By Eunjung Irene Oh

Another South Korean administration has failed to handle its belligerent neighbor, North Korea. President Moon Jae-in, confirmed in 2017, embarked on an ambitious mission to “realize peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula” with three major goals: “resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, development of sustainable inter-Korean relations, and realization of a new economic community on the Korean peninsula.”[1] With barely a couple of months left before his presidential term ends, he seems to have achieved none of these goals. North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons, including submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), which will provide Pyongyang a lethal second-strike capability. Inter-Korean ties have been at a standstill since the failed United States-North Korea summit in 2019. Economic cooperation between the two Koreas, including humanitarian aid, has come to a full stop despite President Moon’s continued effort to engage with the North.

To his credit, President Moon has taken a particularly bold steps in his attempt to improve inter-Korean relations. He agreed with then-U.S. President Trump in 2018 to scrap annual joint military exercises, traditional symbols of the Republic of Korea (ROK)-U.S. shared defense commitment.[2] He repeatedly signaled to the North Korean leader that he was willing to provide humanitarian aid and economic assistance for dialogue.[3] The Moon administration also defended the enactment of an anti-leaflet law in South Korea, which criminalizes the distribution of anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the North, despite mounting international criticism that it curtails freedom of speech.[4] Most controversially, the Moon government called for formal declaration of an end to the Korean War, which, if signed, could serve as a rationale for the withdrawal of the U.S. forces in Korea.[5] After all these efforts by President Moon in the past four years, however, Pyongyang remains a formidable security threat on both regional and global stages with no signs that it will ever roll back its nuclear and missile programs.[6]

What went wrong with President Moon’s ambitious policy of engagement? What lessons can the next administration draw from President Moon’s failed North Korea approach? A close look at President Moon’s inter-Korean policy reveals two fundamental flaws: liberal premise and misalignment with Washington. On a fundamental level, he based his engagement approach on a strategic miscalculation about the intentions of the North Korean regime and failed to consider the change in the strategic environment that came with the advancement of the North’s nuclear technology. These factors, combined with policy misalignment with the United States and a growing rift with Washington, hampered any tangible progress for the denuclearization process.

Illusion about the North Korean Regime’s Intention

The basic rationale behind the engagement policy of President Moon Jae-in is the classic liberal premise that peace starts with free trade and open markets, which have a pacifying effect on states. Proponents of the engagement policy argue that North Korea is willing to amend new relationships with the outside world and integrate into the liberal international order when given economic incentives and security assurances. They argue that the North Korean regime genuinely wishes to repair relations with the United States and its allies, but faces basic insecurity, which compels it to engage in hostile and belligerent behavior.[7] For this reason, proponents of the engagement approach vehemently oppose a policy of containment or isolation, which they believe will only destabilize North Korean society. This belief has formed the basis of President Moon’s North Korea policy, which emphasizes the use of economic carrots and political dialogue to engage Pyongyang.

However, decades of North Korean behavior have proven that Pyongyang is not as well-meaning and reliable as President Moon and his supporters wish to believe. In fact, Pyongyang’s national strategy was, and still is, guided solely by its commitment to preserving and bolstering regime legitimacy. Its adoption of anti-imperialist ideology and use of militant nationalism, for example, are vital parts of the regime’s overarching strategy to amass popular support and strengthen regime stability. Pyongyang’s systematic abuse of human rights is a prime example that supports this argument. Under the Kim Jong-un regime alone, North Korea has purged around 400 individuals, including Kim’s uncle, through public executions and arbitrary torture at prison camps to repress political dissent.[8] Kim has also continued to commit violations of basic civil liberties such as denying his people the rights to food, religion, assembly, and speech in order to maintain their fearful obedience.[9]

