North Korea: The Country We Love to Hate: [The last part] Napoleoni, 2018

North Korea: The Country We Love to Hate: [The last part] 

The Comfort of Nukes

North Korea’s passion for nukes springs from the trauma of the Korean War. In 1958, in the aftermath of the conflict, the United States installed hundreds of nuclear weapons in South Korea with the clear message that it would use them at the beginning of an invasion of the North should it decide to. Americans and South Koreans have staged regular military exercises across the border of North
Korea and at sea to rehearse this invasion. North Koreans have lived with the fear of another war for decades. Paradoxically, these intimidation tactics have strengthened the DPRK regime. The Kim dynasty has used the politics of fear to its own advantage, presenting itself as the sole guarantor of peace against its enemies – South Korea and the United States.

Against this scenario, building and possessing the atomic bomb became a necessity for North Korea to survive and protect itself. The popular acceptance of the phenomenal effort and sacrifices made for the nuclear program relies on this view. North Korea is not the sole country to have successfully linked a nuclear program to defence of the status quo. All states at odds with nuclear powers, for example, Pakistan versus India, have sought nuclear capability to guarantee their own survival. The idea that North Korea or Iran might strike first and attack America with nuclear weapons is highly unlikely; the purpose of building an atomic bomb is not to launch it against the United States but to prevent an attack by the USA or any other country. The reason is simple: everybody knows that a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies by countries like North Korea and Iran, or anybody else, would provoke the immediate destruction of those regimes.

Following this logic, the building of every new nuclear weapon creates a greater guarantee of the survival of the state that possesses it and furthers stability, because it will never be used. Although the deterrence factor of the Cold War era – both superpowers possessing the atomic bomb – would appear to belong to the past, it continues to exist between legitimate and rogue nuclear states. Since 9/11, this renewed thinking about nuclear deterrence has gained strength and convinced the North Koreans that the nuclear program is fundamental to their survival and that renouncing it is suicidal.

Vladimir Putin has illustrated this concept. Everybody remembers what happened to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Saddam abandoned the production of weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, under the pretext of searching for these weapons, Saddam Hussein himself and his family were killed. […] The country was destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged. Everybody is aware of it and everybody remembers it. The North Koreans are also aware of it and remember it.¹¹

The North Koreans often mention what happened to Mohammed Gadhafi. When he agreed to give up his pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Bush promised that if other countries would do the same, the USA would offer an open path to better relationships. However, eight years later, the USA and NATO contributed to the overthrow of Gadhafi, who was eventually killed. The
North Korean leadership has described the diplomatic efforts to persuade Colonel Gadhafi to give up his arsenal of unconventional weapons as an invasion tactic.
From North Korea’s perspective, what has happened in the Middle East confirms that the DPRK should never give up its nukes. And this explains why Kim Jong-un has not paid any attention to the promises of economic cooperation in exchange for the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear program. On the contrary, he has accelerated it, ramping up missile testing. Since he assumed power, at
the age of twenty-seven, Kim Jong-un has tested eighty-four missiles – more than double the number that his father and grandfather tested. The North Korean leadership is also convinced that the nuclear deterrence guarantees the survival of the regime in the eventuality of an internal revolt, as happened in Libya. Indeed, foreign powers will think twice before arming the rebels if Pyongyang possesses nuclear weapons.¹²

So far deterrence has worked for the DPRK not only to keep its enemies at bay but also, paradoxically, to lure the West into helping the regime survive. In the second half of the 1990s, Kim Jong-il used the nuclear program as a bargaining chip to get food, oil and other forms of assistance from the West. He succeeded in stringing along more than one US administration by playing the deterrence game. In the ultimate analysis, deterrence is a confidence game; to be effective, you need to convince people that, if they step over the line, you really will do the things you say you’ll do. Washington has to believe that Pyongyang would do to Tokyo or Seoul what it has said it would and Pyongyang has to believe Washington would use the bomb.

