The juche H-bomb? North Korea, nuclear weapons and regime-state survival

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 1051-1068
Author(s):  
Edward Howell
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Rogue States ◽  
The North ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
Domestic Level ◽  
North Korean Regime ◽  
State Survival

Abstract Existing scholarship on North Korea's nuclear programme remains overwhelmingly centred around questions of containment or engagement with the North Korean regime-state, amid international calls for denuclearization. Yet, scholarship has rarely interrogated the precise value of nuclear weapons to the regime-state. This article develops a new theoretical framework of nuclear ideology to explore the puzzle of the survival of North Korea. This framework aims to show how the North Korean nuclear programme is deeply entrenched within the state ideology of juche, as one device for continued regime-state survival. Through interviews with elite North Korean defectors and textual analysis of North Korean and international sources, I show that North Korea's nuclear ideology has been constructed according to different frames of meaning, targeting referent actors of international ‘enemy’ powers and domestic audiences. This article concludes that nuclear ideology functions primarily as a tool to arouse domestic legitimacy for the North Korean regime-state, by targeting elite actors within the highly stratified domestic population. From an international perspective, perception of North Korea's survival remains tied largely to the regime-state's physical possession of nuclear weapons. This article has extremely timely theoretical and policy implications given the current ‘dialogue’ between US and North Korean leaders. First, it opens up fruitful avenues of inquiry surrounding questions of the legitimacy of rogue states within international relations. Secondly, this article calls for a more robust understanding of the domestic-level politics of North Korea, in order to understand the regime-state's foreign policy decisions vis-à-vis its nuclear programme.

Dialogue with John Dunn on Korean Denuclearization

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 293-311
Author(s):  
Sang-Jin Han
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Global Risk ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The North ◽  
Fundamental Limit ◽  
National Division ◽  
Reasonable Solution

This dialogue addresses the global risk that broke out of the North Korean development of nuclear weapons and missiles. It starts from the brutal consequences of the national division for Korea and asks why North Korea has been so preoccupied with nuclear projects as has been found to be the case since the 1990s, and how much and why Kim Jung-un today differs from his father in terms of his future, and where the fundamental limit lies in Moon Jae-In’s as well as Trump’s approaches to Korean denuclearization and peace. The highlight of this dialogue is to explain the intrinsic difficulties for Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un in finding a reasonable solution to their respective demands for denuclearization and regime security, and explore the likely future of the Korean Peninsula from the vantage point of Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy and metamorphosis.

North Korea

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McEachern
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
The North ◽  
American President

After a year of trading colorful barbs with the American president and significant achievements in North Korea’s decades-long nuclear and missile development programs, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared mission accomplished in November 2017. Though Kim's pronouncement appears premature, North Korea is on the verge of being able to strike the United States with nuclear weapons. South Korea has long been in the North Korean crosshairs but worries whether the United States would defend it if North Korea holds the American homeland at risk. The largely ceremonial summit between US president Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and the unpredictability of both parties, has not quelled these concerns and leaves more questions than answers for the two sides' negotiators to work out. The Korean Peninsula’s security situation is an intractable conflict, raising the question, “How did we get here?” In this book, former North Korea lead foreign service officer at the US embassy in Seoul Patrick McEachern unpacks the contentious and tangled relationship between the Koreas in an approachable question-and-answer format. While North Korea is famous for its militarism and nuclear program, South Korea is best known for its economic miracle, familiar to consumers as the producer of Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars, and even K-pop music and K-beauty. Why have the two Koreas developed politically and economically in such radically different ways? What are the origins of a divided Korean Peninsula? Who rules the two Koreas? How have three generations of the authoritarian Kim dictatorship shaped North Korea? What is the history of North-South relations? Why does the North Korean government develop nuclear weapons? How do powers such as Japan, China, and Russia fit into the mix? What is it like to live in North and South Korea? This book tackles these broad topics and many more to explain what everyone needs to know about South and North Korea.

Washington will prove a paper tiger on North Korea

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Technology Transfer ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Delivery Systems ◽  
Nuclear Test ◽  
Nuclear Technology ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Status ◽  
North Korean Regime

Significance Since its first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has made steady progress in nuclear weapons technology. The July 4 ICBM test reflects its progress on delivery systems with longer ranges and increased sophistication. Pyongyang routinely claims to possess the status as a full nuclear power with the ability to retaliate with strategic nuclear arms against a US attack. Impacts Beijing is likely to share Washington’s concerns about nuclear technology transfer by a more secure North Korean regime. However, Washington is likely to position more rapid-strike conventional forces in the region, over China’s vociferous objections. Once North Korea is confident in its deterrent, it may be willing to offer a cessation of testing in exchange for sanctions relief.

scholarly journals Famine and Reform in North Korea

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Noland
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Food Crisis ◽  
The North ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Korean Food

North Korea has been in a food emergency for more than a decade and in the 1990s experienced a famine that may have claimed one million lives. The crisis is distinguished by its protracted nature, and although conditions have eased somewhat in recent years, the situation remains precarious, and the country could lapse back into famine. This paper reviews the origins of the North Korean food crisis, the impact of the 1990s famine, and the prospects for resolution of the emergency in light of economic reforms initiated in 2002 and the subsequent diplomatic confrontation over the country's nuclear weapons program.

