Showing posts with label foreign affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foreign affairs. Show all posts

Thursday, February 24, 2022

Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power - The Next Decade

Kim Jong-un with his wife, leading DPRK officials up Mt. Paektu in 2019. Image source: KCNA.

 

Introduction

Throughout this series, I have tried to draw from numerous sources to provide an accurate accounting of the first decade of Kim Jong-un’s rule and to limit the number of my own opinion-based comments. For this final article, opinion is about all that anyone could offer. Informed opinion, but opinion and supposition, nonetheless.

People have offered predictions about North Korea since its inception. That there was no way it could survive the Korean War. That Kim Il-sung would end the nuclear program. That Kim Jong-il would falter in the face of famine and the whole system would collapse. That Kim Jong-un couldn’t handle power at such a young age or that war is inevitable.

Those predictions were all wrong. At the same time, plenty of other predictions have been right. That the government would survive the famine because it didn’t care about cutting less desirable citizens off from food. That the country would achieve nuclear miniaturization. That it wouldn’t stop illicit trade activities regardless of the United Nations and especially regardless of the United States.

So, this ‘look to the future’ opinion piece is just as likely to be wrong and to be right and to have areas of grey as the future unfolds and becomes the present. With that caveat, I will attempt to look at the trends of the last decade, the changes, and what’s stayed the same from Kim to Kim to Kim to inform my own views of what the next decade of Kim Jong-un’s rule may look like.

 

COVID and the Economy

The most pressing issue that Kim Jong-un will have to resolve is that of economic contraction due to his lockdown of the country over COVID-19 fears. After two years of very limited trade and internal quarantine measures, the economy is suffering more than it has at any other point during his rule and the food situation, in particular, has reached a critical point.

Although illicit activities have continued unabated, bringing in hundreds of millions each year, there is little indication that those funds are being used to prop up the economy; rather, they are most likely being used to maintain Kim’s lifestyle, provide gifts to the elites to keep their loyalty, and to continue the country’s military buildup.

As such, legal trade must resume before a crisis becomes inescapable, leading to future disease outbreaks (such as from tuberculosis), a limited famine, or even popular unrest. Kim will also have to consider finally allowing vaccines into the country as COVID-19 stops being a pandemic and transitions to an endemic global illness that will be around for years.

Leaving no opportunity behind, the COVID lockdown actually provides Kim the opportunity to gain greater control over the broader economy and over the economic activities of the people as the ‘border blockade’ has made it even more difficult for unapproved cross-border trading to continue. This places the state in a better position to control and monitor what goods come into the country, and it has set up at least two decontamination centers to help facilitate the resumption of trade: one in Sinuiju and one at the Port of Nampo.

A test run at the Sinuiju center recently took place on January 17, 2022, when a train entered North Korea from China after a two-year border shutdown resulted in an 80% drop in trade with the country. The outcome of the train visit and how well the government thinks the Sinuiju facility handled the operation may allow for a slow resumption of trade in the near future.

One twist in North Korea’s economic story has been how Kim, in the early years, allowed limited reform and the markets to continue to grow, but under COVID he has reverted back to more anti-market policies, desperately trying to reign in free market activities and strengthen the state’s central control over the economy. How this struggle against marketization will play out is anyone’s guess, but one complication that Kim is currently having to deal with and will continue to need to contain in future years is the “tyranny of growing expectations”.

As people become accustomed to a certain living standard, they begin to expect more from their government and begin to expect that life in the future will be better than what they have today. In a growing globalized world, this works itself out through expanding free markets and liberalized governments. But in North Korea and other closed states in the past, it can turn into a major threat to the regime as the government cannot compete with the gains made by marketization, and as the people realize that the outside world is much wealthier and freer than what they have at home.

Kim Jong-un made improving living standards and access to consumer goods a key pillar of his rule since the beginning. Promising no more ‘belt tightening’ in 2012, the government is today telling people that they should expect food shortages until at least 2025. After the moderate but measurable rise in living standards of the last 10-15 years, if the government isn’t able to maintain upward growth, then the popular pressure of growing expectations can serve to destabilize the regime.

