Security guarantees are one thing, but will Pyongyang ever give up the national prestige of having nuclear weapons?
The North Korea nuclear issue is an extremely complex problem, to say the least. But it essentially boils down to this: The Kim regime wants security, prosperity, and prestige. If it concludes that its wants can be better satisfied by relinquishing its nuclear weapons, it will. If not, it will hold on to them.
Pyongyang has hinted at how its security requirements for denuclearization might be met, and the United States and its partners have dangled tantalizing economic inducements before the Kim regime to coax it into giving up its nukes. Yet the trickiest part of the denuclearization equation could be finding something to offer North Korea that it would consider more prestigious than being a nuclear power.
Security
Pyongyang says that its primary motivation for developing nuclear weapons was to bolster its security. Its most potent weapons, the Kim regime claims, help to deter the United States from attacking it.
But, as much as Pyongyang values its nuclear arms, it has indicated that it would trade them for a more hospitable security environment. The steps needed to produce that new security environment, at least the ones that were sketched out in a July 6,2016 statement by a North Korean spokesman, are more or less acceptable to Washington. They are, in essence, means of reassuring Pyongyang that it will not be subjected to a U. S. nuclear attack or intimidation.
However, once Pyongyang and Washington get down to negotiating the fine points of denuclearization, many analysts believe that Pyongyang will dust off its old expansive definition of denuclearization, which includes the United States removing its nuclear umbrella from South Korea and Japan, or even worldwide nuclear disarmament. It seems likely that the Kim regime will in time make other demands that have historically been unacceptable to the United States.
Regardless, if North Korea’s relations with South Korea and the United States continue to improve, the Trump administration bets — and some former high-ranking U. S. diplomats believe — that the right mix of security guarantees and confidence building measures could be concocted to satisfy Pyongyang’s basic security requirements for denuclearization.
But that alone might not be enough to convince the Kim regime to abandon its nuclear program.
Prosperity
North Korea has a long history of putting its nuclear program to economic ends, having used it over the years to extort money and goods from other countries.
Now that North Korea has purportedly put the finishing touches on that program, the country’s leader Kim Jong Un has made clear that Pyongyang intends to shift its focus toward its current five-year strategy for economic development. In other words, the mature nuclear program provides the Kim regime with an added benefit: it gives North Korean leadership the peace of mind to grind away at the country’s economic challenges rather than constantly worry about countering perceived external threats.
In their respective meetings with Kim Jong Un, U. S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in all offered to help North Korea develop its economy.
During Trump’s t ête- à-t ête with Kim last June in Singapore, the U. S. leader showed Kim a melodramatic video that presented two alternative futures for North Korea: One where the North remained isolated, insecure and mired in poverty; and another where a secure (and presumably denuclearized) North Korea had the opportunity to flourish with “investments from around the world” and “medical breakthroughs, an abundance of resources, innovative technologies and new discoveries.”
Assuming that international sanctions on North Korea remain in place until it takes significant steps toward denuclearization — i.e. the international community does not allow Pyongyang to have its cake and eat it too — North Korea would clearly be far better off were it to choose a nuclear-free future. Or at least that is true from an economic perspective.
Prestige
The idea that North Korea is, or at least is becoming, a powerful state that commands respect and will one day reunify Korea is central to North Korea’s national narrative. Hence, one finds references to the country’s dignity, pride, and power peppered throughout official North Korean statements. For instance, in his August 1997 speech on national reunification the late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il grandly pronounced that once Korea is reunified, in accordance with Pyongyang’s precepts, “our country will make its appearance on the world arena with great dignity as a rich and powerful, independent and sovereign state […] and our nation will exalt its pride of being a resourceful, dignified and great nation.”
North Korea’s mission to protect its dignity and elevate its status in the world is closely linked to its core Juche ideology, Songun (military-first) policy and, by extension, its nuclear program.
Kim Jong Il claimed that the North’s Juche ideology of self-sufficiency and self-reliance was necessary for preserving “the dignity of the country and the soul of the nation.” North Korea’s nuclear program has become intertwined with that ideology and with Pyongyang’s quest for prestige in three important ways: First, the Kim regime portrays its nuclear program as a great achievement of Juche self-sufficiency. Following North Korea’s first nuclear weapons test, state media proclaimed that the test “was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent [sic].
