Tag Archive for: Kim Jong-un

North Korea could be headed (back) towards famine

With the Ukrainian breadbasket’s link to global markets disrupted by the ongoing Russian invasion, global food security has been unusually prominent in the news cycle. Shortly after the invasion began, some analysts were quick to warn against ‘beggar thy neighbour’ food trade restrictions, and the UN World Food Programme recently stated that the war is driving a ‘global food crisis’. Famine looms in a range of countries, including Somalia and Afghanistan, but the growing food insecurity risk in North Korea has attracted surprisingly little renewed coverage.

There has been sporadic reporting since mid-2021 suggesting that serious food shortages were once again emerging in North Korea. State media reporting of a June 2021 Worker’s Party Central Committee meeting quoted the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, saying, ‘The people’s food situation is now getting tense.’ In November, the BBC, citing reports from defectors in South Korea and assessments by Seoul’s National Intelligence Service, commented, ‘There is a concern as winter approaches that the most vulnerable will starve.’

By early this year, based on official statements from the ruling party’s January plenum, the International Crisis Group wrote: ‘Given the concern expressed in the plenum report about farming, we can assume a degree of difficulty for many North Koreans in getting food—either because it is in short supply or because market prices are out of reach for people who have seen their incomes fall.’

It’s difficult to believe that the situation will have improved much in the year to date, but making any assessment at all is difficult. The Covid-19-driven closure of the border between North Korea and China has both contributed to severe food insecurity and made reliable information about the North scarcer than ever. While the bilateral nature of China’s food aid to the North means international observers have difficulty grasping its exact scale, China is widely acknowledged as the most significant source of food imports and food aid for the country.

In May, after North Korea officially reported its first case of the Omicron variant, Foreign Policy observed that the country ‘may be trapped between famine and plague’. The dual challenge of food shortages and pandemic response will have been tough enough for Kim’s regime, but the import ban the regime is reported to have imposed on crucial trade with China can’t have helped matters.

North Korea is heavily sanctioned and therefore in many ways not affected by fluctuations in global markets like the turmoil precipitated by the war in Ukraine, but imports still matter. It has continued to rely on oil imports for a range of agricultural inputs, including fertilisers and diesel, for example. Sanctions have severely restricted the availability of crude oil to the North for some time.

Natural disasters have also played a part in food shortage concerns over the past several years, and recent conditions are cause for concern. The Economist and World Food Programme have noted that snow coverage, a critical factor in North Korea’s agricultural rhythms, was markedly below average in both 2021 and 2022. ‘By the regime’s own admission, this year’s drought is the second-worst since records began in 1981.’

The US national intelligence estimate on climate change, which identifies North Korea as one of the states most vulnerable to climate impacts, suggests its effects should be considered the new normal: ‘North Korea’s poor infrastructure and resource management probably will weaken its ability to cope with increased flooding and droughts, exacerbating the country’s chronic food shortages.’

There are links between famines and political instability, but they are complex, varied and context specific. North Korea has a well-known and tragic history of famines, most notably the deadly 1994–1998 event, which also highlighted the political nature of famines. These events are not simply a matter of crop failure, but of government choices, market access, aid and other factors. The catastrophic nature of the 1994–1998 famine, through which the regime endured, also signals that as much as famines are a challenge for the government, they don’t pose any clearcut threat to regime survival.

Just as it is difficult to make sense of what’s actually going on inside North Korea, it is also difficult to make sense of how food insecurity might influence its foreign policy and the internal political situation facing the regime. The International Crisis Group suggested that domestic and agricultural woes would likely mean the regime would be inwardly focused during 2022—yet we’ve seen a most active period of missile testing. The testing could well be targeting a domestic audience. More likely, the development of nuclear weapons serves multiple ends, including for deterrent purposes and as a source of leverage for the regime’s broader political and strategic interests.

The impact of this situation on the Korean People’s Army is another open, but potentially significant, question. There were reports last year of malnutrition concerns for military personnel, for example. It’s also worth noting that the KPA has historically played a role as an auxiliary agricultural labour force. The most recent UN reporting, which described ‘the strong possibility of starvation’ as alarming, also stated that ‘rice from the military reserve had been released to soldiers’.

Events in North Korea remain as opaque as ever, perhaps compounded by Kim’s need to disguise dire food insecurity, as well as the further shuttering of the country that has occurred over the Covid years. What reporting is available suggests that the prospect of devastating famine still looms. We’re unlikely to get an accurate read on events in North anytime soon, but it seems unlikely that the reality is a happy one.

Twilight of the Kims?

Nearly three years after his failed bromance with Donald Trump, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is once again angling for US attention. North Korea has tested a new, high-tech missile and hinted that it may agree to restart talks with South Korea, whose president, Moon Jae-in, desperately wants to resuscitate his moribund outreach to the North. But if Kim is expecting a positive reaction from US President Joe Biden, he shouldn’t hold his breath. With issues like China and the rebuilding of US alliances topping Biden’s agenda, overtures to Kim are unlikely.

Kim’s dog-eared script isn’t helping his cause. The latest drama has unfolded all too predictably. In Act I, Kim Yo-jong, Kim’s sister and the North’s spokesperson on North–South affairs, averred that the regime might be interested in discussing a peace treaty with South Korea—an idea that Moon himself proposed in September. She hastened to add, however, that South Korea would have to distance itself from US demands for nuclear disarmament and end joint military exercises with US forces.

