North Korea’s Strategic Pivot: Abandoning Reunification for Military Partnership
Amid the hysteria of the 2024 US Presidential election – seen by many on the world as a pivotal event in the world’s direction for the next generation, at least – there is an increasing amount of talk concerning North Korea’s increasingly militant actions. Most alarming among these is its deployment of combat troops to Ukraine, to aid the Russian war effort there, as that conflict grins through its third year.
The failure of the 2019 Hanoi Summit between then-US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un marked more than just another setback in US-DPRK relations. It represented a crucial turning point in North Korea’s strategic outlook, leading to its current role as a military supplier to Russia and its apparent abandonment of the long-held dream of peaceful reunification with South Korea.
The reasons for these cascading failures go back as far as 2003, and are the result of a warped view of ‘realpolitik‘, driven by open and naked profit motives which are completely divorced from reality.
The Shadow of History
Since its formal organization in 1948, the totalitarian Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (or DPRK) has been responsible for not simply fomenting wars, but some of the worst, and longest-running, human rights abuses in modern history.
The Pyongyang government’s abysmal mismanagement of the nation has resulted in a brutal prison state, routinely wracked by famines, and whose industrial base remains firmly in the 1970’s, if that. In addition, North Korean intelligence has been routinely kidnapping Japanese citizens since the 1970’s, to train their foreign intelligence operatives (i.e., “spies”) how to act as citizens of western countries.
However, in two critical area’s, the almost obscenely resource-rich North Korea has spared no expense: its nuclear weapons and space launch programs.
While derided by many for their technological backwardness, poor national management, and cultural isolation, in these two critical areas, North Korean capabilities are nothing to be laughed at.
Bolton’s astoundingly bad judgement is what caused Trump’s failure in Hanoi, a decision-tree so bad, it could be seen as a deliberate act of sedition. North Korea’s nuclear strategy has been fundamentally shaped by the fate of other authoritarian leaders who gave up their WMD programs. The overthrow and subsequent deaths of Saddam Hussein in Iraq (2003) and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya (2011), among others, provided “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un with compelling evidence that nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantee of regime survival.
The Hanoi Disaster
The 2019 Hanoi Summit failed largely because of fundamentally different expectations. The Trump administration, abysmally advised by the hysterical chickenhawk, then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, then-US President Donald Trump was led to believe that North Korea could be “persuaded” to follow a “Libya model” of denuclearization. This profound misreading of Kim’s priorities doomed the talks before they began.
Kim arrived in Hanoi seeking a gradual approach: partial denuclearization in exchange for significant sanctions relief. The American position – complete denuclearization before any meaningful sanctions relief – was a non-starter for a regime that had learned harsh lessons from history: Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s youthful leader, is well aware of the vicious, gruesome and bloodthirsty cackle of then- (2011) US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi: “We Came, We Saw, He Died”…after the Libyan dictator had completely caved to Western pressure to abandon his “weapons of mass destruction” programs nerly a decade before, only to have the United States and NATO openly destroy his regime. Muammar Gadaffi was one of the foulest excuses for a human being in modern history, but the West made an agreement with him, then happily broke it at the first opportunity.
Kim Jong Un may be a lot of things, but an idiot, he most certainly is not.