So far North Korea has succeeded because it is unpredictable. Its behaviour is at odds with the rest of the world and nobody feels confident ruling out a nuclear strike. Donald Trump is the fourth president of the United States who has promised to end North Korea’s nuclear program. Bill Clinton signed a deal in which North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear development in exchange for oil and a civilian reactor, but neither side fulfilled its commitments and North Korea outsmarted the USA. George W. Bush initially refused bilateral negotiations but then changed his mind and joined the Six-Party Talks.¹³ Barack Obama first appeared conciliatory then retreated into a stonewalling policy called ‘strategic patience’. Finally, during his first nine months at the White House, Donald Trump led the UN Security Council to pass several rounds of additional sanctions against North Korea, but it seems like this has only made Kim more determined.
Will Kim Jong-un outsmart the USA and the world as his grandfather and father did and achieve their dream, a nuclearised DPRK?

The Art of Deceit

Since its birth, the DPRK has succeeded in fooling its enemies, stringing along several US administrations and proving to have mastered ‘the art of deceit’.

In 1985 the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, allowing international inspectors into most of its nuclear sites. That gave Pyongyang the breathing space to secretly gain access to the technology it needed to continue to build a nuclear device. In 1993 the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection team came to the conclusion that the DPRK had broken the treaty at least three times, in 1989, 1990 and 1991. At that point negotiations started with the Clinton administration to resolve the crisis, which led to the signature of the Agreed Framework in 1994. In exchange for freezing their nuclear program, the North Koreans would get two light-water reactors and shipments of heavy fuel oil from the Americans. The USA also agreed to work towards a normalisation of diplomatic relationships between the two countries. Building on this agreement, by 2000 the negotiations had progressed to the point that some analysts believed there was a good chance to end the conflict between the DPRK and South Korea and the USA. They were wrong: at the eleventh hour Bill Clinton did not travel to North Korea, he never shook Kim Jong-il’s hand.

Neither the Americans or the North Koreans had any intention of honouring the deal. 

The USA never fully lifted economic sanctions against North Korea and did not attempt to normalise diplomatic relations. As John Feffer and John Gershman write, The Clinton administration persuaded Congress to accept the construction of two light-water reactors in North Korea by arguing, quietly, that the regime in Pyongyang would not likely be around in 2003 when the reactors were supposed to go online. Instead, the regime is still around.¹⁴

While Clinton was bluffing, the North Koreans were deceiving everybody by continuing to work at the nuclear program with the help of Pakistan. A June 2002 CIA report mentioned that Pakistan had been bartering nuclear weapons secrets for North Korean missile systems, including data on how to build and test a uranium-triggered nuclear weapon.¹⁵

Kim Jong-un is a third-generation Kim who is fully committed to the nuclear program. He may also be the one who succeeds in transforming the DPRK into a nuclear power. He hinted at this in his first speech in April 2012 when he said, ‘superiority in military technology is no longer monopolised by imperialists and the time in which enemies threaten us with nuclear weapons has passed for
ever’.¹⁶ 

To prove this point, he needs a long-range missile capable of travelling to the USA – which he got – and a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on it – which he claims he has. If the DPRK has not achieved a proper miniaturisation of the nuclear bomb yet, it is only a matter of time until it does. It has the expertise and the capacity, something it acquired in the aftermath of the implosion of the
Soviet Union, when Western countries were too busy congratulating themselves on the Cold War victory to pay attention to North Korea.

Bruce Klingner, former CIA expert on Korea, claims that when the Soviet Union imploded, the DPRK was able to employ top rocket and nuclear scientists, and possibly as many as ten of them moved to North Korea.¹⁷ These are scientists who have been working at its nuclear program. Pyongyang also used its spies to steal missile technology from missile factories in the former Soviet bloc. A 2011
video from the Ukraine secret service, for example, shows two North Koreans copying plans inside a long-range missile factory in the Ukraine. What the North Koreans wanted was the Soviet engine for long-range missiles, which was produced both in Russia and in the Ukraine. The Hwason 14 proves that they got this technology and have built on it, developing their own advanced technical know
how for long-range missiles and, possibly, for miniaturising a nuclear device. The self-reliance motto has been applied to the nuclear program.