The predictable sabre-rattling came a few days later, in Act II. Following the announcement that the regime had launched a new hypersonic missile and carried out half a dozen other tests, Kim took to the podium (with his missilery in the background) to tout the North’s ‘world-class defense capability’. Although the Biden administration had sent ‘signals that it is not hostile’, he declared that the North has ‘no reason to believe it’. By challenging US credibility, Kim was all but asking the United States to respond, ideally by following its Korean ally’s lead and publicly throwing a bone his way.

But the newly slimmed-down Kim isn’t the only one reusing an old script. Moon’s offer to negotiate a peace treaty as a prelude to nuclear negotiations has been a perennial feature of North–South talks. As if following Kim Yo-jong’s cue, Moon’s Democratic Party followers duly played their part by calling for a suspension of military exercises and other preconditions for negotiations.

Yet, in seizing on the prospect of new nuclear talks, the political leadership in Seoul seems to have already forgotten what Kim said at North Korea’s Eighth Party Congress in January: ‘We must develop tactical nuclear weapons that can be applied in different means in the modern war … and continue to push ahead with the production of super-large nuclear warheads.’

As always, North Korea’s blandishments and bluster are geared towards only one goal: to loosen the vice of nuclear-related economic sanctions. Despite making economic development his domestic priority five years ago, Kim has failed to improve basic living conditions in the country. Battered by floods, food shortages and a pandemic-induced lockdown, his initiatives—market-based reforms, decentralised decision-making and more social investment—have stalled, tanking trade and economic growth. Kim acknowledged as much at the party congress in January, emphasising the need for ‘self-reliance’ and explicitly sidelining reform.

Unfortunately for Kim, there’s a new audience in the White House, and it’s far tougher than the incumbents in Seoul. Speaking before a joint session of Congress in April, Biden made clear that Kim should not expect the kind of pre-emptive concessions that Trump offered at the summits in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019. According to Biden, the US is prepared to talk anytime without preconditions about the peninsula’s denuclearisation, but there will be no mano-a-mano deal-making. As the White House press secretary explained after Biden’s speech, ‘We have and will continue to consult with the Republic of Korea, Japan, and other allies and partners at every step along the way.’

Biden’s priorities in Asia pose a big problem for Kim. In early October, CIA Director William Burns announced the creation of a new China Mission Center and then disclosed that the agency’s North Korea mission centre will be shut down. Although countries like North Korea and Iran will remain priorities, that work will be absorbed into the agency’s regional divisions. According to a State Department official, US intelligence agencies ‘will continue to remain in close consultation and coordination with our South Korean allies on issues of mutual concern’, especially North Korea.

For Kim, the implications of this reorganisation are obvious. While Trump was willing to backhand longstanding US allies for the sake of his summitry theatre, Biden insists on working closely with America’s partners. The consequences of this change are already apparent across the region. In South Korea, conservative politicians campaigning for next year’s presidential election are calling for greater pressure on the North and to repair ties with Japan, which have become badly frayed under Moon.

Similarly, in his first conversation with Biden as Japan’s newly installed prime minister, Fumio Kishida emphasised the importance of allied cooperation. Reportedly singling out the threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea, he highlighted Japan’s need for stronger missile and naval defences.

Biden’s overarching focus on China, North Korea’s sole ally and source of economic support, also doesn’t bode well for Kim. To be sure, the North Koreans have probably concluded, correctly, that a more fractious US–China relationship will make China less likely to twist their arms on the nuclear issue. Given today’s tensions, it’s highly unlikely that China will do the US any more favours in this regard.

But Chinese help with the North Korean nuclear issue has only ever been intermittent at best. Because China doesn’t want Korean refugees flooding over its border or a US ally in control of the entire Korean peninsula, it still has an interest in limiting Kim’s provocations.

In any case, having China in his corner is probably the best that Kim can hope for in the next act of the drama. By bolstering US allies and deepening mutual cooperation, America’s strategic commitment to Asia not only represents a bulwark against China’s own military ambitions; it also changes the balance of forces surrounding the Korean peninsula. Australia’s investment in nuclear submarines and enhanced alliance relations with the US and the United Kingdom represent future capabilities that can focus on Pyongyang. And Kishida’s Liberal Democrats back a boost in Japan’s defence spending to 2% of GDP.

For its part, Pyongyang would do well to consider these and other forthcoming strategic changes affecting the Korean peninsula. America’s Asian partners, with their strong economies, world-class technology and modern defence forces, are well prepared for the 21st century. Time is not on Kim’s side.

A partial North Korean nuclear agreement is better than none at all

Last Friday, after a long hiatus, US and North Korean officials resumed their negotiations on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Later that same day, the North Koreans walked out, citing the Americans’ ‘outdated viewpoint and attitude’. Not an ideal start. But don’t despair: the prospects for some sort of limited accord emerging in the coming months are good. Both sides want a deal—not the same deal, true, but they might yet find enough common ground to make a start on what can only be a long-term task.

Two issues will be prominent in North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s thoughts. First, the sterling work done by his rocket scientists since the test flight of the Hwasong-15 ICBM in late 2017 has materially strengthened Pyongyang’s hand at the negotiating table. Some of the North’s short-range missiles have been redesigned, apparently to allow them to fly lower and flatter trajectories—complicating the tracking and interception missions of regional ballistic-missile defences. And a recently tested solid-fuelled submarine-launched ballistic missile—although tested from a sub-surface platform rather than an actual submarine—performed well, suggesting North Korea’s making progress on adding a sea-based leg to its nuclear arsenal. All of that makes for a happy Kim.

