The North Korean Nuclear Threat:

Threats and Ambiguity for Security and Subsistence

Michael A. Cole
Department of Public and International Affairs
George Mason University

International Relations, GOVT 540

Dr. Ming Wan
7 December 2005
 The North Korean Nuclear Threat:

Threats and Ambiguity for Security and Subsistence

In an insecure environment and given its position of comparative weakness, the

North Korean leadership has found nuclear threats and ambiguity to be powerful tools to

remain in power, provide security, and increasingly, to extract concessions from the

United States and its neighbors to satisfy the country’s material and strategic needs.

Although it has pursued nuclear weapons for decades, North Korea has never tested a

nuclear device, suggesting either prohibitive technical challenges or an important layer of

its security strategy. The threat of acquiring a nuclear capability has enabled North

Korea to disregard international condemnation, negotiate with great powers despite

conventional weakness, and exert its preferences in a manner disproportionate to its

strength. As developments in politics and technology undermine the utility of nuclear

threats, North Korea is likely to prolong ambiguity concerning its capabilities for as long

as it is practicable, but must eventually identify new means to maintain its security.

When it signed the Armistice Agreement concluding the Korean War in 1953,

North Korea’s economy and infrastructure were devastated. It had suffered more than

half a million deaths in addition to approximately 900,000 Chinese deaths (Niksh 1), and

the Agreement left it with neither peace nor security assurances. The South Korean

government initially refused to sign the agreement and to recognize the North Korean and

Chinese communist governments, preferring instead to continue the war and unite the
peninsula (Nahm 378). South Korean hardliners espoused this position for decades.

With the memory of its brutal war with U.N. forces, and of its war-time enemy’s likewise

desire to govern a united Korean peninsula, North Korea has sought security above all

from its post-war conception to the present. To this end, it has pursued conventional and

nuclear defences, both independently and through alliances.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (D.P.RK.) adopted traditional

socialist models by instituting a centrally controlled economy and investing heavily in the

military. It diverged from orthodox communism by pursuing Kim Il-Sung’s juche

ideology, a “creative application of Marxist-Leninist thoughts” based on “self-

orientedness or self-reliance” (Nahm 379) intended to make the Korean revolution

distinct from other communist revolutions. Economic recovery served as an early test of

the North’s new system. “It was estimated that about 80 per cent of North Korea’s

productive capacity was destroyed by the war” (Nahm 387); its agricultural sector was

decimated; factories and hydroelectric plants were severely damaged (Nahm 388). The

centralized economy saw earlier and faster success than South Korea until the mid-1960s,

when the socialist economic model began to flounder.

“Underfed and overworked, the North Korean farmers and workers were exhausted.

Free medical care and education helped the people, but the high pressure politics

combined with the slow rise in the living standard and various threats of

punishment” could achieve only limited development objectives (Nahm 398).

Shortages of agricultural staples formerly supplied by southern Korea’s productive

farmlands, difficulty acquiring manufacturing materials and recurring famines, have not
been alleviated by frequently redrawn economic plans intended to reverse economic

decline.

The Kim regime’s military reconstruction following the Armistice was pursued

with renewed conflict in mind, and its expressed desire has been control of the Korean

peninsula. Although threats associated with nuclear weapons have colored North Korea’s

international relations for half a century, the post-war military buildup emphasized

conventional arms. Beginning in 1954,

“North Korea sought and received a tremendous amount of military assistance from

the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Efforts led by them to rebuild

their military strength led to the rise of a large military force, well indoctrinated

with political ideology and equipped with up-to-date weapons” (Nahm 385).

The U.S.-North Korea conflict has taken shape as a conventional confrontation,

but nuclear threats have always rested in the background, initially as the result of

American nuclear capability and North Korean alliances.

“During the Korean War, the United States made a number of pointed threats of

nuclear use, and after the War, Washington deployed a sizeable number of tactical

nuclear weapons to Korea. The result of these U.S. policies was to present North

Korea with a real and growing nuclear threat.” (Mazarr 1995).