The DPRK has also been building a network of facilities where nuclear scientists work around the clock. These are mostly underground, hence nobody really knows how big they are. The only way to spy on buildings is from above, from satellite pictures, says Curtis Melvin of the US–Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.¹⁸ According to his research, most of the secret nuclear test sites are on the east coast. A vast network of tunnels has been built underneath the mountains and this is where North Korea has conducted most of its nuclear tests. The main nuclear research facility is Pungye Ri, about 600 kilometres north of Pyongyang, and this is where the scientists live.

When put in the context of the economic sanctions, North Korea’s achievements in building a functioning nuclear program seem to prove that the sanctions have not worked. South Korea estimates that the DPRK spends between $1 billion and $3 billion per year to keep the nuclear program going. Its total cost of defence is estimated at $10 billion per year. This is a fraction of what the USA spends,
however, for North Korea it is a quarter to a third of its GDP ($30–40 billion).¹⁹ Can North Korea afford to carry on this expenditure? 

Curtis Melvin believes it can. ‘This is expensive, but probably it is a cost the country can absorb without fomenting much resentment among the North Korean elites’, he says. ‘In fact, North Korean elites would probably feel less secure without a nuclear program, even if its costs relative to the economy as a whole were higher.’ Melvin says the economic situation for ordinary North Koreans would have to be in near ruin, with domestic resentment among elites reaching dangerous levels, before the leadership would reconsider its nuclear program. ‘Current signals indicate that North Korea is nowhere near this breaking point.’²⁰
A Western diplomat who lived in North Korea disagrees with these estimates.

I think these are wrong estimates given the fact that DPRK’s external trade is anywhere in the range of 3 to 6 billion US dollars. One has to keep in mind that the main part, which is the labour force, is for free or at no more cost then food and clothing. How would 1 to 3 billion dollars be used on (imported) hardware? That’s not possible, keeping in mind that also hardware from within the DPRK is
considered to be no cost. The real cost is reflected in the fact that the people aren’t given the prosperity they would deserve for the labour they provide to their state. I think these estimates are based on a full cost model applicable to our capitalistic system where everything can be labelled with a price tag.

In any case, completing the nuclear program will allow the leadership to reduce the total defence budget because the nuclear device will be a better deterrent and less costly than conventional weapons. Money could be allocated for infrastructure and to improve people’s living standards or could be used to offset the impact of the latest round of sanctions. So the idea that Kim Jong-un may be convinced at this point to renounce the nuclear dream of his father and grandfather is a fantasy. The nuclear program remains a top priority.

Epilogue  The Future

Experts and the media are concerned about the clash of propaganda between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Both are new to the game of politics and seem to have a narcissistic approach to it. Neither of them appears to be able or willing to engage in diplomacy and they both enjoy throwing insults at each other.
Regardless of personality clashes, Kim Jong-un will continue to test the red line that separates the DPRK from the rest of the world. Donald Trump has at his disposal three possible scenarios. The first one is decapitation, that is, a surgical strike to kill Kim Jong-un. David Maxwell, a former US special forces colonel who fought in the Korean War, does not believe that will work. The system is con-
structed to protect Kim. There are three rings of defence around him; by the time the strike takes place he will be somewhere underground. The second option is a strike against North Korea’s missile nuclear facilities, but many are hidden underground and there is not sufficient intelligence to know where they are actually located. Any of these strikes would trigger retaliation from Pyongyang, including the use of a nuclear device, if not against the USA, then against South Korea or Japan. Let’s not forget that North Korea has a large display of heavy artillery positioned across the border with South Korea.

The only viable option seems to be diplomacy. So far the USA has put pressure upon China to increase the sanctions, but China will never abandon North Korea, its role as a buffer across its border is too important. Even if in recent months China has appeared to be much tougher on the DPRK, in the long run it will continue to do business with Pyongyang. The only viable option seems to be
diplomacy. A possible solution, and the one that will guarantee peace, is to accept the DPRK into the nuclear club. Not an option that Trump would normally consider, unless the man who has mastered the art of the deal strikes the deal of the millennium with the nation that perfected the art of deceit: North Korea.