But in another area, Kim is much less happy. The sanctions-hit North Korean economy is struggling: Seoul’s Bank of Korea estimates the economy shrank by 4.1% in 2018, on top of a 3.5% slump in 2017. Even the weather’s being unkind. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is predicting that 2019 will see the smallest crop production in five years, bringing serious food shortages to about 40% of the population. In short, sanctions are biting and famine is looming. That weakens Pyongyang’s hand at the negotiating table and Kim’s domestic profile. For much of his reign, he’s been photographed visiting fish farms and food factories.

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is probably relieved to see talks resume. He’s copped a fair amount of flak for pulling the plug at the Hanoi summit in February and subsequently trivialising North Korea’s campaign of ongoing missile testing. His personal commitment to Kim through the hiatus in negotiations has been impressive—including his willingness to step across the border in North Korea during the brief meeting between the two at the demilitarised zone.

Kim has previously said that it’s important to have an agreement by the end of the year, now a mere three months away. The reasoning behind that deadline may have more to do with the onset of the presidential race in the US than with any specific North Korean timeline. Kim might well fear that any 2020 agreement would quickly become a political football. Trump, of course, wants a quick agreement for exactly the opposite reason: he hopes to brandish it in 2020 as a sign of his competence in relation to a difficult problem where other presidents have stumbled.

So there are valid reasons to believe that something might come out of this new round of negotiations. That doesn’t mean we’re remotely close to a full and final denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Such an agreement could be in place by New Year’s Eve only if the work was already 90% of the way there. Some exchanges have been occurring—in early August, for example, Trump spoke of a three-page letter from Kim. But both sides seem some way away from a full-blown accord.

Indeed, media reports are starting to signal that a more limited agreement is probably the more likely outcome—something that lifts specific sanctions for a set period in exchange for specific forms of North Korean nuclear restraint. That sort of agreement might well be acceptable to both sides as a halfway house which allows them to monitor each other’s bona fides. The agreement would be more than a simple trust-building exercise. The US needs something that would bear down on the North’s nuclear capability and test Pyongyang’s tolerance for greater transparency of its nuclear and missile programs. Pyongyang needs something that increases its sense of security and eases its economic difficulties.

The terms of any limited agreement will be hard fought. And North Korea’s compliance with previous arms control measures is perhaps kindly described as ‘patchy’. So, what should the world expect? Well, Trump’s primary objective will be to wind back threats to the US homeland. He’ll want to reverse the large strategic gains North Korea made in 2017, when it successfully tested two different intercontinental ballistic missiles and a thermonuclear warhead with a yield of about 250 kilotons.

At a minimum, any agreement has to lock down the two unilateral moratoria granted by Kim at the Singapore summit in June last year—a cessation of nuclear tests and ICBM tests—for the simple reason that, unless they are formalised, Kim can withdraw them whenever he chooses. Nowadays the Twitterverse works itself into a mini-frenzy with each new North Korean missile test. A resumption of ICBM testing would be much more serious.

But Washington can’t simply sign up to something that prioritises US security at the expense of the security of its allies in Northeast Asia. An agreement would also need to make inroads into North Korea’s current and future nuclear capabilities, by prohibiting future fissile material production, accounting for existing warheads and outlining a credible program for their destruction. That means Kim has to agree to open up Yongbyon, his main nuclear facility.

That’s going to be difficult for a whole host of reasons. So, watch for a partial agreement, not a full one—and, probably, more walkouts as the rubber starts to hit the road. Still, a series of halfway-house agreements—a sort of Zeno’s paradox version of denuclearisation—may eventually give us a largely nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Trump’s appeasement of North Korea is really about his own re-election

Having met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times—all to great fanfare—US President Donald Trump may still believe that denuclearisation is underway in the hermit kingdom. If so, he’s probably the only one who does, given North Korea’s frequent missile tests and upgrades to its weapons.

It is anyone’s guess what the Trump administration’s North Korea policy will look like a year from now, but, for now, both sides seem to have what they want. Trump has wrangled a loose stalemate that could hold through the November 2020 US presidential election, and Kim has secured a suspension of US – South Korean military exercises in exchange for freezing his nuclear tests.

The summits with Kim never should have led to the current freeze-for-freeze arrangement, which weakens the US – South Korea alliance. Yet when first meeting Kim in Singapore in June 2018, Trump decided simply to follow his instincts. He has been taking US policy on North Korea in the wrong direction ever since.

Thinking like a New York real-estate developer, Trump assumed that North Korea wanted economic relief. But he also listened carefully to Kim’s explanation of why North Korea pursued nuclear weapons in the first place: to deter a supposedly hostile United States from attacking it. If Trump found that argument plausible, it may have been because his own (now former) national security adviser, John Bolton, was a living, breathing validation of North Korean fears.

And so, at the press conference following the Singapore summit, Trump openly considered curtailing the ‘expensive’ US – South Korean military exercises, which he described using Kim’s own terminology (‘wargames’). Between freezing joint exercises and making his always eager secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, available for peace-treaty negotiations, Trump assumed that he had addressed North Korea’s chronic trust issues. He need only maintain his avuncular relationship with Kim and he would be a shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize.

It has now been 15 months, and the North Korean regime is still not even remotely interested in considering denuclearisation. Trump’s team—if one can call it that—is in disarray, cognisant of the imminent policy failure, but reluctant to admit that their leader may be in over his head. Steve Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, continues to consult with relevant third parties, maintaining the fiction that denuclearisation is still on the table. But he doesn’t appear to be receiving any support from Trump, who seems to have convinced himself that progress depends on his personal intervention.

The North Koreans would agree with Trump on that, albeit not for the same reasons. Unlike Biegun or Pompeo—who speak of denuclearisation with a sense of urgency—Trump seems to agree with the North Koreans that there’s plenty of time. After all, he is primarily concerned with protecting his signature diplomatic achievement until the 2020 election. Accordingly, he need only maintain the appearance of progress through periodic feel-good summits.

