OPINION – During the past two years, North Korea has launched over 100 ballistic missiles, to include hypersonic, short and intermediate-range, cruise, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Their last nuclear test was in September 2017, of a reported thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb). A seventh nuclear test has been imminent for the past year.
Here’s a deeper dive: North Korea launched three successful Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) tests in 2023, the most recent a solid-fuel road mobile ICBM with an assessed range of 15,000 kilometers (9,320 miles), capable of targeting the whole of the U.S., and in early January 2024, a solid-fuel Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) with a range of 5000 kilometers, capable of targeting Guam, in addition to last month’s test of an underwater nuclear weapon.
On January 5, 2024, North Korea fired over 200 artillery shells in waters adjacent to South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, where in 2010, North Korea killed four South Koreans and injured nineteen after North Korea torpedoed a South Korean corvette that killed 46 seamen.
This escalation coincided with reported pronouncements from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that South Korea is the North’s principal enemy and no longer the “partner of reconciliation and reunification, but instead an enemy that must be subjugated, if necessary, through a nuclear war.”
Last year, Kim said nuclear weapons would be enshrined in the constitution and previously had announced that North Korea’s nuclear doctrine changed from nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the pre-emptive first use of nuclear weapons in the event of an imminent attack against its leadership or command and control infrastructure.
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The spate of missile launches and bellicose rhetoric from Pyongyang coincides with a very public warming of relations with Russia. On September 13, 2023, Kim met with Vladimir Putin in Russia’s Far East and in October 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Pyongyang for meetings with Kim.
Last month, North Korea’s Foreign Minister, Choe Son Hui, visited Moscow for meetings with Putin and Lavrov, with an announcement that Putin will be visiting North Korea in the foreseeable future.
No doubt, discussions also dealt with the ballistic missiles and other weapons North Korea is providing to Russia, for its war in Ukraine. It’s also likely discussions dealt with the nuclear and missile assistance Russia will provide to North Korea. On November 21, 2023, North Korea successfully placed its first reconnaissance satellite in orbit, most likely with the assistance of Russia. Kim recently proclaimed that North Korea would put three new military reconnaissance satellites into orbit in 2024, probably with Russian assistance.
The former Soviet Union has a long history of nuclear and missile assistance to North Korea. It abruptly ended in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union. This historical relationship, starting with the Korean War from 1950-53, is now being reconstructed, with North Korea assisting Russia with weapons for its war in Ukraine and Russia apparently prepared to provide North Korea with nuclear and ballistic missile assistance – all in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
On October 3, 2002, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly traveled to Pyongyang and in meetings with North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, said North Korea had a secret program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, violating signed agreements with the U.S. – the Agreed Framework — and the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement and the Joint North-South Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. On the second day of Kelly’s visit, North Korea’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju told Kelly that North Korea was entitled to have nuclear weapons to safeguard its security.
President George W. Bush, in his memoir Decision Points, documents his conversations with China’s President Jiang Zemin in October 2002, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and in January 2003, telling Jiang that he was concerned about a nuclear arms race if North Korea persists with its nuclear weapons program. Then in February 2003, Bush said: “I went one step further. I told President Jiang that if we could not solve the problem diplomatically, I would have to consider a military strike against North Korea. The first meeting of the Six-Party Talks took place six months later in Beijing.” And “in September 2005, our patience was rewarded. The North Koreans agreed to abandon all nuclear weapons and return to their commitments under the NPT.”
The Six-Party Talks ended abruptly in 2009, when North Korea refused to permit United Nations nuclear monitors to leave the Yongbyon nuclear facility to inspect non-declared suspect nuclear sites in North Korea. Those suspected nuclear sites were the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) sites for nuclear weapons.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin was key to getting North Korea to join the Six Party Talks (China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and North Korea) for its first meeting in August 2003, and Chinese President Hu Jintao was instrumental in getting North Korea, after missile launches in July 2006 and its first nuclear test in October 2006, to return to negotiations in 2007 and commence with the dismantlement of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
China assisted with North Korea in 2003 and 2006 because China also knew that North Korea with nuclear weapons would not only incite a nuclear arms race in the region, but it would bring instability to the Korean Peninsula and the whole of Northeast Asia.
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The Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty between China and North Korea, signed in July 1961, was renewed in 2021, for another twenty years, between Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. It commits China to come to the aid of North Korea during times of conflict.
China’s official news agency Xinhua on March 22, 2021, said “Xi Jinping is willing to work with North Korea and other related parties to uphold the political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue and preserve peace and stability on the peninsula, so as to make new contributions to regional peace, stability, development and prosperity.”
In addition to this defense treaty, China provides North Korea with over 90% of its crude oil imports and over 90% of its trade, in addition to significant amounts of food aid. Clearly, China has significant leverage over North Korea.
Given recent developments, the potential for conflict on the Korean Peninsula is high. This is the time for China to act. To convince North Korea that further escalation of tension with South Korea could lead to conflict and war on the Korean Peninsula, with dire consequences for the two Koreas and the region.
This piece by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joe Detrani was first published by The Washington Times
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