(Indeed, it was not until the conclusion in September 2005 of the Six-Party Talks that

North Korea received formal confirmation that the U.S. had removed its nuclear weapons

from the peninsula consistent with its 1994 Framework Agreement concession and

President Bush’s 1991promise, and that South Korea did not have nuclear weapons in

accordance with the 1992 joint declaration on the denuclearization of the korean
Peninsula (Huntley 10)). North Korea expressed interest in nuclear weapons as early as

the mid-1950s (Mazarr 93). As the Cold War progressed, North Korea’s well-

documented poverty diminished its conventional war-fighting capability. South Korea’s

comparative economic and military ascendancy, and the strength of the U.S.-South Korea

alliance, placed beside North Korea’s security needs and offensive aspirations maintained

a nuclear capability as an attractive strategic asset. To this end, strategic alliances

became an early North Korean objective.

Alliances made by North Korea with the Soviet Union and China served to

enlarge the U.S.-North Korea conflict into an issue of global importance, effectively

raising the stakes of possible U.S. intervention against the D.P.R.K.’s regional

provocations, and provided much-needed funds and expertise to promote North Korea’s

nuclear aspirations.

“Under the mutual military assistance agreements signed in 1961 with the Soviet

Union and the People’s Republic of China, North Korea received a considerable

amount of military assistance from both countries, particularly from the Soviet

Union … All of North Korea’s military-related industries were established by

foreign assistance programs, especially Soviet-sponsored programs” (Nahm 386).

North Korea’s 1965 acquisition of a Soviet research reactor produced an alarming threat

to international norms and regional stability (Mazarr 94). Under Soviet tutelage, the

North continued construction of reactors and at least one plutonium reprocessing plant

through the late 1980s, including the project at Yongbyon that would later become the

center of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspections controversy.

 The dramatic social and economic reforms undertaken by Russia and China in the

early 1990s, particularly the decline of socialism and their increasingly peaceful

engagement with the West, left North Korea without the security of its Cold War

alliances but in possession of a developing nuclear weapons program. The D.P.R.K.’s

strategy for national security faced a turning point.

“The final blow for North Korea came when its former allies Russia and China

normalized their relationships with South Korea in 1990 and 1992, respectively …

When Moscow informed North Korea of its decision [to normalize relations with

South Korea], Foreign Minister Kim Young Nam warned that North Korea would

not regard the existing Moscow-Pyongyang military alliance treaty as being in force

and that North Korea had no choice but to facilitate the development of necessary

weapons. It shows how much the North Korean leadership was struck with fear for,

and a sense of crisis over, the nation’s survival. In addition, with the collapse and

‘betrayal’ of former allies, the North Korean leadership realized its severe

diplomatic isolation and came to perceive a grave danger to its own survival”

(Mazarr).

Continued weakness and underdevelopment within, and American and South Korean

threats perceived from without, led the D.P.R.K. to consider its nuclear weapons program

as its most powerful deterrent and place it at the fore of its defensive position.

North Korean strategy, dependent on nuclear deterrence having never tested a

nuclear device, utilizes ambiguity concerning the extent to which the nuclear program has

progressed and how far the Kim regime intends to progress toward a nuclear capability.

North Korean security is maintained by nuclear threats, of violence and merely of

acquisition contrary to international preferences and norms. Its threats are adapted to

serve the dual purpose of extracting political and material concessions, maximize

ambiguity, capitalize on opportunities to extract concessions for cooperation, and to buy

time for the nuclear program’s development. North Korea’s interests are efficiently

served by an ambiguous nuclear threat alone. However, world politics has evolved to

make a security liability of progress beyond threats to device testing, therefore opening

the possibility that North Korea will come to see its interests reflected in nuclear

nonproliferation. In the interim, the strategy employs a long timeframe in which the Kim

regime will use its nuclear program and associated threats to remain in power as North

Korea moves cautiously toward its uncertain future.