Moreover, the Trump administration and the Kim regime share a disinterest in developing a broader diplomatic architecture. North Korea has always preferred a bilateral process with the US, because that format enhances its own prestige, and, unlike the moribund six-party talks, avoids the appearance that it is being ganged up on. To be sure, dealing directly with Trump can be risky (he did, after all, walk out of the Hanoi summit in February). But, overall, the process of summits and love letters has created a warm relationship between Kim and Trump, thereby softening the latter’s position.

The US, meanwhile, has been happy to brief interested third countries on the process, while keeping them on the sidelines and out of the negotiating room. Other members of the six-party process—South Korea, Japan, Russia and China—have seen little reason to believe that progress is at hand. But they might as well let the US shoulder the burden and reputational risks of managing North Korea on its own.

There’s never any guarantee that the North Koreans will play the role set for them. As matters stand, the benefits of the current stalemate probably exceed the costs of the sanctions regime, which has grown increasingly leaky. But the intensity of the North Koreans’ response to any mention of US – South Korean exercises suggests that they may see an opportunity in the current standoff—and in this president—to undermine US regional engagement more broadly.

The Kim regime’s recent missile tests and behaviour towards South Korea may be meant as a warning to Trump. If so, the message is clear: unless you placate us, we will cause problems for you before November 2020.

Trump might like the world to think that he’s maintaining strategic patience with North Korea. But it’s now clear that his administration’s policy is one of appeasement. Whether it will work for him remains to be seen. November 2020 is still a long way off.

Addressing Kim Jong-un’s hunger for security

In an article about the meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi in February, I shared the sentiment that Trump needed to allow his administration to prepare more carefully for any future negotiations with North Korea. More specifically, I suggested that he invite China and Russia to associate themselves openly with the negotiations, at least to the extent of developing a joint stance with the US on security assurances for the DPRK. I said that:

Pyongyang needs to hear a new, and unanimous, narrative to the effect that the security of the DPRK is robust rather than fragile; that these three countries are determined, collectively, to protect this state of affairs; and that, in these circumstances, they expect the DPRK to denuclearise expeditiously and focus its full energies on economic development.

A few weeks later, on 28 April, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, told Fox News in Washington that Kim clearly favoured the bilateral format followed in Singapore and Hanoi and that this also remained Trump’s preference. Bolton added that Trump was mindful of the failure of the six-party talks that took place between 2003 and 2007 and implied that the president’s advisors were not disposed to recommend broadening participation in any future negotiations.

I would not suggest for a moment that these statements are directly connected. Many commentators believe it’s time to expand participation in these negotiations. It remains very likely, however, that something will be needed to change the trajectory of these negotiations. One can urge the two principals to trust one another but—despite protestations of a genuine personal warmth between the leaders—both sides feel they have done that before, and have the scar tissue to show for it. What’s needed is something that will change the dynamics of any future engagement without requiring either leader to overtly step away from the core tenets of the position they have set out.

That ‘something’ should both offer positive reinforcement of the benefits that would flow from a genuine resolution of this old problem and block off or deter the use of the bolt holes that have been exploited in the past to stall or derail negotiations. On more than one occasion, North Korea has walked away from negotiations, or threatened to do so, contending that Pyongyang was being given no choice other than to continue to rely exclusively on its massive conventional forces and whatever weapons of mass destruction it was able to assemble.

A common or coordinated set of security assurances from the US, China and Russia could be worth looking at in this context, though it wouldn’t be a straightforward exercise. To highlight the most obvious difficulty, the US will not—and should not—qualify its commitment to the security of South Korea. The US offered and spelled out the security assurances it was prepared to give in the context of the broad bargain that took shape during the six-party talks. Those ideas would obviously be part of the exercise being proposed here.

The notion of trilateral security assurances ticks some important boxes. It would give Kim substantially more room for manoeuvre domestically. Even if one is of the view that the DPRK’s extreme paranoia about the threat from the US was overwhelmingly a device to legitimise exceedingly repressive domestic arrangements, this has now been sustained for so long that no one in North Korea has the courage or imagination to think otherwise. And, apart from the Kim regime, an important part of the entrenched difficulties on the Korean peninsula has been that it is seen as unfinished business between the major powers. In 1949 and 1950, Russia and China endorsed and discreetly aided North Korea’s use of force to bring the South into the socialist camp. That effort was inconclusive but subsequent efforts to put Korean affairs on a more normal and stable footing have been contaminated by lingering instincts to ensure that the geostrategic balance sheet finishes up tilted in a manner favourable to one or other of the major players. This complicating influence is, if anything, exacerbated if Russia and China are allowed to try and advance their interests from the relative obscurity of the fringes of the US–DPRK process.

And the simple fact that there is an opportunity for the US, China and Russia to reconcile their competing strategic interests and find sufficient common purpose in attempting to resolve the North Korean issue is not something to be scoffed at in today’s international political climate.

The Hanoi and Singapore summits: establishing the terms of engagement

The footage of Donald Trump announcing that he had decided to walk away from his talks with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi without any joint declaration showed the president as quite composed, seemingly comfortable with his decision.

There are still a lot of gaps in what we know about what transpired in Hanoi but, broadly speaking, it appears that the US president finally accepted that, alongside a rapport with the North Korean leader, the US needed to be far more thoroughly prepared for these meetings. He therefore wisely elected to fly home empty-handed.