Should this meld with other pressures against the current system, an inescapable domino effect may occur in the future, leading to the end of the state. This has been one of the biggest threats to the Kim’s and it is something they have managed to avoid thus far, but no one knows where the ultimate tipping point lies.

Regardless of economic reforms or further ossification, one thing, of course, that continued throughout the pandemic and will continue well into the future is North Korea’s illicit activities. Whether it’s selling counterfeit goods, money laundering and theft, or busting sanctions with oil, fish, luxury goods, and other commodities, the state will keep relying on these ill-gotten millions each year to try to stabilize the system and keep the elites in lockstep with Kim Jong-un.

 

Weapon Development

Missile development is the next most important issue as Kim Jong-un works toward realizing his “wish list” as laid out in his speech to the 8th WPK Congress in January 2021. This list includes everything from developing improved ICBMs to hypersonic glide vehicles to tactical nuclear bombs and other weapon systems.

Kim Jong-un spent much of 2021 testing multiple weapons and showed off a wide range of equipment (some known, some new) during the “Self Defense 2021” exhibition. He also began 2022 with a series of seven missile launches that included its longest-range missile test since 2017.

Since the failed summits, North Korea has embarked on a series of technology demonstrators like the hypersonic glide vehicles (showing off two different designs) and rail-based missile launches. Having declared the country’s nuclear deterrent complete, Kim is going to need to continually develop new delivery methods and to improve his nuclear arsenal’s survivability, as it currently relies on a limited number of large, slow-moving TELs that cannot be easily replaced. This helps to explain the proliferation of weapon designs as well as radar and improved air defense systems.

I believe that future nuclear tests are unlikely, but they can’t be ruled out as Punggye-ri still has two functional tunnels. And after North Korea implied that the self-imposed moratorium on testing would no longer be adhered to, it does place future tests on the table.

 

In terms of sanctions, I think that it is unarguable that they have been an abject failure. Upwards of two hundred thousand citizens are still locked in prison camps, the country has tested nuclear weapons and created miniaturized warheads, North Korea has missiles that can reach the United States, and the Kim family is still firmly in control. However, one reason why sanctions have failed is that the enforcement of those international sanctions is rooted in each individual UN member state’s own interpretations of the sanctions and their own willingness to enforce them.

China has been integral to North Korea’s ability to skirt sanctions and carry out illegal activities. And while China occasionally gets tired of Pyongyang’s behavior and temporarily gets stricter with enforcement, the existence of North Korea is within their own national self-interest. This means that China will never do anything that might directly cause the collapse of the current government short of North Korea declaring war or causing significant damage to China itself.

Therefore, absent greater international pressure on China to plug the enforcement leaks and loopholes, China will continue to be North Korea’s lifeline and Kim Jong-un will continue using this to his advantage.

Until China becomes willing to strictly enforce sanctions or until either the United States or South Korea becomes willing to cave on major issues (all unlikely scenarios), North Korea is going to keep testing weapons. The goal of complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) is now completely unrealistic unless the United States is willing to go to war, which it hasn’t been despite the murder of multiple US military personnel and the assassination of multiple South Korean officials over the decades.

In my view, the only viable option is that of arms control, limiting the number of warheads and their yields, limiting the range of missiles, and limiting the numbers of launchers North Korea can have in exchange for substantial sanctions relief.  However, the human rights situation complicates matters as does Pyongyang’s history of ignoring agreements.

At least in the near term, we should certainly engage in talks but the longer-term position is likely to be merely “wait and see,” as neither side seems willing or capable of making the difficult decisions or want to risk losing face, and as North Korea hasn’t been patient enough for slower confidence-building measures prior to more substantial agreements.

 

Human Rights

Domestically, human rights abuses will assuredly continue. Kim Jong-un has shown little inclination to degrade the state’s system of prison camps and he has ramped up internal surveillance to levels not seen since Kim Il-sung.

Although Camp 22 was closed under his watch in 2012, many of the prisoners were merely transferred to other sites, and others are alleged to have been allowed to starve to death to enable the camp’s closure.