At the time North Korea disengaged from Russia, the credibility of its nuclear threat

was ambiguous. Little Western consensus developed as intelligence reports were

contradictory and D.P.R.K. public statements were inconsistent. Time and intelligence

communities have since shown North Korea has made significant progress toward the

two primary technological aspects of nuclear weapon construction (nuclear material

development and delivery). The evidence in these areas moderates the possibility that

North Korea has not yet tested a nuclear device due to technical challenges, again

suggesting strategic motivations. In 1990, Russia’s K.G.B. reported to the Soviet Central

Committee that “According to available data, development of the first nuclear device has

been completed at the nuclear research center in Yongbyon;” “The C.I.A. estimated

publicly in December 2002 that North Korea could produce two atomic bombs annually

through [highly enriched uranium] beginning in 2005;” the aforementioned K.G.B. report

suggested the North Korean government had decided not to test the device in order to
avoid international detection (Niksch 11). North Korea has claimed to possess nuclear

weapons (and in turn, that it does not), and the U.S. intelligence community acts upon the

assumption that the affirmative claim is credible. Whether or not the D.P.R.K. has

weaponized its nuclear material, two things are clear: North Korea possesses or may soon

possess the wherewithal to do so, as seen below by its technological achievements, and

the country’s strategic interests provide insight to its likely course of action where its is

obscured by strategic ambiguity.

Relationships with Russia, China and Pakistan have benefited the North Korean

nuclear program by providing its scientists with expertise, education and materials. The

government employs approximately three thousand scientists and personnel at Yongbyon

alone, many of whom studied nuclear technology in China and in the U.S.S.R. until its

collapse in 1991 (Niksch 9); “East German and Russian nuclear and missile scientists

reportedly were in North Korea throughout the 1990s” (Niksch 10). China and Pakistan

have supplied components and materials for the nuclear program. In the case of Pakistan,

either equipment or equipment designs were exchanged for North Korean missile

technology (Squassoni 6), though technology explicitly intended for North Korea’s

weapons program is thought to be largely of indigenous origin (Niksch 9). The nuclear

program is highly capable, and has succeeded in key areas of development.

There is evidence of both highly enriched uranium and plutonium-based nuclear

facilities in North Korea capable of producing weapons-grade material. There was

suspicion but little evidence of the country’s interest in uranium enrichment at the time of

the 1994 Framework Agreement negotiations and its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations

did not prohibit enrichment (Squassoni 5).

 “[Bush] administration officials have stated they do not know the locations of North

Korea’s uranium enrichment program or whether they have assembled the

infrastructure to produce uranium-based atomic bombs; but U.S. intelligence

agencies reportedly have extensive information on North Korea’s accelerated

overseas purchases of equipment and materials for the uranium enrichment program

since early 1999” (Niksch 9).

U.S. and Chinese intelligence sources indicate construction of facilities under Mt. Chun-

Ma and elsewhere that will be detected only with great difficulty (Squassoni 6).

Although it is known to possess enrichment-related equipment acquired in the 1980s

(Squassoni 4), at least one active uranium-yielding mine, and natural uranium sources

estimated at twenty-six million tons nationwide (Niksch 9), North Korea continues to

deny it administers a uranium enrichment program (Squassoni 5).

North Korea’s plutonium-based program is well documented and publicly

acknowledged. In addition to research facilities at Taechon and Pyongyang, the major

nuclear compound at Yongbyon contains three installations for plutonium processing.

Yongbyon’s five mega-watt atomic reactor can produce enough plutonium (6kg.) for one

nuclear weapon each year (Niksch 8). Construction resumed in June 2005 of a fifty

mega-watt reactor capable of yielding material for thirty weapons annually (Niksch 8).