For a few weeks after Trump agreed to meet Kim, the US entertained the dream of a hole-in-one outcome. In this scenario, the DPRK had determined that being a nuclear-weapon state was not in its long-term interests but that it had succeeded in creating a situation that would result in it being handsomely rewarded for dismantling its nuclear capability.

With a cooperative DPRK, the US envisaged swiftly disabling this capability before progressively eliminating it more thoroughly. Some people, including Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, called this the Libyan solution because something along these lines had occurred in Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya in 2003–04. The Trump administration was forced to concede ahead of the Singapore summit that the process in the DPRK would take a different and yet-to-be-determined path.

Similarly, it now seems clear that the DPRK didn’t see either of the summit meetings as an opportunity to begin the painstaking bargaining to fulfill the joint commitment to denuclearise the Korean peninsula. To the contrary, both summits were approached as opportunities to feel the other side out and seek to position the DPRK as favourably as possible for the ensuing substantive negotiations.

Starting in the lead-up to the Singapore summit, the DPRK sought to confirm the US as the clear aggressor on the Korean peninsula since the late 1940s and with a correspondingly massive ‘trust deficit’ to make up before the DPRK could reasonably be expected to enter into substantive negotiations and binding outcomes on its nuclear capabilities and related issues. Kim targeted US/UN sanctions and signalled that if Washington wanted to persuade him that it was ‘safe’ to do business with the Americans they should relax the sanctions. To reinforce the message, Kim had reinvented himself during 2018 as a leader concerned exclusively with lifting the living standards of his people.

What was so special about the UN/US sanctions? Two aspects of them seem particularly relevant. First, for the US, progressively stronger and sharper sanctions had been the primary instrument of protesting and seeking to deter the DPRK’s accelerated push towards a viable nuclear arsenal. Seen from Pyongyang, however, sanctions connoted punishment for bad behaviour or engaging in illicit activities. This was the attribute of sanctions that Kim could not accept. He wasn’t going to commit to denuking when the other side—and third parties—viewed him as some kind of international criminal driven in from the cold by economic deprivation.

A second, more prosaic, consideration is the likelihood, at some point, of the DPRK really wanting to play for time—and the severity of the sanctions making that a particularly costly option and therefore less plausible as a threat.

Put another way, in Pyongyang’s eyes, the prominence attributed to the sanctions regime in creating the opportunity for a political solution conceded the moral high ground to the United States. Eliminating, or at least sharply diminishing, the prominence of sanctions in the mix of issues in play therefore became the DPRK’s core objective at both summits.

Moreover, as with the US and the ‘Libyan solution’, the DPRK misread Trump’s eagerness to declare a success and ultimately ran with a limited package of capabilities that would be verifiably dismantled in return for a substantial rollback of sanctions. Trump rejected this out of hand and recognised that the bargaining had run its course.

It won’t be easy to find a way around this issue. Will the DPRK remain committed to denuclearisation even if its preferred point of entry into the process has been blocked off? The indications since Hanoi have not been promising. It gets back to the lack of preparation, particularly by the Trump administration, but actually by most US administrations of recent decades.

The DPRK started the Korean War in 1950—an act of aggression endorsed and supported by the Soviet Union and China—and subsequently sustained a harshly belligerent posture towards the US and South Korea while trumpeting the narrative that it was the victim of invasion in 1950 and had since endured the constant prospect of renewed aggression. These harsh realities ‘explained’ the draconian domestic constraints, the extraordinary expansion of the DPRK’s armed forces after the Korean War—to an economically crushing 1.1 million, with massive rocket and artillery capabilities deployed provocatively within range of Seoul—and, ultimately, the drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Moscow and Beijing have done little or nothing over the past 70 years to shift the mentality of the DPRK leadership towards some semblance of normality, and the US has allowed them to get away with it.

So now we have the third generation of a brutal family dictatorship at the head of a huge army and an arsenal of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles insisting that the world owes them, big time. Trump might start with his pals—Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—and suggest that Pyongyang needs to hear a new, and unanimous, narrative to the effect that the security of the DPRK is robust rather than fragile; that these three countries are determined, collectively, to protect this state of affairs; and that, in these circumstances, they expect the DPRK to denuclearise expeditiously and focus its full energies on economic development.

Crashing and burning in Hanoi

The world had high hopes for the outcome of the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi on 27 and 28 February. The possibility of a breakthrough was overstated and now we’ve been burned by the irrational exuberance about a North Korea willing to denuclearise. It never planned to do that.

The summit came to a crashing halt on the 28th when the two leaders turned their backs on each other, and on a rather nice lunch. At the post-summit press conference, Trump said that ‘sometimes you have to walk’, reasoning that the US couldn’t agree to a deal that involved a complete lifting of US economic sanctions in return for North Korea’s dismantling of its Yongbyon nuclear facility. That would have left much of North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure intact—including the undeclared facilities that have been discovered since the 2018 Trump–Kim summit—and would have meant that the US would, in effect, have been subsidising the further development of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.

The North Korean riposte came later that evening, with a claim by Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho that North Korea only called for a partial lifting of sanctions in return for the dismantling of Yongbyon under the gaze of US inspectors. A North Korean official also suggested that Kim ‘may have lost the will for further negotiation’.

All the signs out of Hanoi suggest that the future of diplomacy between Trump and Kim is uncertain at best. There might be lower level talks between the US and North Korea, but it’s not likely that they would lead to a resolution that satisfies all parties. The North Koreans are also watching Trump’s growing domestic woes, including the testimony by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen—which burst political bombshells all over Capitol Hill as the Hanoi summit was getting underway—and the impending release of the Mueller report.

So where to from here?