In contrast, prisons in Pokchong-ni, Kangdong, Chidong-ri, Yongdam, Nongpo, Chongjin, Hwasong, Pukchang, and others have all seen new construction or renovations to their facilities. Additionally, public executions outside of the prisons, within regular towns and villages, have reportedly not ended and are now carried out for things like watching certain foreign media.

Since coming to power, Kim Jong-un has directed the Ministry of Social Security, Ministry of State Security, the People’s Border Guards, and other relevant agencies to crackdown on defections and unapproved cross-border economic activity. In 2011, 2,706 defectors made it to South Korea. By 2018, only 1,137 defectors were able to make it to the South. However, COVID-19 gave Kim a great opportunity to ramp up the repression of freedom of movement.

Hundreds of new border guard huts and hundreds of kilometers of new border fencing have been erected during the pandemic. While anti-defection measures had been begun prior to COVID, nearly the entire northern border ended up with a double row of electrified fencing since the beginning of the pandemic. Although the ‘border blockade’ is ostensibly to prevent the spread of the virus from Chinese persons and goods illegally crossing the border, it has served to nearly end defections.

In 2021 a mere 63 defectors made it to South Korea.

 

Freedom of expression and thought have also come under greater assault, especially in the last few years, as Kim has solidified his rule and now looks forward to being the only Kim in charge for another generation or two, in the model of his grandfather.

There is no greater threat to a closed society than information and no greater threat to an authoritarian system than individuality. It is said that blue jeans helped bring down communism. This wasn’t because jeans come with guns or brings down economies, but because they became a symbol of capitalism and individuality. While the saying is overly simplistic, that basic article of clothing became subversive and was a reminder that the free world and its values were thriving, while breadlines and secret police were all communism had to offer.

Similarly, North Korea has relied upon the group subsuming the individual. The masses, as a unified whole, are what the North Korean government and society are built upon. The individual only exists as an entity for so long as they give themselves over the larger group and never turn their back on socialism by highlighting their individuality or demanding to be treated as a human being equal to any other.

This feature of all authoritarian regimes, left and right, is relied on to keep the masses in line and curtail any risk of nonconforming thoughts and actions. It is this feature that Kim Il-sung wielded to such a great effect that for a stretch of thirty years, almost no known public demonstrations or other protests occurred.

And after the breakdown of the information cordon in the 1990s, it is this feature that Kim Jong-un must learn to wield again, or else he will have to accept that permanent cracks in the system exist and may one day bring the entire system crashing down.

To this end, more and more effort is being expended on hunting down purveyors of smuggled media material, cell phone tracking and blocking technology has been installed along the entire Sino-DPRK border, and the government has taken greater steps to punish officials and police who turn a blind eye toward or take bribes to overlook illegal activity. Even attacks on everything from non-traditional hairstyles to using foreign slang have been couched in terms of national salvation – of restoring a true socialist community by going after impure, reactionary elements.

Kim Jong-un has even leveraged South Korea’s desires for diplomatic normalization to get the South Korean government to pass laws violating human rights within the ROK merely to appease him. But all that has done is hurt the South’s own legitimacy and standing as a democratic beacon in the region while enabling Kim Jong-un to limit the flow of outside information and culture into the country.

In my view, it’s hard to see a time when this rise in human rights abuses will end so long as the invisible yet existential threat of COVID exists. Of course, the government has never needed a real threat to its existence to lash out at foreign elements within the self-proclaimed racially and culturally pure North Korean community, but COVID happens to be a very real threat and provides an excellent opportunity for Kim to maintain his veer toward greater authoritarianism.

 

Future of Foreign Relations

Between assassinations, further missile and nuclear tests, and a never-ending list of illicit activities, North Korea has become more and more isolated under Kim Jong-un. The government’s anti-pandemic measures have only exacerbated this with the removal of diplomatic and foreign aid staff from the country. But North Korea has still tried to strengthen ties with China and Russia, as well as Eastern European and African countries through the exploitation of DPRK citizens as foreign labor and, occasionally, construction project leaders.

The long and turbid history of North Korea’s interactions with the world has created an unstable environment with little ingrained goodwill or trust among all parties. Its history with the United States has been particularly fraught.