The D.P.R.K. possesses approximately eight thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, from

which it can extract weapons grade plutonium for up to six weapons (Niksch 1). U.S.

intelligence experts believe North Korea successfully reprocessed its stockpile of eight

thousand fuel rods and may produce a new stockpile (Niksch 8). All that remains is
miniaturization, warhead manufacture, and attachment to missile delivery systems, an

area in which North Korea has long been successful.

North Korea has been capable of delivering warheads in an attack on Seoul since the

success of its S.C.U.D. short-range missile in the 1980’s, but the North Korean leadership

reportedly aims to threaten the continental United States (Feickert 6). The No Dong

(“Laborer”) short to intermediate range missile improved upon the S.C.U.D. with greater

accuracy and power within the peninsular theater, and could reach Japan and other

neighbors. The Taepo Dong 1 missile employs a two-stage deployment process using an

adapted No Dong missile followed by a derivative of the widely successful S.C.U.D.

missile to project warheads as far as U.S. installations in Okinawa and Guam. The Taepo

Dong 2 missile, which remains untested, may reach up to 8,000 kilometres (to Anchorage

or Seattle). Analysts speculate the Taepo Dong 1 could function with a light warhead

(200 kg.) to reach the central United States or Washington. The assembly of a warhead

and successful joining of nuclear devices to projectile weapons is either within North

Korea’s power or could be within a short time. Despite the ambiguity surrounding the

North’s specific nuclear capabilities, its successes in the two primary technical areas

necessary to produce nuclear weapons indicated its constant non-nuclear status until

September 2005, and continued restraint from announcing itself to be a nuclear power is

a subtle but integral part of its security strategy.

North Korea’s opportunity to signal a shift to its post-Cold War strategy in a

public manner came as it reacted to invasive International Atomic Energy Agency

inspections which threatened to reveal more about its nuclear program than would serve

its strategic interest in ambiguity. After signing the N.P.T. in 1985 at Russia’s urging (in
coordination with the U.S.), North Korea refused to permit I.A.E.A. inspectors to visit its

nuclear facilities until it received public assurances from President Bush in October 1991

that American nuclear weapons had been removed from South Korea. The North signed

an I.A.E.A. safeguards agreement in 1992 to permit inspections, but continued to limit

inspectors’ access and movement (Nye 1295). Inspections were controversial as a result

of the 1991 compact on Korean peninsular denuclearization, in which “South Korea

sought wide-ranging powers of challenge inspection, anathema to the North’s closed

system” (Mazarr 95). The 1992 I.A.E.A. announcement “that it had uncovered

discrepancies in the amounts of plutonium produced and declared by North Korea”

(Mazarr 95), and its demand for “special inspections” of locations not on its list of

disclosed nuclear facilities, led to the expulsion of I.A.E.A. officials and North Korea’s

1993 announcement that it intended to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty

(Mazarr 95). Just three years after its Cold War security framework had fallen apart,

North Korea constructed a new one, this time by capitalizing on its opacity, manipulating

perceptions and agreements to ensure its physical security and gain concessions. In

addition to the withdrawal of the United States’ nuclear footprint on the Korean peninsula

and the reversal of a long-held American policy not to disclose the locations of nuclear

weapons, North Korea earned itself a negotiating position among large powers.

In order to stem the rhetorical escalation, in which North Korea threatened war for

the first time in decades (Nanto 12) and the United States threatened sanctions and a

blockade (Mazarr 96), both sides entered into discussions to maintain the D.P.R.K. as a

Nonproliferation Treaty sigN.A.T.O.ry. The high level, semi-official talks in 1994

between former President Jimmy Carter and President Kim Il Sung produced the
Framework Agreement, which stood as a bilateral memorandum of understanding in

which each made commitments and concessions in exchange for North Korea’s

continued participation in the N.P.T. regime. Carter’s visit was seen by North Korea as a

strategic victory.