Strategic Reassessment
The Hanoi summit’s collapse triggered a comprehensive reassessment in Pyongyang of North Korea’s strategic position:
- Nuclear Strategy
– Nuclear weapons development needed to be accelerated
– Its missile testing program needed rapid expansion
– It needed to publicly acknowledge its nuclear status - Diplomatic Posture
– Reduced emphasis on US negotiations
– Strengthened ties with China and Russia
– Dismissal of South Korean outreach - Economic Planning
– Increased focus on self-reliance
– Development of sanctions-resistant trade
– Military industry expansion
The Russian Connection
North Korea’s military-industrial complex, while technologically stalled in the 1970’s for the most part, maintains a massive production capacity for basic weapons systems. Its ability to manufacture artillery ammunition using Soviet-era specifications has made it an ideal supplier for Russia’s war effort, allowing Russian industry the ability to slow its own production to refine and retool, even as western arms industries remain stalled in their production of the same supplies. This partnership offers multiple benefits to Pyongyang:
- Economic Advantages
– Hard currency earnings
– Technology transfer opportunities
– Sanctions circumvention - Military Benefits
– Combat experience for troops
– Modern battlefield observations
– Testing of equipment in actual combat - Strategic Gains
– Stronger ties with a permanent UN Security Council member
– Reduced international isolation
– Leverage against US pressure
Of these points, the second – giving its troops modern combat experience – is the most valuable to North korea in the short term. It it very difficult for a military that has not actually fought a war in decades to know what new tools and techniques it should try to implement; armed forces around the world are notoriously conservative (to the point of being hidebound) for a reason, although rarely to the level of North Korea.
Whatever the reality of the fighting in Ukraine, “blooding” North Korean troops there could give them a significant advantage over their South Korean adversaries in a future fight, as South Korean troops have not had any experience in the kind of war currently being fought in Ukraine, despite having a significant technological advantage over their northern opposition.
Abandoning Reunification
The shift away from even theoretical peaceful reunification represents a significant change in North Korean policy. Since the Korean War armistice in 1953, both Korea’s have maintained reunification as an official goal, though with vastly different visions of how it would occur.
This policy shift serves several purposes:
- Solidifies Kim’s domestic position
- Justifies increased militarization
- Enables closer alignment with Russia and China
- Reduces diplomatic constraints on aggressive actions
After a string of public failures to successfully get a satellite into orbit, Pyongyang finally managed to get a reconnaissance satellite, the “Malligyong-1” into orbit (rather like the original US and Soviet launch attempts).
The successful satellite launches demonstrate North Korea’s growing mastery of several critical ICBM technologies, particularly multi-stage rocket separation and long-range guidance systems. The primary technical hurdle remaining for effective ICBM capability is reentry vehicle technology – protecting a nuclear warhead during its hypersonic return through the atmosphere. Russian assistance in this area likely on Kim’s shopping list for providing weapons and troops to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, as Russia possesses some of the world’s most advanced reentry technologies.
By early 2024, North Korea had already demonstrated progress in multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) development through tests of the Hwasong-17 ICBM, which appears designed to carry multiple warheads. Their March 2024 test of a new solid-fuel ICBM suggested further advances in this capability. MIRV technology would allow a single missile to carry multiple nuclear warheads, each capable of hitting different targets. This dramatically increases both first-strike capability and the ability to overwhelm missile defense systems.
The combination of proven satellite launch capabilities, potential Russian reentry assistance, and advancing MIRV technology could enable North Korea to deploy a credible nuclear triad system, fundamentally altering the strategic balance in Northeast Asia.
Regional Implications
This strategic realignment has profound implications for Northeast Asian security:
- South Korea
– Increased military tension
– Reduced diplomatic options
– Stronger US alliance imperative - Japan
– Enhanced missile defense urgency
– Strengthened US security ties
– Increased military spending justification - China
– Complicated regional balance
– Reduced influence over DPRK
– New strategic calculations needed
The acquisition by North Korea of a credible strategic nuclear capability would represent a catastrophic shift of world power.
Looking Forward
North Korea’s evolution from a state theoretically seeking peaceful reunification to an active military supplier in global conflicts represents a significant shift in Northeast Asian security dynamics. This transformation, rooted in the failures (whether accidental or deliberate) of past diplomatic initiatives and Kim Jong Un’s determination to ensure the survival of his regime, suggests a more militarily active and less diplomatically constrained North Korea in the years ahead.
As this article goes to press, the United States is some four days away from the 2024 Presidential election. There is no way to know what will happen if Donald Trump wins on November 5th – but the outcome of a Harris victory is starkly and painfully clear, because any response they make to Kim’s new course will be either completely incoherent, or wildly overblown.
Choose wisely.