The Clinton administration thought it had a workable deal in the development of the Agreed Framework, but the death of Kim Il-sung and subsequent famine radically altered the world Kim Jong-il was forced to face, and the Bush administration posed a much different threat in Kim Jong-il’s view after North Korea was labeled as part of the Axis of Evil and with the eventual invasion of Iraq. Under Obama, ‘strategic patience’ only allowed Kim Jong-il and eventually Kim Jong-un to continue their military buildup and created no real progress on the diplomatic front. With President Trump, ‘maximum pressure’ was about as unserious a campaign as one could think of. Despite the horrifying bluster with both sides threatening the annihilation of the other, maximum pressure was more like moderate suggestions, particularly as international efforts continued to hinge on China’s willingness (or lack thereof) to enforce the will of the United Nations.

After a year of a new administration under Biden, it has become obvious that the United States lacks the bandwidth to deal with Kim Jong-un. In the face of continual missile tests, failed summits, and mounting geopolitical problems elsewhere, Americans and the international community itself seem to be going numb to Pyongyang.

Launches no longer draw the media attention they once did and South Korea’s official announcements regarding activity at various nuclear facilities have basically become exact copies of each other, with only the dates changed.

In such an apathetic environment, it’s difficult to see how any progress can be made. And as Russia and China continue to serve as lifelines in the face of international will, dealing with Pyongyang can never simply be a bilateral proposition.

Of course, the only reason anyone even cares about North Korea is because North Korea made itself a problem. It has commanded the world’s attention for generations through threats and belligerent actions. Receding into the background is not the Kim way.

Kim Jong-un will eventually do something that catches the world’s eye once again, and we can only hope that the international community is willing to address whatever that is. Ignoring Pyongyang only emboldens the regime. And while there may be no good options currently and although there have been many failures over the years, discussion and diplomacy are still the best policy – even in the absence of grand agreements or apocalyptic threats. 

 

Tomorrow’s Personality Cult

The half-life of the North Korean cult of personality is roughly the reign of one Kim. During Kim Il-sung’s rule over the country, he was a genuinely beloved and respected leader. The cult under Kim Jong-il fell precipitously as upwards of 1 million North Koreans died under his watch, but the state’s system of indoctrination from birth and its security apparatus insured that the cult survived. Under Kim Jong-un, the cult has weakened further, with many young people reportedly not caring about the great ‘Paektu Bloodline’ or his alleged brilliance.

To counter this, Kim has taken multiple steps to shore up the cult, and, assuming he survives another ten years, these steps can be expected to continue as the cult forms one of the ideological pillars for the state’s very existence and must be maintained.

During his first years, Kim tried to solidify his rule by drawing direct comparisons between himself and Kim Il-sung. His appearance, dress, more personable qualities, and even riding around on white horses, all reminded the people that he was not just another leader but was the rightful heir to Kim Il-sung.

Even his ability to complete the country’s nuclear program and bring a United States president to cross the DMZ all underscored the divine blood flowing in his veins. Still, younger generations have been far more concerned with economic betterment and cultural exchanges than they have been with ridged ideologies. And this poses a long-term threat to the government.

Kim has taken the opportunities provided by COVID-19 to try to reestablish a sense of national unity through a shared crisis, and in doing so, has double-downed on the development of his own personality cult. To do this, he has turned the sacrifice of personal liberties into an expression of true patriotism, for only the Kim family, Juche, and the Monolithic Ideological System can save the country.

As part of this, he has attacked foreign cultural influences, particularly that of South Korean music and other entertainment, with a key focus on rooting out these influences from among the nation’s youth. A so-called “thought law” was implemented in 2021 that goes after those using South Korean slang, efforts have been redoubled to punish those watching foreign media, with executions in store for those accused of distributing the material, and even personal fashion choices have been attacked as being anti-socialist and part of the corrupting influence of capitalism.

With the information cordon that so dramatically cracked under Kim Jong-il being reestablished and cross-border travel becoming ever more difficult, Kim Jong-un is working toward rebuilding the ‘hermit kingdom’ of his grandfather, with as many vestiges of western influences wiped out as possible. The end results being a population less susceptible to revolution, greater government control over the people’s daily lives, less market activity, and it has prolonged the longevity of the Kim family’s rule over the country.