Lopsided Security on the Korean Peninsula

Asian Survey ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Kil Joo Ban
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Gray Zone ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
The North ◽  
Conventional Weapons

North Korea’s asymmetric provocations over the last decades can be classified into two periods: tactical provocations at sea in 1970–1990 and strategic (nuclear) provocations in 2000–2020. What is the logic underlying the North Korean imbroglio? And how does the former period differ from the latter? The first set of provocations was intended to shift the threat imbalance caused by a widening gap in conventional military capabilities into a balance of insecurity, where the weaker North Korean side faced South Korea and the combined ROK–US forces. The second set was intended to shift the balance of insecurity into an imbalance of terror while ensuring that only Pyongyang would be armed with nuclear weapons in the area. The “gray zone” discourse of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (rather than North Korea) ended up bolstering North Korea’s nuclear program, while South Korea intensified only its conventional weapons program.

scholarly journals The North Korean Economy: Current Situation, Crisis, and Possible Scenarios

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Seok-Hyang Kim
Keyword(s):  
North Korea ◽  
Political System ◽  
Foreign Currency ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Korean Economy ◽  
The North ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
North Korean Regime

For more than a half century, the international community largely ignored North Korea. Since 1990, however, the situation has changed dramatically and North Korea has begun to attract increasing international attention. Throughout the 1990s, scenarios of a North Korean collapse were in vogue. Yet, these estimations were proved to be wrong. It is now widely accepted that North Korea is relatively stable in the sense that it seems to have little trouble keeping its political system intact and functioning. By now, the most striking aspect of the North Korean political system is its extraordinary resilience. Why then has the North not yet collapsed, despite the chronic shortages of food, energy, and foreign currency? In this paper, I would like to raise two main questions. The first question is: “How serious are the difficulties of the North Korean economy?” And the second is: “What actions has the North Korean regime taken to resolve these difficulties and how effective those actions have been?” The North Korean regime has been striving to readjust and improve its economic strucrure since the 1970s. The regime has sought foreign capital and technology. However, the regime has been attempting to reformulate its economic structure within the strict framework of the existing political system whose survival was its paramount concern, and therefore it has failed to link the domestic economy with the world economy. What the regime has been doing is, on the one hand, to map out policy measures designed to open up its doors, while on the other hand escalating its ideological and political campaigns to prevent the people from being “contaminated” by a capiralist culture which it anticipated would develop as a result of such measures. It is no wonder that, under these conditions, all attempts at reforming met with only limited success at best. The North Korean regime, however, has negotiated with its people the expansion of its second economy, despite its reluctance to do so. In fact, the regime explicitly defined farmers' markets as remnants of “backward” capitalism which would become extinct as socialism reached a higher stage of development. It is expected that the ruling hierarchy in North Korea will be able to survive for a considerable period of time, despite the threatening economic crisis. So far in North Korea, the need to safeguard the existing political regime has been given far greater priority than the need to bring about reform. However, the North Korean regime, if it intends to survive, will be compelled to carry out full-scale reforms sooner or later.

Nuclear weapons and state survival in North Korea

Survival ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bracken
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
State Survival

North Korea and Reunification

Asian Survey ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 859-881
Author(s):  
Terence Roehrig
Keyword(s):  
North Korea ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Economy ◽  
The North ◽  
North Korean Regime

Efforts to denuclearize North Korea continue, but it is highly doubtful whether this goal will be reached. An often-expressed fear of a nuclear-armed North Korea is that it might use this capability to coerce reunification with the South on its terms. Though its leaders often speak of the desire for reunification, North Korea will not and could not pursue a successful nuclear coercion strategy because it carries an inordinate amount of risk, even for Pyongyang, which raises serious doubts about the credibility of its nuclear threats, the possibility of success, and the likelihood of pursuing such a strategy in the first place. And even if North Korea were to succeed, its efforts to integrate the South Korean economy would be a disaster, leading to the end of the North Korean regime.

The North Korean Nuclear Crisis in 2017: New Challenges and Risks

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Sung Chull KIM
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Command And Control ◽  
Hydrogen Bomb ◽  
The North ◽  
Bomb Test ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Nuclear Crisis ◽  
And Control

North Korea’s hydrogen bomb test and ICBM tests in 2017 incurred a new crisis. Given that North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons and a military option against it may be unworkable, deterrence becomes a realistic recourse to cope with the crisis. The most challenging issues are the North’s pursuit of more missile technologies and unknown aspects of nuclear command and control in Pyongyang.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document