KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
July marks the anniversary of the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War and the 1954 Geneva Conference, convened to resolve the issues that the war could not. In the seven decades since, efforts to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula have been limited and flawed. Today, the security situation in the region is arguably more precarious than ever, with a nuclear armed-North Korea and dysfunctional great power relations. Recent foreign policy shifts in North Korea do not augur well for peace in the near term. Thus, even moving the needle toward peace will likely require Washington to undertake bold initiatives.
USIP’s Frank Aum discusses the failure of diplomacy over the last seven decades, recent shifts in Pyongyang’s foreign policy and why the U.S. should ramp up its engagement with North Korea.
There are many complicated reasons. Initially, the bitter enmity between North Korea and the United States and South Korea following the Korean War meant that neither side was interested in talking. Inter-Korean competition for legitimacy over the Korean Peninsula also meant that Washington supported Seoul while ignoring Pyongyang.
Since the 1970s, however, there have been a handful of efforts to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but they all had flaws. The two Koreas reached important agreements on inter-Korean reconciliation in 1972, 1991, 2000 and 2018, but without the United States directly involved, these agreements could not address critical issues like U.S. force presence, nuclear weapons or multilateral sanctions.
The United States began senior-level policy talks with North Korea in 1992, the first time in 38 years, after North Korea showed signs of developing a nuclear weapons program. These talks culminated with an agreement in 1994 that mothballed North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for energy assistance. However, it was only an interim agreement that didn’t address fundamental issues outstanding from the armistice agreement, like U.S. troop withdrawal.
In April 1996, President Bill Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam jointly proposed peace talks with North Korea. But North Korea, reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union and mired in a devastating famine, took over a year to respond. When it finally did, it demanded that U.S. troop presence be on the agenda. The United States balked, and the peace talks quickly floundered.
All the major interim accords involving the United States and North Korea fell apart due to grievances about unkept commitments by one or more parties.
All the major interim accords involving the United States and North Korea — the 1994 Agreed Framework, the 2007 Six Party Talks agreement, the 2012 Leap Day Deal and the 2018 Singapore Statement — fell apart due to grievances about unkept commitments by one or more parties before negotiations could extend into the later stages where matters like a peace treaty could be addressed.
Cynical and fear-based thinking also pervaded bilateral engagement, which may have caused a constant drag. For example, there was apprehension on both sides that peace talks could undermine important aspects of their respective national security. For the United States, it was concern about the removal of U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula, which would weaken not only deterrence against North Korea but the U.S.’s overall defense posture in the region. For North Korea, it was the potential for peace to weaken the rationale for military primacy or usher in greater Western presence in the country, which would endanger the regime’s control over its people.
There was also a strain of thinking, spanning many U.S. administrations, that North Korea was close to collapse so Washington should not deal with Pyongyang as a long-term partner but rather just wait it out. In recent years, a bipartisan “North Korea fatigue” has emerged in Washington, premised on the idea that because the Kim regime is unredeemable and unreliable, there is no point in negotiating, and containment, pressure and deterrence are the only options. Likeminded conservative South Korean administrations have reinforced this thinking, constraining the United States even further.
There have been three major shifts in North Korea’s approach to foreign policy in recent years.
The first shift is in North Korea’s approach to the United States. Fifty years ago in 1974, the chairman of the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly Hwang Jang-yop wrote a letter to the U.S. Congress, asking for talks to reach a peace agreement. For most of the next 50 years, North Korea was typically the one that wanted talks with the United States, and Washington had the leverage to say yes or no.
Today, the tables have turned. The United States is now the one seeking unconditional talks with North Korea, but Pyongyang no longer believes that peace is possible with the United States. It is also refusing to engage in any talks with the United States as long as denuclearization is on the agenda.
The second shift is North Korea’s approach to South Korea. In the early 1970s, the two Koreas signed a joint communique that supported peaceful unification, at least in principle. North Korea violated that principle many times over the next 50 years, but at least it provided, structurally, the foundation for conciliatory efforts between the two Koreas.
Today, that foundation no longer exists. In January, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un abandoned the country’s longstanding policy of peaceful unification and called South Korea the principal enemy and just another country, rather than related family. And South Korea, despite its constitution, in many ways also sees North Korea similarly, especially the younger generation.
The support that Russia is providing North Korea shields Pyongyang from any urgency to change its behavior.
Lastly, North Korea is focusing on solidifying ties with countries like Russia and China. The support that Russia is providing North Korea — including satellite technology, nutritional and energy assistance, veto power at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) and dismantling the U.N. Panel of Experts — shields Pyongyang from any urgency to change its behavior. The new comprehensive strategic partnership agreed to by Russia and North Korea represents an unequivocal statement by two nuclear countries and one U.N. Security Council permanent member that they are developing a coalition to challenge the U.S.-led international order. With China, that’s three nuclear countries and two of the five permanent members of the UNSC.
All this means that the United States is facing perhaps the worst security crisis on the Korean Peninsula since the Korean War, with little constraints on North Korea’s behavior. There have been other crises in the past, but in those instances, North Korea didn’t have a developed nuclear weapons program or the unbridled backing of Russia and China at the Security Council.
The United States needs to enhance engagement with North Korea aggressively. Such an approach includes the United States taking the first step, offering unilateral conciliatory gestures to encourage North Korea to respond in a reciprocal fashion, and making peaceful coexistence and risk reduction the primary initial focus of engagement rather than denuclearization. Strong and unconventional political leadership is necessary to implement such an approach.
This type of “maximum engagement” approach could help reduce risk and tensions, as it did in 2018 and in the 1990s. It may even complicate North Korean cooperation with Russia and China.
For more on peace on the Korean Peninsula, check out USIP’s essay series, which offers creative perspectives on how the pursuit of peaceful coexistence with North Korea can help the United States and South Korea advance peace and security and reduce the risk of conflict in a tangible and realistic way.