 

Succession & Future of Government

With questions about Kim Jong-un’s health dogging his entire reign, and the fact it is known that he has experienced medical emergencies, the matter of succession is more pressing than it otherwise would be for a ruler still in his thirties.

Kim Jong-un has made a series of structural changes to the rules of the WPK that could, theoretically, allow for the future succession of a non-Kim family member. He has also placed his sister, Kim Yo-jong, in positions of moderate official power while giving her substantial practical authority. She appears to be the most trusted person in his orbit and can routinely be seen following behind her brother taking notes and keeping meetings/events on track. Additionally, she has been given more leeway to voice her own views than anyone since Kim Jong-il was still being groomed by Kim Il-sung.

Given that Kim doesn’t have any adult children, killed his half-brother, and his other brother has largely been kept in the background, this points to Kim Yo-jong being the de facto successor in the event of an emergency.

Once Kim’s own children come of age, this is likely to change but for the time being, Yo-jong can be considered to be the second most important person in the country. While she lacks the needed official Party and military titles to take over, what’s important is Kim Jong-un’s faith in her and the fact that she has been able to build her own support base within the Party and even the military.

 

Kim Jong-un will also continue to reform the government and Party to fit the particular needs of his era. Loosening agricultural controls to improve productivity, seeking greater government revenue via market fees/taxes, the further militarization of the civilian police force, and the ongoing shift away from the Songun Policy have all made their mark.

What’s more, is as Kim has replaced older Party apparatchiks and military officers, he has opened up the opportunity to rearrange the inner workings of both organizations to cut down on corruption (which drains money and authority away from the central government), introduce and enforce his own ideological views, and he can gradually set up frameworks to deal with major crises of leadership such as if he became incapacitated or died, as well as to develop a more robust command and control system regarding nuclear weapons.

Trying to understand the decision-making process and the “why’s” within North Korea is often a form of reading tea leaves, but it is my suspicion that the cumulative effect of Kim’s efforts on the structure of the WPK and the military will lead to organizations that, in the end, will be markedly more modern and forward-looking, creating a more viable system for the future.

 

Final Thoughts

Contrary to predictions of the Kim regime collapsing or that Kim Jong-un would be a Western-minded reformer, as Pratik Jakhar has noted, his rule has been “remarkably resilient and consistent. Kim Jong Un has stayed within the confines of the framework established by his grandfather Kim Il Sung and inherited from his father Kim Jong Il. In the process, he has preserved state oppression, class divisions, purges, military adventurism, economic control and mandated glorification of the Kim family.”

Jakhar’s view sums up the last ten years and I believe it is prescience for the next ten years as well.

Throughout this biographical series, we have seen that although Kim has initiated a number of changes, they have been on the periphery and still uphold the core values of the regime. Massive construction projects and megafarms have always been part of Pyongyang’s agenda. The roots of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs date to soon after the Korean War and have melded into the national psyche, making their development an integral part of the state’s legitimacy. And there has been no decline in rampant human rights abuses nor has there been a move away from the personality cult.

External forces always elicit responses and policy changes to fit the moment, but they have followed tried and true formulas that have kept North Korea going for 77 years. Meaningful structural changes to the way things are done are never done in haste. What drift there has been over the years since the early days of Kim Il-sung has largely been incremental, with Party hagiographers and archivists taking care to erase any public trace of old policies that are no longer supported by the current ideological flavor.

Over the next decade, Kim Jong-un will undoubtedly face new challenges and will continue to face growing threats from within the country such as information sharing and marketization. But if the last ten years have taught us anything, it’s that he can be relied upon to employ terror tactics within and without, and that he is only open to reform so long as that reform can help ensure the state’s longevity and his premier position within it.

And until China decides to step up its enforcement of international sanctions, there is little reason to believe that things like missile tests, illicit trade, financial crimes, and human labor trafficking won’t continue.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series, and can get access to the underlying data behind the supplemental reports.