Evidence abounds that the Pyongyang regime gives precedence to its own interest over the wellbeing of its people. Even before the pandemic, North Korea rejected food aid from the South in an expression of discontent over an upcoming ROK-U.S. military exercise.[10] On top of this, the regime has continued to import a significant volume of luxury goods from China as gifts for the elites, when almost half of the population is food insecure.[11] The development of nuclear weapons is another clear-cut example of regime priorities. The North Korea regime continued its costly nuclear program even during the famine, which is estimated to have killed at least one million people between the years 1995–1998.[12] From a position of self-interest, it was logical that the regime did not halt its nuclear program, since nuclear weapons have been indispensable tools for regime survival. In the past decades, North Korea’s nuclear arsenals have served to deter a U.S. attack, secure lucrative economic aid, and maintain strong leverage in their dealings with their adversarial and aggressive neighbors, the United States, China, and the Soviet Union. Abandoning nuclear weapons in their entirety would have been tantamount to discarding the last available oxygen mask to sustain the regime.

From 1998–2008, the engagement policy toward Pyongyang, under former South Korean presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, proved that economic carrots would not change the nature of the North Korean regime. In fact, regime survival is a perfectly rational reason for choosing to violate peace. This explains why North Korea undertook limited acts of violence against the South, such as a torpedo attack, artillery shelling, and a landmine attack. These actions fell short of all-out war, but they were provocative enough to disturb the existing status quo on current or new negotiations. Given the historical patterns of North Korea’s behavior, it is naïve to assume that North Korea will somehow be motivated to pursue reforms and abandon nuclear weapons for the betterment of its people, if given enough economic incentives and security assurances. In this regard, President Moon’s engagement policy, however ambitious, was doomed to fail from the very beginning.

Change in the Strategic Environment, But Same Old Policy

In addition to fundamentally miscalculating Pyongyang’s intentions, President Moon’s policy has also failed to adapt to the changing strategic environment that came with the recent advancement of North Korea’s nuclear technology. The most groundbreaking technological leap in North Korea’s nuclear program was the development of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) in 2017, which gave the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) the capability to deliver a nuclear weapon anywhere in the United States. This development indicated that the strategic dynamics surrounding DPRK’s nuclear program have changed significantly in favor of DPRK in two ways.

First, the advancement meant that North Korea would be ever more reluctant to give up its nuclear program, since it now possesses fully matured technology. Behavioral economists explain this phenomenon as the endowment effect: leaders are more willing to pay costs to avoid losing what they already possess than they are to get what they do not yet have.[13] Unconditional carrots to DPRK might have worked in the distant past when North Korea’s nuclear technology was at a rudimentary stage. Today, they are unlikely to serve as an effective incentive for a regime which has invested tremendous national resources into building its nuclear infrastructure at great political risk.

Second, the advancement of nuclear technology also meant that North Korea began to have much less strategic interest in dealing with South Korea on denuclearization, since it gained leverage to negotiate directly with the United States. DPRK's motivations for direct negotiations with the United States are understandable: Washington, not Seoul, can provide Pyongyang the short-term sanctions relief and long-term security guarantees it wants.

The first U.S.-DPRK summits in Singapore and Hanoi revealed Kim Jong-un’s desperation to have sanctions lifted. According to a South Korean diplomat familiar with the U.S.-DPRK denuclearization negotiations in 2018 and 2019, the main reason North Korea held a summit with President Trump was to pursue sanctions relief. Kim Jong-un did not demand complete withdrawal of the U.S. forces in Korea this time, because he knew that demanding it would have immediately broken off the negotiation. Instead, Kim desperately needed sanctions relief to revive the dying economy, which had shrunk at the sharpest rate in nearly two decades because of UN-mandated international sanctions.[14] Given the facts, it was logical that Washington and Pyongyang ultimately failed to reach an agreement; North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un realized that Washington had no intention of lifting sanctions unless his regime dismantled its Yongbyon nuclear facilities.

