul National University, and Ph.D degree from Northwestern University in the field of International Relations Theory. Major fields include international relations theory, security studies, South Korean Foreign policy, East Asian security relations. Major articles include “A Study on the Forma-tion of European Modern States System,” “Critique of constructivism from the perspective of postmodernism and realism,” “The Rise of New Powers and the Responding Strategies of Other Countries.”

I. Introduction

After the Cold War ended and the former Soviet bloc broke down, North Korea’s rival, South Korea, established diplomatic relations with the former Soviet Union and China, which put North Korea on a difficult journey for survival. Witnessing long-standing communist regimes that had worked alongside Pyongyang to construct socialism helplessly collapse or change over from communism under external pressure or pressure by the people, North Korea found itself in a desperately dangerous situation in which it had to sustain its socialist system and regime, and worry about not just a transition but an absorbed unification by the South.

With the fall of the socialist bloc, the U.S.-led liberal democratic bloc’s development accelerated even further. In the post–Cold War environment, not only the new structure of power but also the development of the massive trends of globalization, information proliferation, and democratization confirmed socialism to be a system lacking the open, democratic, and creative qualities it needed to cope with these changes. In addition, liberal democracy developed in tandem with a market economy. At the same time, as the United States, who was the longtime adversary of North Korea, built an unrivaled hegemony with unprecedented qualities of leadership, North Korea felt ever more threatened.

The Kim Il-sung regime, which was searching for a survival strategy throughout 1991 and 1992, stirred up the first nuclear crisis in 1993, and the Kim Jong-il regime that followed in 1994 tried to escape its post–Cold War crisis by freezing its nuclear program but firmly promoting military-first politics. In the process, North Korea focused on aligning its internal system and strove to provide an opportunity for economic development, on the one hand, while concentrating on creating a diplomatic environment in which North Korea could survive on a long-term basis, on the other. On the basis of its bilateral diplomatic relationship with the United States that was arranged after the first North Korean nuclear crisis, North Korea tried to put an end to the so-called “United States’ hostile policy toward North Korea” while it sought to strengthen its self-defense capacity based on military power that revolved around military-first politics. In regards to South Korea, Pyongyang, while keeping itself from an absorbed unification, utilized Seoul’s engagement policy to secure practical interests for the sake of future regime development.

Also, by improving relations with neighboring states such as China, Russia, and Japan, North Korea attempted to maximize economic and diplomatic support from them. At the same time, it established diplomatic relations with non-Asian states, including those in Europe, and pursued a practical diplomatic doctrine that could have economic and diplomatic benefits, even if only partially.

However, facing a more conservative U.S. foreign policy and the anti-terrorism campaign after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, North Korea found itself in a much more unfavorable diplomatic situation. Eventually, in October 2002, the outbreak of the second North Korean nuclear crisis signaled that North Korea was reverting back to the rigid nuclear military-first diplomacy centered on its nuclear program and nuclear weapons. Within the framework of the Six-Party Talks, sporadic attempts to discuss North Korean abandonment of its nuclear program with accompanying economic aid continued, but North Korea did not have the strategic option of abandoning its nuclear program. Its neighbor states’ security guarantees failed to satisfy its insecurities, and thus the North Korean problem based on the nuclear weapons issue is still going in circles without much progress.

The North Korean nuclear program is not a nuclear weapons issue but a question of the survival of North Korea as a political entity. North Korean nuclear weapons diplomacy is also not about nuclear weapons but about its survival and the overall political system based on military-first priorities. As long as North Korea’s nuclear military-first diplomacy and military-first political system interact reciprocally, the individual evolution of North Korean diplomacy is impossible. And if North Korea’s politics, economy, military, society, and other areas do not evolve in tandem, neither will its diplomacy.

Furthermore, North Korea’s evolution without outside support cannot fulfill the goals that are desired. Neighboring states’ foreign policy toward Pyongyang must also evolve at the same time to support and strengthen North Korea’s domestic forces that advocate for such advancement. North Korea and its neighboring countries’ coevolution will alleviate North Korea’s political concerns and, in the long run, create diplomatic agreements on and action plans for North Korea’s role in Northeast Asia.