Supporters at other levels will be sent each new article a day before it’s published and will also receive a mention as seen below.

 

I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, and Russ Johnson.

--Jacob Bogle, 2/23/2022

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power - North Korea's Coming Out Party

Part IV - North Korea's Coming Out Party

Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump walking together during the 2018 Singapore Summit. Image Credit: Shealah Craighead, June 12, 2018, official White House photograph.

 

Introduction

Hosting the Olympics for the first time is usually regarded as a country’s “coming out party”, letting the world see that they are capable of massive and complex infrastructure projects as well as having developed the diplomatic skills necessary to coordinate an event with tens of thousands of participants and countless visitors from around the world.

This was the case for South Korea in 1988 and China in 2008.

For North Korea, many view their coming out event as the year 2018 itself. In 2018, North Korea attempted to woo their southern cousins during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics at the beginning of the year and followed it up with a summit in Singapore with the United States on June 12. For the first time in history, a sitting North Korean leader and a sitting American president sat across from each other at the same table. However, when Kim Jong-un first ascended to power, few thought such a meeting would ever be possible.

Kim Jong-un had very little diplomatic experience during his short grooming period and the North Korean diplomatic corps was, naturally, dominated by those who had served exclusively under Kim Jong-il. Making matters more difficult is the very limited range of independence North Korean diplomats have to adapt to what the moment requires. Rather, they’re often limited to repeating talking points and must seek authorization for even minor changes.

This has handicapped the vast majority of exchanges with North Korea and has often led to the collapse of talks. Regardless, an election in the U.S. and the openness of South Korean president Moon Jae-in created the opportunity for Kim Jong-un to engage with the world much more than his father, the insular-looking Kim Jong-Il.

And so, the world witnessed something of a miracle in 2018, but that year has become bookended by assassinations and nuclear tests before and aggressive stances and missile tests since. How the miracle year came about and where things seem to be going in the aftermath is what I hope to share in this article.

 

Early Moves, Fire & Fury

Early diplomatic outreaches by Kim Jong-un’s new regime followed long-established cycles of provocation followed by promises to talk in exchange for aid or sanctions relief, only to be followed by a period of provocation again. This was the case with the ‘Leap Day’ deal reached on Feb. 29, 2012 that would have allowed inspectors into the Yongbyon nuclear research site. However, the agreement was discarded a few weeks later as North Korea announced they would launch a satellite into space which the United States viewed as a violation of the agreement.

This cycle continued through to the election of Donald Trump in Nov. 2016. Although, while still firing missiles and testing nuclear weapons, the election seemed to provide Kim Jong-un with an opening to reach out to the U.S. as Trump relied more on his personal relationships with people than he relied on previous policy decisions or protocol. President Trump had also made it clear that he was willing to talk to anyone, including Putin and Xi Jinping, regardless of human rights abuses, if it meant improved bilateral relations and avoiding greater conflicts.

However, this opening appeared to slam shut for Kim Jong-un following the assassination of his half-brother Kim Jong-nam. The 45-year-old Jong-nam had been living in self-imposed exile for years and spent most of his time visiting casinos in Macau, going to concerts, and living in luxury apartments. As Kim Jong-un took power, Kim Jong-nam began to openly criticize the hereditary succession and called on North Korea to reform its practices. This placed Jong-nam in the very dangerous position of being a possible locus of dissent for unhappy elites in Pyongyang who may also want the country to reform.

After Kim Jong-un had solidified his power within the country, he made the decision to take out this threat. On February 13, 2017, Kim Jong-nam was passing through the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia where he was assaulted by two women, with one splashing him with a liquid and the other covering his face with a cloth.

The women were from Vietnam and Malaysia and had been told they were taking part in a TV prank show, but it was no prank. They had unknowingly exposed Jong-nam to the deadly and banned chemical weapon VX. He died soon after despite medical treatment.

The resulting backlash led to multiple countries (including Malaysia) recalling their ambassadors and closing embassies, leaving North Korea more isolated than ever.

But while the world looked on in horror at the assassination, it was North Korea’s weapons testing that really got under President Trump’s skin.

