DEVELOPMENTS

When Laura Ling and Euna Lee flew back from 140 days of imprisonment in North Korea, it was hard not to feel elated and perhaps even hopeful for peaceful engagement with North Korea in the future.  Days later, North Korea released a South Korean worker who’d been held at the Kaesong Industrial Complex.  North Korea then announced that it would loosen border restrictions with South Korea, and Kim Jong Il made an announcement that North Korea would maintain strong relations with China.  And after a year of saber-rattling, he regime also said in late July that it would return to nuclear talks.

But do these positive signs necessarily point to an about face in North Korea’s foreign policy?  Given North Korea’s track record of tumultuous foreign policy practices, there is reason to suspect that these recent shifts more reflect its fluctuating short-term interests rather than a fundamental change of heart by the regime.

BACKGROUND

This past year, North Korea has repeatedly upped the nuclear ante, launching a long-range test missile in April and conducting another nuclear test in May.  The regime has maintained its usual feisty bluster, whether through ostentatiously building up its military to protest U.S. and South Korean joint military exercises, threatening the Japanese, or exchanging insults with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Recently, however, the North Korean government has alternated its typical hard-line rhetoric with some conciliatory gestures. This has included freeing of two U.S. journalists and a South Korean industrial worker, loosening some of its stringent border restrictions with South Korea, as well as reiterating its commitment to maintain good relations with China. Most importantly, it has meant recently announcing it will return to talks about its nuclear weapons program.

But does this change in tone reflect an actual change in North Korea’s policy?  Some have instead argued that these gestures reflect worsening internal conditions that have made the regime more dependent on outside aid and ties.

North Koreans are feeling the economic crunch, and much of its population is desperate for aid.  Since 2008, the North Korean economy has been hit hard by significant cutbacks in food, fertilizer and monetary support. The cash-strapped country has also felt the bite of UN sanctions intended to curb the country’s arms trade. Torrential rains this summer have further exacerbated the country’s economic hardship by significantly damaging farmland, which can barely feed North Korea’s 23 million citizens in a successful harvest.  Even the sale of banned goods, a significant source of livelihood for

many North Koreans, has declined significantly after domestic crackdowns and tightened market controls. Yet one of the clearest signs that North Korea’s diplomatic truculence was hurting its economic viability was that China, a major source of financial, energy and food support, began regulating North Korean exports and banning shipments of metals that could be allocated for military use as well as restricting food exports to North Korea. According to anecdotal accounts by locals in the Sino-North Korean border area, conditions in North Korea are reportedly so poor that Chinese border villages have actually been instructed to help starving North Korean refugees who cross the border,  a stark change from the previous policy of refugee crackdowns and deportations.

The country is clearly plunged in economic crisis, and its political future after Kim Jong Il is just as uncertain.  The enervated North Korean dictator, who suffered a debilitating stroke last year and may be suffering from pancreatic cancer, may be struggling to consolidate his own power and shore up support for a succession scenario that would put his son Kim Jung Un at the helm.

Power transitions in general can be politically dangerous, and Kim Jong Un’s youth and lack of experience render this succession particularly risky.  Hong Jung-wook, a member of South Korea’s ruling Grand National Party, recently suggested that the surge in recent hostility from North Korea’s missile and nuclear activity may indicate that there is a tumultuous transition underway. North Korea expert Dr. Samuel Kim has suggested that Kim Jong Il’s demise may result in a power struggle among North Korea’s powerful military elite, which could ultimately put a more hard line leadership in power.  The relative inexperience of Kim Jong Il’s 26-year-old son have caused many Korea watchers and intelligence officials to wonder whether the young heir apparent will have the authority and know-how to navigate and lead or he will be ousted by in a plot to undermine the succession.

With such ambiguity clouding North Korea’s political future and potentially weakening Kim Jong Il’s political power, Bill Clinton’s visit was exactly what Kim Jong Il was looking for.  The fact that North Korea would not accept other prominent U.S. politicians to envoy shows that Kim Jong Il indeed intended the visit to have political, not humanitarian, ends.  Demanding a high-profile former U.S.  president to visit North Korea was intended to send a strong message to Pyongyang’s ruling elite that Kim Jong Il remained powerful and relevant as a leader.

Though North Korea’s political and economic uncertainty suggests that the country may consider cooperation with the international community, we must still consider North Korea’s checkered past when it comes to nuclear negotiations.  It is possible that the regime is feigning steps toward cooperation in order to buy itself time to build a bomb from its existing fissile material.  North Korea experts and individuals in the South Korean government have feared that the regime might secretly be focusing instead on expanding its highly enriched uranium program, which it could keep undetectable from U.S. spy satellites. There have already been reports that Iranian nuclear experts have been invited to the country to observe missile tests, and North Korea has shared information on their nuclear tests.  Developing its highly enriched uranium program would create more opportunities for the regime to work hand in hand with other nuclear-seeking regimes such as Iran.  The latter option is possibly the more attractive for an increasingly cash-strapped regime, and it is also precisely what the international community wants to avoid: North Korea trading its uranium metallurgy capabilities for Iran’s uranium technology and expertise, with the end result of two nuclear rogue regimes.

ANALYSIS

Pyongyang has a choice.  It can choose to take verifiable steps toward denuclearization or it can continue its ad hoc strategy of building up and cashing in nuclear bargaining chips, at the expense of a real, sustainable long-term strategy.  The regime is also placed in the complex position of needing to reassert its autonomy and not showing weakness as it faces a crucial dynastic transition, while ensuring that its desperate need for international aid is met.

Yet, while the recent gestures have more to with the North Korean ruling elite’s short-term need to shore-up its power before it ushers in new leadership, that does not mean the current scenario does not offer opportunities for the U.S. and the rest of the international community.  Intelligence on North Korea remains spotty, since years of isolation during the Bush Administration had the unintentional effect of crippling U.S. knowledge of the inner-workings of the regime.

Thus, even President Clinton’s recent short visit offered an extremely rare opportunity to assess Mr. Kim’s health and to make observations about who seems to be influential in his government. Even these limited firsthand observations can provide valuable insight to the U.S. as it seeks to assess North Korea’s intentions, a task that has always proven difficult.  As Scott Snyder said in an interview with MSNBC: “…[Clinton’s visit] provided the North Korean leadership [with an opportunity] to give a picture of its own view of the world. This is all information that President Clinton will bring back and will be digested by the Obama administration.”

If sustained, North Korea’s recent gestures to the international community are likely to result in increased international contact with its regime.  For North Korea, this is likely to result in the increased international aid that it craves to preserve its system of governance. For the U.S. and others in the international community, this increased diplomatic contact creates an opportunity for intelligence gathering at a historical inflection point in North Korea’s political future, while opening up an opportunity for further communication and engagement with the isolationist regime.  Though it’s important to balance our optimism with caution when it comes to assessing North Korea’s intentions, it’s clear that the latest overtures are small but necessary steps that bring us closer to a world free from North Korea’s nuclear threat.

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Jung Hwa Song is Asia Regional Editor for Foreign Policy Digest.

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