The scenario that [Kim Il Sung] had worked so hard to put together was happening

at last. Faced with the most dismal economic news he had ever received and a

prospect of a worsening economy, devoid of his long-term sponsor, and desperate

for outside assistance, Kim had, by adroitly using the threat of nuclear weapons and

general war, brought a novice American government to his desk bearing gifts … All

Jimmy Carter accomplished was to adroitly maneuver, cajole, and pressure Kim Il

Sung into accepting everything that the North Korean leader had hoped to receive”

(Cucullu 259).

Under the Framework, the D.P.R.K. was promised light-water reactor power plants to

replace plants capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, 500,000 tons of heavy

fuel oil until their completion, and other forms of aid negotiated at later meetings. North

Korea agreed to store and dispose of its spent nuclear fuel stocks, permit I.A.E.A.

inspections, fulfill its safeguards agreement before completion of the light-water reactors,

and implement its part of the Korean Peninsula Denuclearization Declaration. Each side

committed to move toward political and economic normalization, though the terms of

each are vague. By taking key countries to the edge of war and leaning on its strategy to

utilize nuclear threats and ambiguity, North Korea successfully averted a conventional

conflict it could not win, claimed further assurances for its future security, and retreated

with material rewards.

 The Framework Agreement set in motion a years-long process of recurring threats,

talks and rewards, continuing at present as the Six Party Talks. The North has bought

itself ten years to develop its nuclear program, successfully avoiding I.A.E.A. inspections

throughout the period. During that time, it has restarted and then shut down nuclear

facilities at Yongbyon numerous times, first in December 2002 and recently in June

2005; it has suspended its participation and re-entered international talks several times,

citing its intention to aggressively develop weapons. It retains its strategic tools: threats

attached to its nuclear program and ambiguity concerning the same. The program of

concessions has remained in place since 1995, and manipulation of the program is a part

of North Korea’s strategy to prolong the present situation, but it is also critical to

alleviation of its internal crisis.

“A generation of North Koreans is being physically and psychologically weakened

by malnutrition. The people die silently by the thousands in their homes, in the

fields, and by the roadside. The government tells them that loyalty to Kim Jong Il

and juche socialism is more important than life itself, and many seem to believe it.

This resort to eschatological propaganda is a clear indication of the collapse of

North Korea as a functioning political economic system” (Oh, Hassig 302).

Recent natural disasters are believed to have killed five to ten per-cent of the North

Korean population. Although the military leadership appears unwilling to affect change

and peasant revolts have been easily halted, consequences of unrest and economic

deterioration to the Kim regime remain uncertain. The assistance program is a primary

source of relief from ongoing domestic crises, and its indefinite extension is presently an

objective aided by the North’s strategy.

 The size and content of aid packages change each year in response to North

Korea’s actions and to reflect donors’ strategies and preferences concerning the conflict.

For example, “China and Japan have had some short-term success in linking their food

assistance to North Korean cooperation” (Manyin 30) on contentious issues, particularly

in obtaining information about and release of kidnapped Japanese nationals. Of the

bodies participating in aid programs, including the United States, China, Japan, South

Korea, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Agency (K.E.D.O.), the World Food

Program (W.F.P.) and the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), each employs a unique

calculus to determine what it will send to the North, usually in the form of energy, fuel,

food, fertilizer, and infrastructure and industry projects (Manyin 4). Whatever the calculi

produce, assistance-providing nations are now strategically bound to the aid program.

American food-aid is presently contingent upon “progress in political and security-related

talks” (Manyin 30), primarily with reference to nuclear nonproliferation, and policy

provides minimal unconditional aid for humanitarian reasons. As China and South Korea

depend on their assistance programs to facilitate regional stability, and would thus

increase their aid if the U.S. and others responded with cuts to the North’s nuclear

advancement, the aid is presently of limited utility to deter the nuclear program (Manyin

29). However, it remains a useful tool for the United States to maintain channels to

North Korea even through periods of strategic isolation, and acts as “a vehicle to secure

support from China, South Korea, Japan and, Russia” (Niksh 6) for total D.P.R.K.

disarmament. North Korea utilizes these dynamics to its advantage.