Kim Jong-un tested four nuclear devices between 2013 and 2017, with each device being more powerful than the next. The United States’ intelligence community eventually assessed that Pyongyang indeed had the capability to produce a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile.

Following up on two nuclear tests in 2016, North Korea conducted a series of missile tests in 2017 that culminated in the successful testing of the Hwasong-14 on July 4 and a second test on July 28. The Hwasong-14 became North Korea’s first missile capable of hitting nearly all of the continental United States.

Celebrating the July 4 test, Kim Jong-un called the launch a “gift [to the] American bastards…” for the U.S. Independence Day holiday and told officials to “frequently send big and small ‘gift packages’ to the Yankees”.

These tests brought the North Korea crisis to a boiling point and serious discussions were held about attacking the country or conducting a ‘decapitation strike’ against Kim Jong-un. President Trump summed up his feelings on August 8, 2017 declaring, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States…they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” And, partially in response to the killing of Kim Jong-nam with a chemical weapon in a third-party country, the U.S. also relisted North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism that November.

It was under this shadow that South Korea prepared to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in the city of Pyeongchang. It was also at this point that back-channel discussions were ongoing to set up a new round of talks or even a summit to defuse the situation and avert war. After some uncertainty in 2017, North Korea had reached an agreement to participate in the 2018 Olympics on Jan. 9, 2018, but Pyongyang’s other aggressions were continuing and such a breakthrough event as a summit had yet to be formally agreed to by the time of the Games.

  

Onward to Pyeongchang

Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-Jong, sits next to South Korea president Moon Jae-in during a performance of the North Korean Samjiyon Orchestra in Seoul. Image source: Korean Culture and Information Service, CC 2.0

Although Kim Jong-un said in his 2018 New Years’ Address that “North Korea's participation in the Winter Games will be a good opportunity to showcase the national pride and we wish the Games will be a success”, their participation was still up in the air after North Korea had failed to meet a deadline, but then a final agreement was reached on Jan. 9.

North Korea’s agreement to take part in the games and have both country’s athletes walk in the opening ceremony together under the Unification Flag was a great step toward rebuilding trust and cooperation between each side of the DMZ.

At the same time, as during the 1988 Summer Olympic Games that were held in Seoul, it was also feared North Korea might seek to either co-opt the events or cause major disruptions. In the case of the 1988 Games, this took the shape of bombing Korean Air Flight 858 in the runup to the Olympics that killed 115 people. For 2018, Japan’s Foreign Minister Taro Kono warned Seoul to be warry of any “charm offensive” coming from Pyongyang and there was even some backlash among South Koreans, as the Moon administration signaled that it was willing to give into North Korean demands including things that could be seen to intrude on South Korea’s own rights as a sovereign nation and on civil liberties.

Thankfully, the worst that happened was North Korea condemning the continued U.S. military presence on the peninsula and the military cooperation between Washington and Seoul. However, a kind of co-opting did happen in the form of Kim Jong-un’s sister – Kim Yo-jong.

The announcement that Kim Jong-un’s younger sister would serve as his envoy during the games helped to turn opposition into curiosity as a central member of the Kim family would be visiting South Korea in one of the biggest diplomatic moves since the Korean War.

Kim Yo-jong’s ‘cool personality' and appearance played well with the South Korean public and was evocative of the ‘Kim Jong-il mania’ that swept the country in 2000 following the first inter-Korean Summit as a result of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy that saw a dramatic, though temporary, rise in pro-North sentiment among the general public.

In this sense, Yo-jong helped open the door for future discussions and meetings between the two countries that would pave the way for the inter-Korean summit between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in on April 27, 2018. This move also built up her own public name recognition globally and improved her growing standing within the North Korea elite as one of the few people Kim Jong-un trusts the most.

As part of the 22-member government delegation sent to South Korea, Yo-jong was also joined by Kim Yong-nam, the President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA). A number of civilians were also sent including the Samjyong Orchestra, which was formed to perform in South Korea as part of the overall celebrations.