According to Trump, Kim has promised not to conduct further missile or nuclear tests. That may hold for the time being, but if the North Koreans decide that there’s an impasse or that domestic US politics have undermined the ability of the US to deliver on any deal, it would be quite easy for Kim to reverse course. It just takes a phone call, after all, to order a new missile test, or even a nuclear test.

The rationale for further testing could be tied to a perceived need to perfect long-range missile systems, including getting more data on warhead designs to ensure a future nuclear-armed North Korean ICBM can accurately deliver a warhead on a target. And the North Koreans have talked about a ‘Juche Bird’ nuclear test involving an atmospheric nuclear detonation.

Despite Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo putting a positive spin in the post-summit press conference about future opportunities for diplomacy, there’s broad consensus in the US intelligence community—notably highlighted in a recent assessment by Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats—that North Korea won’t denuclearise, at least not in the way the US seems to interpret that term.

The Trump administration must therefore address a fundamental dilemma. Washington’s stated policy of seeking North Korean denuclearisation is based on a false assumption that Pyongyang will give up its nuclear weapons if it’s offered the right inducements. But if Kim is determined to hang onto nuclear weapons no matter what, then the US policy must reinforce deterrence.

That means that the US should avoid making further concessions, such as signing a peace treaty—a move supported by South Korea. A peace treaty raises the risk that Kim could put new demands on the table. For example, North Korea could challenge the continued presence of US military forces and the United Nations Command on the Korean peninsula, or even the continued provision of extended nuclear deterrence security guarantees to South Korea and Japan.

The North Korean definition of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula broadly focuses on the presence of US nuclear and nuclear-capable forces around the peninsula rather than Pyongyang eliminating its nukes. That interpretation has been reinforced by North Korea’s recent raising of the prospect of links between progress towards denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula and Japan’s potential for an independent nuclear deterrent capability.

The expectation that North Korea will agree to final fully verifiable denuclearisation (FFVD) needs to be hosed down. Diplomacy can and should certainly play a continuing role in getting a meeting of minds to address the drivers of tension, and it can play a useful role in working on confidence-building measures to reduce the potential for misunderstandings or lower the risk of sliding back to the ‘fire and fury’ type tensions last seen in 2017. But the US shouldn’t proceed with further diplomacy with the expectation of convincing Kim to give up his nukes.

Above all, the emphasis in any future talks should be on ensuring that the North Koreans are not tempted to go back to more missile and nuclear testing. Such a development would certainly precipitate a slide back to pre-war tensions and the prospect of a major military crisis on the Korean peninsula.

To prevent such an outcome, the US must seek to boost deterrence against Pyongyang and increase dialogue with Seoul and Tokyo, to reassure them of the stability of alliance agreements.

That’s now a real challenge given Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to US alliances. Even as the Hanoi summit ended, he couldn’t resist challenging the value of US – South Korea military exercises—and then cancelled the major Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises. That’s not the best signal to send to a key ally as concerns grow that further tensions between Pyongyang and Washington may be on the horizon. The Japanese will take note—and so should Canberra.

Is the Trump–Kim meeting in Hanoi more about economic development than denuclearisation?

The choice of venue for the second meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, scheduled for 27–28 February 2019, is about more than convenience of distance, familiarity (Trump visited Vietnam in 2017) and diplomatic facilities.

Vietnam is one of a handful of countries that host the diplomatic missions of both the United States and North Korea. The country’s post-war journey has symbolic significance and sends an important message about what the summit is about—showing Pyongyang a possible way forward.

Hanoi and Pyongyang used to have a lot in common. They’re both on the periphery of China and were determined to unify their countries under the ideology they chose—communism—and against a shared enemy—the United States. But the separate paths they took in the wake of the Sino-Soviet split at the height of the Cold War have resulted in wholly different political destinies.

Pyongyang, as a result of siding with China, supported the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. North Korea became openly hostile to Vietnam in the late 1970s when tensions grew between the Southeast Asian neighbours, and eventually Hanoi intervened in Cambodia. The end of the Cold War drove the two nations even further apart, accentuating the differences in their political regimes, economic development and strategic orientations.

While a unified Vietnam normalised its diplomatic relations with both China and the US, and established positive relations with the Republic of Korea, the DPRK remained isolated and resistant to external influence. Hanoi overcame sanctions and diplomatic isolation through persistent and proactive efforts directed by the Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV’s) policy reforms initiated in the late 1980s.

Vietnam has since emerged as a star economic performer in East Asia, recording consistently high GDP growth over the past couple of decades. No longer considered a ‘rogue state’, it has successfully negotiated with its formerly hostile, anti-communist neighbours in Southeast Asia and become one of the most significant strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

Beyond the expectations about what the Hanoi summit can actually deliver for the denuclearisation process, we also need to think about a longer-term question: What next? In a hope of encouraging Pyongyang’s self-search for ‘normalisation’, should the US and its allies examine the case for easing sanctions?

The experience of Vietnam, which has preserved its communist regime (based on collective leadership, rather than a family dynasty as is the case with North Korea), points to a possible way ahead. For Washington, Hanoi is also the best poster-child for how a former enemy can transform into an increasingly indispensable security partner.

The idea that there could be a ‘Vietnam model’ for North Korea is not new. South Korea has allegedly been harbouring hopes that Vietnam could one day help open up the DPRK. Despite the souring of bilateral ties in the 1970s, Hanoi never completely shut down assistance to North Korea. The diplomatic missions in both countries remained active.

Since 2010, Hanoi has been a source of training and technology for North Korea in areas such as agriculture, fishery, energy, hydropower, horticulture and manufacturing. It also played a supportive role in securing the admission of North Korea into the ASEAN Regional Forum in 2000.