 The Six Party Talks*, begun in August 2003 to achieve a resolution of the D.P.R.K.

nuclear dilemma, concluded in September 2005 with its first formal agreement. (It is the

first agreement between North Korea and the U.S. since the Framework Agreement in

1994). “The agreement marks transition from prolonged initial parrying into serious

negotiations” (Huntley 1) by identifying common principles, goals and means. The

September agreement announced the six parties’ unanimous intention to peacefully

denuclearize the Korean peninsula and specified the dismantlement of D.P.R.K. nuclear

facilities and weapons; it is the first time North Korea has agreed to dismantle and

discontinue its weapons-oriented nuclear program, as well as the first time its assembled

nuclear weapons have been addressed with such a modicum of ambiguity. In addition,

the agreement reiterated the two Koreas’ commitment to their 1992 joint declaration for

peninsular denuclearization and reaffirmed neither American nor South Korean nuclear

weapons are present on the peninsula. Significant departures from the Framework

Agreement are signalled by the signatories’ formal acknowledgement of the North’s

sovereignty, and pledges to normalize economic and diplomatic relations as part of a

phased movement toward a permanent peace and regional security cooperation. This

apparent transition in the years’ long process is contrary to North Korea’s interest in

extended inaction, and talks concluded in November 2005 failed to identify actionable

items to move forward from the September agreement, effectively delaying progress

toward the U.S. objective of denuclearization. However, the 2005 Agreement is the

foundation for the next round of talks. North Korea’s next move will reflect little change

*
Participants in the talks, including the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, South
Korea, Russia, Japan, and the United States, also met in August 2003, February 2004,
June 2004, and July 2005 without success in reaching a resolution.
in its security perception and ongoing need for assistance. It is likely to confirm the

agreement’s acknowledgment that denuclearization and cooperation promise to alleviate

these pressures, but a cost of relying on ambiguity and threats in relationships is that

change and trust develop slowly, if they change at all.

Although North Korea has a history of abandoning its international agreements or

rejecting agreements that specify timetables for its disarmament, its engagements tend to

reflect a broad conception of its security situation. By signing the September 2005 Six

Party agreement, North Korea signalled both continuity and change in its foreign policy

perspective: continuity in its pursuit of security and concessions, and change in its

perception of the best means to achieve these. That North Korea sought American and

South Korean acknowledgement of its sovereignty, formalized assurance of their non-

nuclear status, their pledge to work for normalization and cooperative security, and

omission of the Framework requirement that the North rejoin the N.P.T. and inspections-

regime reflects old fears and known weaknesses, but also new recognition that security

need not be a solitary endeavor. North Korea took care to retain promises of aid and

future development assistance. As it has in the past, the assistance program and

normalization process will unfold sequentially in a “phased manner” (Huntley 2),

providing the North with time to accrue the benefits of aid, as well as opportunities to

obfuscate and retain ambiguity as a powerful tool. This is a victory over the Bush

Administration’s longstanding insistence that “complete, verifiable and irreversible North

Korean disarmament was a precondition to any further U.S. actions” (Huntley 2), and the

North’s active pursuit of such an approach notably suggests its interest in “muddling

through” (Oh, Hassig 309), prolonging the present situation for the security and small
benefits it yields. These represent only small shifts in North Korea’s position. However,

its decade-long shift away from threats of war that punctuated its pre-Framework stance

has consisted entirely of small signals amid a din of threats and ideological

pronouncements.

The diminishing utility of conventionally deployed nuclear weapons carries

strategic consequences for North Korea’s position. The U.S. policy of pre-emption aims

to make their acquisition a greater liability than an asset, and the world-wide spread of

anti-ballistic missile defense systems promises to both render useless the North’s nuclear

program. Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin noted that, “In the post Cold War

world … the United States has ‘unmatched conventional military power, and it is our

potential adversaries who may attain nuclear weapons’” (Huntington 187), but he could

not have forseen the developments that now mitigate nuclear weapons’ usefulness.

