Confronting the Nuclear Challenge
North Korea’s Ambitions and Regional Strategies

North Korea’s Strategic Choices amid Shifting Geopolitics

Jenny Town

The Gathering Storm: A Confluence of North Korea’s Looming Crises

Chung Min Lee

The United States and North Korea: New Threats, New Challenges, and the Need for New Resolve

Evans J.R. Revere

Grappling with Great-Power Competition: China Bandwagons with Petulant North Korea

Andrew Scobell

Going Tactical: North Korea and Two-State Theory in War Strategy

Hideya Kurata

The Korean Peninsula’s New Geopolitics: Why North Korea Is Shifting toward an Alliance with Russia

Artyom Lukin

Introduction

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has ratcheted up its saber-rattling alarmingly over the past few years. It has labeled the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) a hostile state to be subjugated by war, increased testing of ballistic missiles, adopted a war-focused posture, and warmed ties with Russia, culminating in a new comprehensive strategic partnership agreement between Pyongyang and Moscow in June 2024. More than ever, North Korea has the potential to be disruptive in an already-fraught geopolitical environment. Amid the crescendo of security challenges, the question remains: what to do about North Korea? This Asia Policy roundtable contains six essays that examine the current state of the challenges North Korea poses to regional and global security from different vantage points.

Jenny Town opens the roundtable with a reminder that the North Korea nuclear issue cannot be solved in isolation from broader global realities. Kim Jong-un has demonstrated a canny ability to exploit openings in the geopolitical landscape and to play the major Northeast Asian actors against each other. He used the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic to reset expectations, restore traditional values—including ideological unity and enemy narratives—and recalibrate Pyongyang’s approach. During this period, North Korea became “one of the first countries to embrace the idea of a new cold war emerging.” The clock cannot be set back on its WMD program; instead, Town argues that getting back to a global disarmament agenda will require political leadership from the great powers to look for geopolitical openings and “change the narrative about what makes countries more secure.”

Chung Min Lee next looks at how the growing WMD threat from North Korea is worryingly combining with a convergence of internal threats: an imploding economy, the weakness of ideological indoctrination among the younger generation, the high risks of succession, and Kim Jong-un’s determination to strengthen his WMD inventory at the expense of the economy and North Korean citizens’ well-being. With North Korea teetering on the edge of simultaneous crises, he argues that the effectiveness of the response will depend on who is in power in Seoul and Washington. In Lee’s words, “the United States and South Korea would do well to prioritize planning and preparing for the ‘gathering storm’ that North Korea presents rather than focus on engagement-building and incentives to return to denuclearization negotiations.”

Evans Revere suggests that given current geopolitical challenges, combined with the upcoming fray of elections in the United States, we can expect Pyongyang to “try to keep the United States and its allies off balance.” Revere demonstrates that nuclear weapons are the best support of Pyongyang’s central goal—the security of the Kim family regime—as well as bolster other related ambitions such as weakening the U.S.-ROK alliance and reducing the U.S. military presence on and around the peninsula. With any future efforts at denuclearization negotiations likely to repeat past failures, the United States and its partners must act carefully but determinedly to up the ante for Pyongyang going forward: “since North Korea’s desire for nuclear weapons derives from its belief that these weapons will bring security and ensure regime survival, U.S. policy should focus on convincing the regime that the opposite is true—that is, that nuclear weapons will only bring the regime’s demise closer.”

Andrew Scobell examines the state of North Korea–China relations, noting that “China has tolerated North Korean episodes of saber-rattling and provocations with fluctuating levels of irritation and ire.” But with Pyongyang yo-yoing its relations with Washington and Seoul since summitry in 2018 and 2019, and more recently improving ties to Moscow, Kim seems to have provoked Beijing into a more active relationship. Scobell describes how Chinese leaders are concerned about maintaining China’s influence amid the “thickening relationship between Russia and North Korea”—a vulnerability that North Korea has adroitly exploited. As a result, Scobell argues that “the least bad policy option for Beijing is to bandwagon with small but geostrategically important Pyongyang against its great-power rivals and allies,” which limits the prospect that China will use its influence for any hoped-for positive containment role in North Korea’s nuclear trajectory.

Hideya Kurata addresses North Korea’s nuclear doctrine in its two military strategies: its “war deterrent strategy” and “war strategy.” His essay focuses on the possibility for a conventional armed conflict between North and South Korea that could escalate with the North’s use of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW). He examines statements by Kim and other key figures in the regime that show the elevation of these weapons in North Korea’s concepts of preemption and escalation. Kurata also evaluates Pyongyang’s recent redefinition of South Korea as an enemy and endorsement of a hostile two-state situation on the peninsula. These nuclear and political postures are closely linked, Kurata argues: “The potential for the deployment of TNWs spills over into the realm of national unification. When South Korea is the target of an attack, as Kim Yo-jong suggested in her April 2022 statement, it can be justified by the assertion that the South is no longer part of the same nation as the North.” As North Korea expands and refines its nuclear arsenal, Kurata stresses the importance of the United States, South Korea, and other allies putting a corresponding escalation ladder in place.

Artyom Lukin studies the regional economic and military balances from the perspective of North Korea, noting that the “overall military balance on the peninsula is developing in a direction that is unfavorable to Pyongyang.” He elaborates that “the DPRK’s ability to deal on its own with the emerging external threats and risks is becoming increasingly strained, primarily due to its limited economic and technological base.” Despite a nuclear capability that places South Korea, Japan, and the United States in reach, North Korea faces a worsening economic situation, deteriorating conventional military capabilities, and a significant imbalance in both these areas with South Korea (as well as South Korea’s latency as a nuclear power and coverage by the U.S. nuclear umbrella). These challenges could be making the North Korean regime feel insecure. As a result, Pyongyang is under pressure to find a powerful ally, and “the only possible political-military ally for the DPRK is Russia.” The renewed alliance gives Moscow “a new lever over Washington, Tokyo, and especially Seoul” and offers the promise of defense industrial support. Pyongyang, for its part, gains prestige, formal security guarantees, and a greater opening for transfers of weapons and expertise. However, the limits to and boundaries of the partnership still remain to be seen.

Taken together, the essays in this roundtable point to a new phase in North Korea’s nuclear posturing and highlight key external relationships. The risks posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea have surged and will require new approaches in management focused on containment rather engagement.

Jenny Town is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center and Director of the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North (United States).

Chung Min Lee is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (United States) and Chairman of the International Advisory Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). His forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Hard Choices: Correcting South Korea’s Looming Defence Deficits, will be published by IISS as part of its Adelphi Book series in late fall 2024.

Evans J.R. Revere is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies (United States). A retired senior U.S. diplomat and career Asia hand, he served as acting assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He serves on the Board of Advisors at the National Bureau of Asian Research and is a Senior Advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group.

Andrew Scobell is a Distinguished Fellow with the China Program at the United States Institute of Peace (United States). He is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Hideya Kurata is a Professor in the Department of International Relations at the National Defense Academy of Japan.

Artyom Lukin is Professor and Deputy Director for Research at the Institute of Oriental Studies—School of Regional and International Studies at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok (Russia).