The Anatomy of North Korea's Foreign Policy Formulation

Abstract

IntroductionNorth Korea itself is a puzzle. At the end of the Cold War, it was widely believed that North Korea would collapse, considering the loss of its economic patron and ideological backbone in the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, this logic seems to be fading out. Despite its economic setbacks, North Korea has successfully developed its missile and nuclear capability and thus increased the survivability of its regime without suffering military attacks. On the contrary, even though the United States has invented two negotiating frameworks, the Four-Party Talks in the 1990s (China, the two Koreas, and the United States) and the Six-Party Talks (Russia, China, the two Koreas, Japan, and the United States) in the 2000s, the U.S. diplomatic efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and to include North Korea into the international community have been unsuccessful.A certain question arises: Why are negotiations with North Korea, currently the Six-Party Talks, often ineffective? Indeed, neither the bilateral agreement, the 1994 Agreed Framework formed by the United States and North Korea, nor the multilateral declaration, the Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks in September 2005, have been able to deter North Korea from developing and possessing its nuclear capability. In order to understand these phenomena, it is imperative to understand the nature of North Korean foreign policy.In this paper, I argue that North Korean foreign policy can be explained by neoclassical realism, which regards distribution of power in the international system as an independent variable, domestic perception of the system and domestic incentives as intervening variables, and foreign policy decision-making as a dependent variable.1 From the neoclassical realism perspective, foreign policy decision-makers can be constrained by both international and domestic politics, and their perceptions with regard to international anarchy, including whether they have assured its security, are influenced by such domestic factors as states' political structures and ideologies.2 In the case of North Korea, the international distribution of power is interpreted by its domestic political system, based on the national ideology (Juche) and the supreme leader (Suryong) political institution, and I argue that this perception has predominantly determined its foreign policy objectives and decision-making.The Distribution of Power in the International System and Northeast AsiaThe current distribution of power in the international system does not favor North Korea. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, North Korea has faced grave security threats from inside and outside the state. Domestically, as the surge of democratization in Eastern Europe from the early 1990s illustrates, North Korea faced a potential social uprising from inside at the end of the Cold War. It has also been facing the possibility of economic collapse due to decreasing economic assistance from the former Soviet Union, unexpected political events due to the death of Kim Ilsung, and social instability due to the catastrophic famine that struck during the mid- to late-1990s, all of which have contributed to decreasing the overall national strength. Internationally, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant the disappearance of the Soviet nuclear umbrella, and North Korea's security has become much more vulnerable vis-a-vis hostile states in the region, especially the United States, than during the Cold War.In fact, the United States and its allies have become capable of expanding their alliance functions since the 1990s. This is well illustrated by the modernization and realignments of the U.S.-ROK alliance3 and the redefinition of the U.S.-Japan alliance role, which has developed its function and scope since the 1996 Japan-U.S. Joint Declaration on Security,4 which now includes not only the defense of Japan but also regional and global contingencies. …