This working paper predicts that if North Korea pursues nuclear military-first diplomacy in order to support its “strong and prosperous state” policy, it cannot survive as a normal and developed state in the international community. North Korea must make a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear program and revive as a truly developed state, meeting twenty-first-century global standards. In order to achieve this status, the evolution of both North Korea’s political system and its diplomacy must work simultaneously. Moreover, North Korea’s evolution should be supported by the evolution of neighboring states’ North Korea policy. I first examine the development of North Korean diplomacy, and analyze why North Korea’s military-first diplomacy will inevitably fail. Then, I introduce the three steps of diplomatic evolution for North Korea, and through a discussion of the coevolution process of it and its neighboring states, explore the possibility of whether its overall system can lead to a normal and developed future.

II. Components and Evaluation of Diplomatic Strategy in the Military-First Era

1. Components of Diplomatic Strategy

Diplomacy in the military-first era has the strategic goal of serving the strategic purpose of military-first politics. Military-first politics, which has made the military the most important pillar of the regime while it promoted the militarization of the overall society, is a method to maintain and further strengthen the survival capacity of the North Korean socialist regime after the end of the Cold War. Therefore, diplomacy in the military-first era, or, in other words, military-first diplomacy, aims to guarantee the survival of North Korea’s “Great Leader”–centered socialist regime and focuses on creating a diplomatic environment in which North Korea can eventually become a “strong and prosperous state.” As the authority and power of the military have been reinforced, the status and influence of the military in the decision-making process of foreign policy have only increased. Pyongyang, in deciding on its method of enforcing foreign policy, has frequently resorted to military action. Its decision to develop nuclear weapons to use them as an important diplomatic tool can also be understood as one product of the military-first political system.

This argument about North Korea’s military-first politics is closely related to its evaluation of the situation of the international community and the direction of future foreign policy. In other words, this discussion analyzes the environment of military-first politics while finding the “fundamental questions arising in today’s world” from the international political environment. North Korea proclaims the goal of its foreign policy as “protecting and adhering to Juche [Self-reliant] socialism, the bastion of global socialism, from the allied forces of imperialism, and completing Juche achievements.” (Kang 2002, 7-8) Additional explanations of this statement read “as long as imperialism exists on the face of the Earth and the schemes of aggression by imperialists continue, we cannot submit to such forces. The ultimate triumph of Juche achievements can only be accomplished by unrelenting fights. Also, the fundamental spirit of military-first ideology is to fully invoke military, political and economic power to fight to the end against the imperialists who try to crush Juche ideology. Through this process, we shall independently build a new peaceful society based on the dynamic spirit of military-first ideology.” (Kang 2002, 15) Such statements show the direction of North Korea’s diplomatic strategy.

Military-first diplomacy more specifically comprises (1) securing a survival environment through strengthening military deterrence and negotiations with the United States, (2) practical diplomacy for acquiring economic resources, and (3) diplomacy with South Korea in which North Korea, in the name of unification strategy, acquires the necessary diplomatic resources to secure economic aid and an environment in which it can survive. On this survival environment, North Korea asserts that “only a strong military response to the hostile imperialist forces, that only pursue wars of aggression, can lead to peace.” It also states that “it is military-first politics that will provide the peaceful environment necessary for our nation’s unification.” (Kang 2002, 268) Moreover, on acquiring economic aid, it explains that “when our republic suffered an unprecedented food crisis and energy shortage that damaged our overall economy because of U.S. economic sanctions and their schemes using military pressure, military-first politics was the force that drove the military to be the primary actor that vitalized the overall economy.” It also explains that there is a need to “make the military the main force and mightily construct overarching socialism.” (Chun 2004, 32) On its strategy toward South Korea, it argues that “military-first politics is the strongest measure of unification our generation can use to realize our nation’s long-cherished wish for unification.” It further states that “military-first politics finds its meaning in that it hinders the United States’ attempts at wars of aggression and thus provides the fundamental setting for a peaceful environment for our nation’s unification.” It asserts that “this is all because military-first politics is a political method that provides deterrence [in] preventing war on the Korean Peninsula.”