Whether conventionally weak states’ nuclear arms effectively deter outside

aggression or not remains a subject of debate, but Saddam Hussein’s Iraq stands as an

historical example of a conventionally weak state poorly served by a nuclear weapons

threat. Despite continuing ambiguity concerning the veracity of the threat posed by

Iraq’s weapons development, the Bush Administration’s policy of pre-emption accepts

the threat (verbal or apparent) as sufficient cause to attack. President Bush’s inclusion of

North Korea in an “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq during his 2002 State of the Union

address, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s identification of North Korea as one of

six “outposts of tyranny,” were surely causes of alarm for the Kim regime. When the

United States deposed Saddam Hussein in 2003 in a pre-emptive defence against his

pursuit of unconventional weapons, association with terrorists, and despotic governance,

North Korea saw that nuclear weapons now serve as a liability rather than the source of

security they may once have been. Possession of nuclear weapons or the perceived threat

of nuclear proliferation, without the conventional means to defend the state and its

nuclear program, is now potentially dangerous. The policy of pre-emption as it was

employed in the invasion of Iraq also makes a security liability of the subtler threat that

North Korea will sell nuclear weapons to outside actors, such as terrorists. The

landscapes of nuclear proliferation and national security have changed dramatically, and

the North’s position is likely to change accordingly.

Those countries seeking security from a nuclear program that are undeterred by pre-

emption’s threat to proliferation face quick devaluation of their investment in nuclear

weapons as a result of advancements in anti-ballistic missile (A.B.M.) defence

technology.

“North Korea is reportedly spending as much as 40 per cent of its gross domestic

product (G.D.P.) on the military. In a recent interview, U.S. Forces-Korea

commander General Leon J. LaPorte reportedly stated that … ‘North Korea’s

military investments are primarily in their nuclear, biological, chemical and missile

programs in order to gain an ‘asymmetrical’ advantage over the U.S. and South

Korean forces’” (Feickert 3).

Whereas the D.P.R.K. invests in its nuclear program because it is believed to provide a

greater investment return in security and concessions than its traditional army, successful

A.B.M. defense programs will render the nuclear program ineffectual and obsolete. The

U.S. Department of Defense reports,

 “The missile defense program is developing and fielding a layered defense for the

United States, our deployed forces, allies and friends against threats of all ranges

and in all phases of flight. Initially limited, these defenses will evolve to become

increasingly capable over time as technologies mature. In late 2004 the United

States fielded the initial Ballistic Missile Defense System Test Bed that can be used

for limited defense operations as the Missile Defense Agency continues to develop

and test the system” (Missile Defense Agency 1).

The A.B.M.-defense program is both land-based and sea-based. Tests for the sea-based

functions are oriented to form a missile shield with U.S. Navy ships for Japan’s defense

against North Korea, and tests of the land-based model have used missiles placed at a

trajectory to simulate a warhead fired from North Korea. The model under development

will target inbound missiles at three points in their paths, using sensors to identify

deployed missiles immediately after launching. It employs lasers to disrupt incoming

missiles by targeting their fuel tanks, and smart weapons successfully intercepted test-

decoys in 2005.

In November 2005, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has

successfully tested its Topol-M missile, which it claims is impervious to anti-ballistic

missile systems now under development (Felgengauer 1). That technology is a part of

the “next wave,” and its progress suggests North Korea’s hugely expensive program of

nuclear warhead development and 1980s missiles may soon be at least two generations

behind technology used by the rest of the world. Meanwhile, “Japan, India, Australia,

South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, N.A.T.O. and others are moving to acquire new or improved

missile defenses” (Hackett 1). N.A.T.O. may announce its plans as early as its 2006
conference in Riga, Latvia (Inside Missile Defense 1). North Korea’s post-Cold War

system is unlikely to compete with the sophisticated technology in development to defend

against it, and the country continues to overspend on its outdated system to the detriment

of its economy and stability. North Korea’s characteristic strategic acuity will not long

countenance such inefficiency and weakness.