If one correctly assumes that regime survival is the ultimate objective of Kim Jong-un, one can predict his next logical goal: seeking an explicit security guarantee from the United States. The most ideal security guarantee for Kim would be in the form of U.S. force withdrawal from Korea and Japan and a written pledge that the United States will not interfere in an inter-Korean issue. In the long term, DPRK will seek formal recognition as a nuclear state, since that will allow the country to operate as an ordinary state actor on the international stage. North Korea is also likely to want the establishment of diplomatic ties with Washington.[15] Unfortunately, South Korean President Moon Jae-in can offer none of this. As a client state relying on the United States for security, South Korea cannot risk dealing with security threats alone, especially without the nuclear umbrella offered by Washington. Using the withdrawal of U.S. forces as a bargaining chip would also be detrimental to President Moon’s domestic popularity, since the majority of South Koreans support the long-term stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea.[16]

Against this backdrop, it is no question that Pyongyang had little, if any, interest in directly negotiating with or being persuaded by President Moon Jae-in to denuclearize. Despite the fundamental shift in the strategic dynamics, President Moon has continued to pursue an unrealistic policy built around a false assumption that he could somehow put the country in the “driver’s seat” in the peacemaking process.[17] If he desired to play such a role, President Moon should have focused his policy on building greater leverage and elevating South Korea’s international stance by fostering cooperation with other stakeholders such as the United States, China, and Russia. Instead, his government urged Washington to allow Seoul greater flexibility in engaging with Pyongyang through economic exchange and cooperation.[18]

Increased U.S.-South Korea Tensions

President Moon’s engagement approach towards North Korea has resulted in policy misalignment and friction with the U.S. government, which largely originated from the difference in perception about Kim Jong-un’s intentions. The U.S. government unfortunately, but correctly, did not agree with the Moon government on the supposedly benign nature of the Kim regime. This divergence between Seoul’s and Washington’s perceptions and subsequent policies and strategies caused significant friction between the two partners.

The difference in views between Seoul and Washington on Kim Jong-un’s intention was most apparent during the Kim-Trump summits. For instance, former national security advisor for President Trump, John Bolton, who was directly involved in the U.S.-DPRK summits, noted that he became “deeply skeptical of [the U.S.] efforts to negotiate the North out of its nuclear weapons program.”[19] After a series of negotiations with Pyongyang, Bolton began to realize that “North Korea always cajoled a gullible America back to the negotiating table to make more concessions.”[20] The diverging views of Seoul and Washington on Kim Jong-un’s intentions and President Moon’s zeal to play a key role in the process created much damage to the alliance relationship. As Bolton noted, the South Korean mediation leading up to the U.S.-DPRK summit in Singapore was a “whole diplomatic fandango” which was “South Korea’s creation, [related] more to its ‘unification’ agenda than serious strategy on Kim’s part or ours.”[21]

Unfortunately, the trouble between Seoul and Washington only deepened following the failed 2019 summit in Hanoi. The two sides continued to clash over the cost of defense sharing, Seoul’s ambiguity about joining the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), and President Moon’s decision to terminate the intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, a crucial ally of the United States. The growing rift between Washington and Seoul is well-reflected in a remark by South Korean Ambassador to the United States: Lee Su-hyuk, in a parliamentary hearing in 2020, said that “just because [South] Korea chose the U.S. seventy years ago does not mean that it has to choose the U.S. for the next seventy years.”[22]

Although President Biden openly criticized President Trump’s approach to North Korea and foreign policy vis-à-vis U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, the Biden administration is similarly skeptical of Kim Jong-un’s sincerity about denuclearization. Jung H. Pak, Deputy Special Representative for DPRK under President Biden, noted that the primary purpose of having nuclear weapons for Kim is regime survival. She argued that Washington should “hold off on any grand gestures [towards Kim Jong-un]” unless it is clear that Kim is willing to make “any real concessions on his part.”[23] President Biden directly reflected this view in his recent North Korea policy review, which made explicit that his administration will continue to put pressure on Pyongyang and not seek a grand bargain by offering security guarantees or sanctions relief to the Kim regime.[24]

The difference in views on North Korea’s intention has continued to serve as an impediment to progress in denuclearization talks. President Moon has repeatedly tried, though unsuccessfully, to persuade President Biden to lift sanctions on Pyongyang. In doing so, President Moon has argued that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is sincere about his commitment to denuclearization, describing Kim as “very honest … very enthusiastic [and] one with strong determination” who does not want to pass down the burden of nuclear weapons to his children.[25] Despite President Moon’s efforts, however, Washington has repeatedly declined Seoul’s request to allow inter-Korean projects to proceed, claiming that these projects violated UN sanctions.[26] The conservatives in South Korea and the Korean peninsula experts in Washington voiced concern about the growing friction between the two allies, but the Moon administration brushed it aside. It was clear that the Moon administration was digging deeper into the holes it had created without yielding any tangible or meaningful progress in improving inter-Korean or U.S.-DPRK relations.