Such military-first politics is also implied in the revised constitution of North Korea. In the Eighth Constitution revised on September 5, 1998, the expression “Marxism-Leninism” in Article 4 of the Seventh Revised Constitution was deleted. The phrase “repel foreign powers on a national scale” of Article 5 was deleted as well. Moreover, in the Eighth Revised Constitution, Article 17, “autonomy, peace, amity” were set as the goals of foreign policy and at the same time, the diplomatic stance was based on “our own version of socialism and strengthening of international solidarity based on autonomy.” The fundamental direction of North Korean diplomacy has thus shifted from (1) revolutionary diplomacy to practical diplomacy, (2) from diplomacy focused on “liberating the South” to a protectionist diplomacy to maintain the North Korean socialist regime, (3) from encampment diplomacy to nonalignment diplomacy in the short run and to open diplomacy in the long run, and (4) from a self-reliant diplomacy between China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War to inducement diplomacy due to Sino-Soviet détente.

Such fundamental diplomatic orientations of Pyongyang clearly differ from its diplomatic strategies during the Cold War period. The Korean Workers’ Party code and the former socialist constitution stipulate that “the immediate purpose of [the] Korean Workers’ Party is to achieve complete socialist victory in the Northern part of the Republic and [finish] national liberation and the historic task of the people’s democracy revolution on a national scale. The ultimate goal is to penetrate Juche ideology across the entire society and [construct] a communist society” (Preamble of the code). For this goal, North Korea adopted a platform to strengthen the three main revolution capabilities and increase diplomatic relations within the socialist bloc and the Third World through strong ties to the Soviet Union. The one continuity is that amid the lack of evidence that North Korea has given up on communist unification, it has not given up the political intention to put the entire Korean Peninsula under its influence by measures other than war. As Hak Soon Paik has pointed out, “In the historical, psychological, and substantial space of the ‘Korean Peninsula,’ the essence of North Korea’s strategy, to win the competition between the two Koreas and secure a monopolized authority over the entire peninsula to build a unified nation, has not changed.” (Paik 2003, 150)

The core goal of military-first diplomacy was diplomatic relations with the United States. Immediately after the end of the Cold War, North Korea focused on negotiating with the United States, and between December 1988 and December 1992, it pushed forward advisor-level diplomatic contacts in Beijing twenty-eight times (Kim 2002, 149-151). However, as North Korea realized that the required factors for its survival were increasingly lacking, it decided on walking the path of military-first diplomacy and then launched the first nuclear crisis in March 1993. Afterward, by agreeing to freeze its nuclear program in the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework between Washington and Pyongyang, North Korea tried to make diplomatic room for its survival for the time being. After going through the first nuclear crisis and signing the Agreed Framework, the bilateral relationship between the United States and North Korea began, and until the DPRK-U.S. Joint Communiqué under the Clinton administration in 2000, desperate efforts to improve U.S.-DPRK relations, known as the “Geneva Agreed Framework system,” continued for eight years. This relationship then experienced a year-long lull after the Bush administration came into office. In 2002, with the outbreak of the second nuclear crisis, this bilateral relationship entered the era of the Six-Party Talks, but without an effective breakthrough, it stagnated.

North Korea, based on its nuclear program, proceeded with its military-first diplomacy while trying to sign a peace treaty with the United States and to create the military and diplomatic environment necessary for its survival. After the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework, U.S.-DPRK relations showed partial progress. On January 12, 1995, the U.S. State Department announced that it would ease the sanctions on North Korea, allow business and travel between the United States and the DPRK, grant permission to North Koreans to use U.S. finance institutions, and engage in the importation of magnesite from North Korea. During this process, North Korea continually emphasized the signing of a U.S.-DPRK peace treaty. While demanding the conclusion of a peace treaty, North Korea took measures such as expelling the delegation of the Czech Republic in 1993, establishing Panmunjom representatives of the Korean People's Army in 1994, and pulling out North Korean representatives from the Panmunjom Military Armistice Commission, to jeopardize the armistice system. The Four-Party Talks were held in March 1997, but after six talks ending in June 1998, the Four-Party Talks ceased due to North Korea’s refusal to participate. This was the result of North Korea’s repeated argument that the U.S.-DPRK peace treaty must be signed first...(Continued)