The Threat from North Korea 

By Ambassador Joseph DeTrani

Ambassador Joseph DeTrani served as the U.S. Representative to the Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO), as well as former CIA director of East Asia Operations. He also served as Associate Director of National Intelligence and Mission Manager for North Korea, was the Special Envoy for the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, and served as the Director of the National Counter Proliferation Center, ODNI.  He currently serves on the Board of Managers at Sandia National Laboratories.

OPINION — North Korea is now aligned unmistakably with a revanchist Russian Federation, providing artillery shells, ballistic missiles and now troops on the ground to aid Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.  It’s the latest in a spiral of dangerous moves the nation has taken, after years spent pursuing greater engagement with the U.S. 

North Korea has reportedly amended its constitution to make South Korea its principal enemy, eschewing peaceful reunification, while destroying railways and roads connecting North Korea to South Korea. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s rhetoric has become more strident, threatening to use nuclear weapons – tactical and strategic — if his country perceives a threat to its survival.  Kim recently visited a Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) site, finally admitting to the world that North Korea was using fissile material from HEU and plutonium for nuclear weapons. North Korea had denied the existence of the HEU program since 2002, the year that the country’s leadership was told that the U.S. knew they had a secret program to produce nuclear weapons, in addition to their plutonium facility in Yongbyon.  

Anatomy of the downward spiral 

How have relations with North Korea deteriorated to this level?  Indeed, this is the North Korea that spent thirty years seeking a normal relationship with the U.S., contending that it would be a good friend of the U.S. and that its nuclear weapons were a deterrent, simply to ensure the regime’s survival.  During these three decades, we had the Agreed Framework of 1994 that former President Jimmy Carter helped to establish; we had former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visit North Korea and hold productive talks with Kim Jong Il, the father of Kim Jong Un; we had North Korea’s second most powerful North Korean official, Marshall Jo Myong-rok, meet with former president Bill Clinton in the White House to discuss normalization of relations; we had the Six-Party Talks that resulted in a September 2005 Joint Statement committing North Korea to complete and verifiable denuclearization in return for economic development assistance and a path to normal relations with the U.S., South Korea and Japan; and we had former President Donald Trump ‘s summits with Kim Jong Un in Singapore and Hanoi.  The 2018 Singapore Summit produced a short joint statement committing North Korea to denuclearization in return for a transformation of relations with the U.S.  The 2019 Hanoi Summit ended abruptly when North Korea refused to acknowledge its HEU facilities, expecting sanctions relief in return for halting activities at its Plutonium site in Yongbyon. 

From 2019 to the present, negotiations with North Korea have ceased, with North Korea incessantly launching ballistic missiles, some capable of reaching the U.S. And it was during this five-year hiatus that Mr. Kim decided to align with Russia, with his visit to Vladivostok to meet Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin’s visit to Pyongyang to formally enshrine an allied relationship with North Korea, with a mutual defense treaty, committing each to come to the defense of the other if attacked.  


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The view from Beijing 

North Korea’s new relationship with Russia Korea must be unsettling to a China that has its own domestic economic challenges and geopolitical issues – in Taiwan, and in the South China Sea – with the U.S. and other countries. An emboldened North Korea, given its relationship with Russia and Iran, may become even more provocative, inciting potential conflict on the Korean Peninsula.  North Korean troops in Ukraine, aiding a revanchist Russia, could also embolden Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who also has the support of Iran, into thinking he’s on a roll, convinced Russia will prevail in Ukraine and move forward with recreating the Russian empire.  Obviously, Russia should not be permitted to prevail in its war of aggression in Ukraine.   

Indeed, ignoring North Korea is no longer a viable option.  Some have argued that normalizing relations with North Korea and accepting them as a nuclear weapons state was and is the best approach for dealing with North Korea. I and others have opposed this approach. Normalizing relations with a nuclear-armed North Korea could result in significant nuclear proliferation, with a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia, with South Korea and Japan – and others – seeking their own nuclear weapons, despite U.S. extended nuclear deterrence commitments. Moreover, the danger of a nuclear weapon or fissile material for a dirty bomb getting into the hands of a rogue state or terrorist organization could become that much greater. In 2007, Israel bombed the nuclear reactor North Korea was building for Syria in Al Kibar, a clear violation of past agreements with North Korea. 

Concurrently, arguing that we can ignore North Korea, with a policy of containment and deterrence, is also a flawed policy. North Korea now has a mutual defense treaty with Russia, a country that had called for the denuclearization of North Korea and supported sanctions against North Korea in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). And North Korea has China, its economic lifeline and treaty partner committed to its defense.  Both Russia and China are ensuring that North Korea is no longer sanctioned by the UN Security Council for it continued violation of resolutions prohibiting missile launches and nuclear tests, with a likely seventh nuclear test imminent. And North Korea has not been deterred from building more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, to distances as far as the U.S.  In fact, the likelihood of conflict on the Korean Peninsula has become more likely. 

With the upcoming presidential election and new U.S. administration taking charge in January, it is now possible to take a different tack with North Korea. Engage the North with the prospect of sanctions relief in exchange for a halt in fissile material production, nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. Keep open the option of a path to normalization of relations with the U.S. 

The U.S. must also make it clear that it continues to be  committed to the defense of South Korea and Japan, with enhanced extended nuclear deterrence commitments and a continuation of joint military exercises with South Korea, that should also include Japan. 

A new U.S. administration has an opportunity to reengage with North Korea, a country that wanted normal relations with the U.S. but is now allied with and aiding a revanchist Russian Federation. 

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times

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