The Way Forward

It is in the interest of South Korea to focus on calibrating its North Korea strategy with that of the United States for effective policy implementation. First, Seoul and Washington should build a common understanding that the need for regime survival is the main driver of Pyongyang’s aggressive strategy and tactics. Based on this understanding, both partners should discuss and agree on their end-goals with North Korea. For instance, even denuclearization can mean different outcomes depending on how an endpoint is defined. Questions that need joint answers include: should North Korea be allowed to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in agreement with the “1991 Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula?”[27] Or should Seoul and Washington strive to achieve “Complete, Verifiable and Irreversible Denuclearization (CVID)” of North Korea as first proposed by President George W. Bush?[28] Setting a common goal and devising a long-term strategy with Washington will be extremely challenging, since South Korean and U.S. presidents serve for a limited period, while Kim Jong-un essentially rules for his lifetime. The latter has a relative advantage, given that he is able to implement a unified, long-term strategy by capitalizing on seasoned diplomats and military strategists with years of experience dealing with both conservative and liberal administrations in Seoul and Washington. This alone should be a more-than-sufficient reason for the South Korean and U.S. administrations to prioritize calibrating their long-term North Korea strategies, which can ideally set the foundations for North Korea policies of future administrations.

Second, South Korea should focus its effort on maximizing its leverage over North Korea through active diplomacy. Of course, it is painful for Seoul to accept that the denuclearization of the North is no longer an inter-Korean issue. However, South Korean efforts to engage North Korea should start from this acknowledgement that the South cannot offer what Kim genuinely wants, which is a security guarantee. Instead, Seoul must clearly define its goal for inter-Korean relations and convince major stakeholders China, Russia, Japan, and the United States why that goal should be achieved and what benefits it will bring to them. Each stakeholder has a significant role to play in resolving the North Korea issue, but Seoul has been negligent in using its diplomatic, economic, and political leverage to engage these stakeholders. South Korea should creatively employ all available means, such as public diplomacy and economic cooperation, to build strong relationships and elicit cooperation from these key players.

The discussion all comes down to the most fundamental question which South Koreans themselves must answer: what does South Korea want to do with North Korea? Can the nation truly “coexist peacefully” with the Pyongyang regime? If not, do the South Korean people envision regime collapse, gradual integration of the North, or maintenance of the status quo? Although current and past administrations should have already debated and answered the question of what Korea should look like and how to build that Korea, they have either willfully avoided it or glossed it over for political expediency. After all, which leader would want to admit publicly that regime collapse or a stalemate is the best possible outcome, when he or she can talk gloriously about peaceful coexistence? Talk is cheap, but the cost imposed upon generations of South Koreans will not be.

About the Author

Eunjung Irene Oh is a graduate student at Yale University. Oh previously served in the Republic of Korea Air Force as an officer, specializing in international affairs and policy at the Ministry of National Defense (MND).

Endnotes

1. “Moon Jae-In’s Policy on the Korean Peninsula,” Policy Issues, Ministry of Education, South Korean government, accessed on June 5, 2021, https://www.unikorea.go.kr/eng_unikorea/policylssues/koreanpeninsula/goals/.

2. Paul Sonne, “U.S., South Korea suspend joint military exercise because of North Korea talks,” The Washington Post, October 19, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-south-korea-suspend-joint-military-exercise-because-of-north-korea-talks/2018/10/19/07990f06-d3c3-11e8-a275-81c671a50422_story.html.

3. “President Moon Vows Assistance for N. Koreans Despite Nuclear Tension,” Yonhap News, September 27, 2017, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20170927008700315.

4. Hyonhee Shin, “S.Korea Passes Law to Ban Anti-N.Korea Leaflets amid Activists' Outcry,” December 14, 2020, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/skorea-passes-law-ban-anti-nkorea-leaflets-amid-activists-outcry-2020-12-14/.