The Trump administration seems to have embraced the idea of a ‘Vietnam model’, touting the benefits of economic reforms to Kim’s government. But such a pathway is a long shot, given the very different circumstances between the former Vietnam (which never possessed a nuclear weapons capability) and today’s North Korea. But it’s probably the best example we have.

Beyond the already very detailed discussion on the possibility of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program, there’s a parallel dialogue in peace talks with Pyongyang. While the first requires the international community to consistently support maximum pressure on Kim to denuclearise, the second offers the prospect of engagement: the abandonment of nuclear ambitions in return for an economic carrot.

Vietnam’s active foreign policy dictates that it should be a responsible actor in the rules-based international system. Hanoi has openly criticised Kim’s nuclear activities as ‘a grave violation of UN Security Council resolutions’ and Hanoi hopes to secure a non-permanent seat in the Security Council in 2020–21.

But it also sees an opportunity to play a stronger diplomatic role, should there be a breakthrough declaration of a formal end to the Korean War. Imagine the historical significance of a Hanoi peace declaration. Not only would Vietnam showcase its diplomatic ability, but it would also highlight the importance of providing a neutral ground—following Singapore’s example—for difficult negotiations to take place.

Southeast Asia hopes this could be a beginning of a continuous diplomatic process, just like the evolution of ASEAN in the 1960s that contributed to the cessation of the multiple conflicts that defined the region at the time.

Hanoi’s willingness to host the meeting is also linked to its regime’s need for validation. The attention on the successes of the Doi Moi reforms in transforming the country and elevating its international position is certainly shoring up the CPV’s legitimacy. Washington’s recognition of Vietnam’s economic achievement is reassuring for party leaders in Hanoi.

Hosting a successful summit will gain Hanoi credits both in the eyes of both Washington (the US is Vietnam’s largest export market) and South Korea (Vietnam’s largest investor, and one of its principal aid donors and sources of tourism). Another plus, if Kim is in the mood, is the potential for warming up economic ties between Hanoi and Pyongyang and maybe allowing better access for Vietnam’s goods and services into the DPRK.

Watching the North Korea watchers

A major crisis on the Korean peninsula would be the most significant event of our time. If it were a conflict, the Pentagon estimates that there could be around 20,000 fatalities a day in South Korea in its opening exchanges. It’s safe to assume a type of devastation beyond imagination. If the North were to collapse, a nation of 50 million South Koreans would likely become immediately responsible for 24 million impoverished, desperate, politically estranged neighbours. Before, during and after any crisis, there will be momentous strategic, social, economic and political challenges involving all major powers. This raises an important question: who is watching, researching, analysing and reporting on the potential for such a crisis to occur?

Over the last year, international attention has been focused on the Korean peninsula. Between Kim Jong-un, Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump, a perfect storm of populism and strategic change has seen a sound-bite-ready, often undiplomatic, frantic rhythm of events develop. This has led to an explosion in the growth of ‘North Korea watchers’—the community of scholars, analysts, government officers, NGO advocates and journalists who, for one reason or another, commit a portion of their lives to watching North Korea.

For around 20 years, in government and academia, I’ve worked with the North Korea watchers—and they’ve always intrigued me.

When they come together at conferences, workshops or impromptu events addressing emerging crises, they exhibit certain characteristics that highlight a very real cultural identity—a sense of common understanding; recognition of familiar language, symbols and oral narrative; and in broad terms, even a shared sense of mission. Yet they’re an incredibly disparate group.

North Korea watchers come from all walks of life, with diverse educational, professional and personal backgrounds. Unlike ‘Russia watchers’ or ‘China watchers’, few start with a plan to become a North Korea watcher. Most grow into the role, emerging from a specialisation in another field. The rationale for others range from the extreme to the mundane. Still others fall into a comfortable niche between the unquestionable opacity of North Korea, and convenience, opportunism, (mis)fortune and/or media-fuelled egoism. Most will admit, it takes an oddball to dedicate oneself to watching North Korea.

Diversity can strengthen analysis. A hard target like North Korea requires diversity to produce an ‘intelligence market’ of competent assessments. But intelligence is an imperfect market. Competition between individuals and corporate- or politically funded think tanks, along with social media, means the loudest or the most extreme commentator often holds the ear of the policymaker. Regularity and reach do not necessarily equate to analytical competency.

If diversity is strength, then the better known North Korea watchers should provide confidence—among them are a historian educated in St Petersburg, a Korean-born veteran of the intelligence community doing the think-tank tour, an eccentric Englishman with a penchant for poetry, and a passionate antipodean journalist who knows them all. But diversity can also be a weakness.

North Korea watchers disagree on Pyongyang’s aims and sincerity, the capacity of its nuclear and missile arsenal, the wisdom of reconciliation policies, the most efficient modes of engagement and the impact of change on the strategic balance. There are also broad disagreements between geographic subcommunities—dispersed microcosms of the Korea watcher community. Few, if any, Seoul-based North Korea watchers support stronger measures on the Kim regime that could result in conflict. In contrast, Washington-based North Korea watchers are more open to stronger measures. Disagreement is inherent to all policy-watching communities.

The real struggle emerges in the contest for influence. Who should policy- and decision-makers pay attention to? Is Korean language capacity required to analyse Korean peninsula issues? Is education in strategy, politics, economics or nuclear and missile technology required? How long does a North Korea watcher need to be in the field to fully understand the topic? What does a background in government add to analytical competency?