While North Korea continues to suffer from the weakness, poverty, isolation and

fear it was left with in the wake of the Korean War, the rest of the world has moved on.

The Communist-bloc afforded temporary conditions for the North’s security and

subsistence, and the country has capitalized with legendary resourcefulness and skill on

the nuclear technology that alliance left to it. North Korea developed nuclear weapons

technology thoroughly enough to successfully use it as the foundation of its strategy to

regain the security and subsistence it enjoyed under alliances with Russia and China. The

International Institute for Strategic Studies explains, “What passes for economic strategy

as well as foreign policy in North Korea remains little more than a search for outside

economic aid” (Stevenson 305). Although it lingers and carries the Kim regime one year

at a time, this strategy will deteriorate as it has before; North Korea’s decade of

obfuscation and delay will end, forcing it to change or experience further decline.
 List of References

Cucullu, Gordon. 2004. Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin.
Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press.

Fairbank, John K.; Edwin O. Reischauer; Albert M. Craig. 1978. East Asia: Tradition
and Transformation. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Feickert, Andrew. “North Korean Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States.”
Congressional Research Service Issue Brief. Washington, D.C., August 12, 2004.

Felgengauer, Pavel. “1.4 A Pain In the Neck.” Novaya Gazeta. 8 November, 2005.
No.83, p10.

Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order. New York, New York: Touchstone

Hackett, James. “Missile Defense Trajectory.” The Washington Times. 10 October,

2005. A17.

Huntley, Wade L. “Waiting to Exhale: The Six Party Talks Agreement.” Report prepared
for the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research, University of
British Columbia. Vancouver, British Columbia. September 21, 2005.

Manyin, Mark E. “Foreign Assistance to North Korea.” Congressional Research Service

Issue Brief. Washington, D.C., May 26, 2005.

Mazarr, Michael J. “Going Just a Little Nuclear: Nonproliferation Lessons from North
Korea.” International Security Vol. 20 (Autumn 1995): 92-122

Missile Defense Agency. “Ballistic Missile Defense System,” program update

presentation. http://www.fas.org/ssp/starwars/program/gbi.htm

Morgenthau, Hans J. “Diplomacy.” The Yale Law Journal Vol. 55 (August 1946): 1067-
1080.

Nahm, Andrew C. 1988. Korea: Tradition and Transformation. Elizabeth, New Jersey:
Hollym International Corporation.

Nanto, Dick K. “North Korea: Chronology of Provocations.” Congressional Research

Service Issue Brief. Washington, D.C., March 18, 2003.
Niksch, Larry A. “Korea: U.S. Korean Relations – Issues for Congress” Congressional
Research Service Issue Brief. Washington, D.C., September 16, 2005.

Niksch, Larry A. “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program.” Congressional Research

Service Issue Brief. Washington, D.C., August 31, 2005.

Nye, Joseph. “New Approaches to Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy.” Science, Vol. 256
(May 1992): 1293-1297.

Oh, Kongdan; Ralph Hassig. “North Korea Between Collapse and Reform.” Asian
Survey, Vol. 39, no. 2 (March/April 1999): 287-309.

Park, Kyung-Ae. “Explaining North Korea’s Negotiated Cooperation with the U.S.”
Asian Survey Vol. 37 (July 1997): 623-636.

Stevenson, Jonathan, ed. Strategic Survey 2001/2002. London, U.K.: Oxford University
Press for The International Institute of Strategic Studies. 2002

Squassoni, Sharon A. 2004. “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade Between North

Korea and Pakistan.” Congressional Research Service Issue Brief. Washington, D.C.
March 11, 2004

Sullivan, Michael P. 1976. International Relations: Theories and Evidence. Englewood

Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.