5. “Moon Repeats Call for End-of-war Declaration,” Korea JoongAng Daily, October 8, 2020, https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2020/10/08/national/northKorea/Moon-Jaein-endofwar-declaration-Pyongyang/20201008175700532.html.

6. “Annul Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, April 9, 2021, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2021-Unclassified-Report.pdf.

7. For a discussion on a rationale for the engagement policy, see Victor Cha and David Kang, Nuclear North Korea: a Debate on Engagement Strategies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

8. Andrew Jeong and Timothy W. Martin, “Kim Jong Un Purges Wealthy Elite and Opponents of Outreach to U.S.,” The Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/kim-jong-un-purges-north-korean-elite-in-violent-crackdown-11550593810.

9. “Report of the Detailed Findings of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” United Nations Human Rights Council, February 7, 2014, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/coidprk/pages/commissioninquiryonhrindprk.aspx.

10. “N. Korea Refusing to Accept Seoul’s Food Aid over Allies’ Joint Military Drill,” Yonhap News, July 24, 2019, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190724000638.

11. Hyonhee Shin, “North Korea bought at least $640 million in luxury goods from China in 2017, South Korea lawmaker says,” Reuters, October 22, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-nuclear-china/north-korea-bought-at-least-640-million-in-luxury-goods-from-china-in-2017-south-korea-lawmaker-says-idUSKCN1MW15M; “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) FAO/WFP Joint Rapid Food Security Assessment,” World Food Programme, May 2019, https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000104948/download/?_ga=2.173093605.717233706.1629953092-1021510307.1629953092. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/world/asia/north-korea-sanctions.html.

12. John Pomfret, “Congressional Aides Report Higher Hunger Toll in N. Korea,” The Washington Post, August 20, 1998, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/korea/stories/famine082098.htm.

13. Daniel Kahneman, Jack L., Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler, “Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 5, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 193-206.

14. Anonymous South Korean diplomat in discussion with the author, July 2021.

15. Anonymous South Korean political scientist with expertise in North Korean politics in discussion with the author, July 2021.

16. Karl Friedhoff, “While Positive toward US Alliance, South Koreans Want to Counter Trump's Demands for Support,” the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, December 16, 2019, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/public-opinion-survey/while-positive-toward-us-alliance-south-koreans-want-counter-trumps.

17. “Full Text of Moon’s Speech at the Korber Foundation,” Korea Herald, July 7, 2017, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170707000032.

18. hung-in Moon, “The Next Stage of the Korean Peace Process,” March 14, 2019, Foreign Affairs, March 14, 2019, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2019-03-14/next-stage-korean-peace-process.

19. John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 74.

20. Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, 73.

21. Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, 74.

22. Seung-woo Kang, “Envoy to US in Hot Seat over Repeated Controversial Remarks,” Korea Times, October 13, 2020, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/10/120_297513.html.

23. Jung H. Pak, “What Kim Wants,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2020-04-13/what-kim-wants.

24. Reuters and Nandita Bose, “Biden Administration Sets New North Korea Policy of ‘Practical’ Diplomacy,” Reuters, April 30, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/biden-administration-has-completed-north-korea-policy-review-white-house-2021-04-30/.

25. Charlie Campbell, “South Korean President Moon Jae-in Makes One Last Attempt to Heal His Homeland,” Time, June 23, 2021, https://time.com/6075235/moon-jae-in-south-korea-election/.

26. “Yomiuri: US Refused S. Korea's Request to Make Exception in Sanctions on N. Korea,” Yonhap News, June 22, 2021, https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/news_view.htm?lang=e&Seq_Code=162328.

27. “Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” January 20, 1992, https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/KR%20KP_920120_JointDeclarationDenuclearizationKoreanPeninsula.pdf

28. “Ensuring a Korean Peninsula Free of Nuclear Weapons, Remarks to The Research Conference – North Korea: Towards a New International Engagement Framework by James A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs,” U.S. Department of State Archive, February 13, 2004, https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2004/29396.htm.