Because any crisis on the Korean peninsula would affect the US, China, Japan, South Korea and ultimately the global economy, the North Korea watcher community is significant and important. Their insight feeds into government intelligence briefs and the decision-making of Fortune 500 companies.

My current research explores the little-known world of North Korea watchers. The mixed-method study explores a core of 40 or so individuals who dedicate themselves to watching North Korea and around 500 others who are intermittent watchers. The study explores the community’s characteristics, social structure, interactions and practices. It also explores the products of the community—the analysis and commentary—and assesses it in the context of best practice in intelligence analysis.

Moon’s crisis diplomacy, Kim’s staged play-along and Trump’s egoism produced a momentary lull in tensions. In his well-received text, The four flashpoints, Australian National University academic Brendan Taylor describes the default position of the Korean peninsula as a Quentin Tarantino–style Mexican stand-off. Given the risks of returning to that default position, it’s important to know more about, and to watch, the North Korea watchers.

The art of the (bad) deal with North Korea

Is Donald Trump’s deal with Kim Jong-un towards ‘denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’ falling off the tracks already? US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang over the weekend certainly suggests that’s the likely outcome.

Pompeo had hoped to get some assurances from the Kim regime on its approach to achieving North Korea’s comprehensive, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation (CVID). Getting a clear understanding of North Korea’s intentions on this important issue was seen by the US as an essential prerequisite for continued diplomatic engagement. This information was completely lacking in the superficial Singapore summit declaration, presented on 12 June.

But Pompeo came away empty-handed from Pyongyang. Media reporting of the meeting suggests that the North Koreans didn’t explain what steps would be taken to eliminate their nuclear and missile capabilities, nor was there an accounting of their warheads, missile systems and weapons labs. Rather than a helpful statement from Pyongyang that laid the groundwork for further talks, the North Korean government publicly denounced Pompeo’s team as making ‘gangster-like demands’ and called the talks ‘regrettable’.

Most commentary sees this as a major setback for the denuclearisation process and a humiliation for Trump.

Pyongyang’s statement does clarify two points. First, North Korea won’t accept CVID as a basis for any deal. Second, any diplomatic process must involve a peace settlement to defuse tensions. But what does that really mean? It’s likely that, as part of any process, the North Koreans will demand an easing of sanctions and a drawdown of US military forces on the Korean peninsula. The withdrawal of US forces in South Korea is an idea that appeals to Trump despite the risks to South Korea, and the perception that it could generate that Washington was wavering on its security commitments to key allies.

Security assurances from the US to the North Korean regime would be expected to follow. If the North Koreans are pushing ‘the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’ formula, rather than accepting CVID, they could demand the end of extended nuclear deterrence security guarantees to South Korea. That would have to involve withdrawal of nuclear-capable forces from within and around the Korean peninsula, potentially including Japan.

The statement from Pyongyang doesn’t say that denuclearisation will be the end result of any step-by-step process (that could take years).

As Max Boot suggests: ‘Kim has played Trump like a Stradivarius.’ Trump heaped praise on the world’s most brutal dictator in Singapore, and then boasted in a tweet that North Korea had promised to unilaterally disarm and therefore ‘there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea’. At the same time, Pyongyang was reportedly busy modernising its nuclear weapons labs in undeclared facilities to increase production of fissile material, while expanding its missile development capabilities. It’s also working on a new submarine designed to launch ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.

Washington now has some basic choices to make. One option is to continue diplomatic negotiations with the Pyongyang. That risks perpetuating an illusion of progress based on a hope that the North Koreans are sincere about getting rid of nuclear weapons. Clearly Trump is content to rely on hope. But hope isn’t a strategy, and the US and its allies have been burned badly in the past. Nor is it likely that North Korean demands for concessions will be accepted by Trump’s national security team—James Mattis, John Bolton and Pompeo—who are cognisant of how the North Koreans behave. They are likely to resist surrendering too much, too quickly, to Pyongyang.

Certainly, Trump can continue to move the goalposts via Twitter, to claim success when there’s only continued North Korean duplicity. But all this means is that Kim will continue to play Trump for a sucker. Only the most optimistic view would suggest that this approach will really lead to North Korea eliminating its nuclear weapons and missile capabilities.

Another option is to try to reinstate ‘maximum pressure’. There are risks here, too. A worsening US–China trade war might make China less likely to enforce any new economic sanctions against North Korea. Moscow and Seoul may also be reticent, with the latter seeking to avoid new tensions with its northern neighbour. Trump could certainly revert to ‘fire and fury’ threats, and reinstate the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises he foolishly cancelled without the North Koreans reciprocating (their military exercises continue). Returning to that confrontational posture would resume the slide back towards a devastating military conflict on the Korean peninsula.

The US could also visibly and meaningfully strengthen its nuclear-capable forces deployed in the region, and reinforce security guarantees in a way that sends a strong message to Pyongyang. Such a deployment could be reinforced by trilateral (US–South Korea–Japan) cooperation on ballistic missile defence, and on developing greater intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to detect and track North Korean ballistic missile forces. Certainly greater effort towards responsive non-nuclear precision-strike capabilities would also help.

This is a threat, but one that reinforces strategic ambiguity from Kim’s perspective. It represents a more calibrated and nuanced approach that could be matched with inducements for a return to diplomacy once the North Koreans are ready to seriously engage on the basis of CVID.

It’s likely to be a better option than an ongoing diplomatic process without a clear commitment by Pyongyang to CVID on an agreed timetable. The art of that bad deal would steadily erode US credibility. After the failed Pompeo visit to Pyongyang, the US should begin to consider alternative approaches, even if Trump is forced to back-pedal on his ‘peace in our time’ tweets.