During the period of the Olympics, Yo-jong attended the opening ceremony, watched a hockey match, and met with several South Korean dignitaries including President Moon Jae-in himself, during which she delivered Kim Jong-un’s invitation for him to travel to Pyongyang. And while Yo-jong did not attend the closing ceremony, SPA Presidium member General Kim Yong-chol did, continuing the highest levels of North Korean representation throughout the events.

In contrast to Yo-jong’s engaging behavior, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was noted as looking “stony face” during the opening ceremony, perhaps reflecting the Trump administration policy of ‘maximum pressure’ toward North Korea. However, relations would soon begin to thaw.

 

After a flurry of lower-level meetings in March and early April, on April 27 the first inter-Korean summit in eleven years took place. It was the first meeting between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in and the summit gave rise to the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

The Panmunjom Declaration was largely a reiteration of the goals found in previous agreements, with some previsions recalling the 2000 June 15th North–South Joint Declaration and the 2007 North–South Summit Declaration, namely to seek reunification on joint Korean terms, end hostilities, engage in economic cooperation, and develop a step-by-step process toward further cooperation and peace.

The Panmunjom Declaration did make some progress, however, in that it directly called for an official end to the Korean War (which is technically still ongoing) and gave a more detailed outline for how to accomplish the broader goals of the agreement. This included the creation of a North-South liaison office in Kaesong and connecting the countries through the Donghae and Gyeongui railways.

Additionally, both sides agreed to remove loudspeakers along the DMZ that have blasted propaganda into each country off and on for decades, and they agreed to put an end to sending balloons across the DMZ which is something North Korea, in particular, has long complained about.

The move against balloons, which are often sent across by South Korean civilian groups, would expose the South Korean government to considerable criticism by civil rights activists as the government signaled its willingness to prosecute citizens for sending anything over the DMZ, including money and USBs of popular television shows.

But while the domestic political issues took on a life of its own, both Koreas continued their engagement and two more inter-Korean summits were held in 2018.

At the same time, efforts were underway to bring an end to the rising antagonism between North Korea and the United States.

 

Working Toward a Summit

North Korea’s participation in the Olympics and the Panmunjom Declaration created an opportunity for North Korea and the United States to begin a period of détente. After the bellicose heights of “fire and fury” the year before, a South Korean delegation met with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on March 5, 2018 to negotiate future moves toward peace.

Mere days after the Pyongyang meeting, South Korean officials were at the White House where President Trump met with South Korea national security adviser Chung Eui-yong and National Information Director Suh Hoon to discuss their meeting with Kim Jong-un. They then presented Trump with an invitation by Kim Jong-un to eventually meet, with the likely timeframe being in May.

However, as Ankit Panda laid out for the BBC, “There was something profoundly odd about the optics of this announcement. Three South Koreans… stood shoulder-to-shoulder speaking to eagerly-gathered reporters outside the West Wing. Without any American officials present, it very much placed this entire diplomatic initiative in South Korea's hands. One could easily walk away sensing that the United States wasn't entirely enthusiastic about this endeavor.”

This framing of the U.S. mood was indeed correct. Although President Trump accepted Kim Jong-un’s invitation “on the spot”, as the details of the meeting began to be planned, the United States reiterated its policy that North Korea must take “concrete and verifiable steps” toward denuclearization prior to any summit and that sanctions against the country would remain in place until an agreement is made between the two countries.

Kim Jong-un appeared to have foreseen these demands and preemptively placed a self-imposed moratorium on further nuclear tests and agreed it would dismantle certain missile and nuclear sites including at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, a test stand at the Iha-ri military base, and close the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The moratorium had already been agreed to back on March 5, but Kim Jong-un didn’t make a formal announcement until April 20 saying, the country is doing this to “prove the vow to suspend nuclear [testing]”.

While this gave Pyongyang an air of sincerity as a good-faith actor, eager to follow through with the summit just a few weeks away, some analysts felt that the move had more to do with the fact that North Korea simply didn’t need to conduct any more nuclear tests as it had already accomplished what it needed.

 

During this time, South Korea was also meeting with China and Japan to continue laying groundwork and working out the ultimate details of the summit.

As opportunities grew through the Olympics and into March, Kim Jong-un held a clandestine meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 25-28, marking his first visit with the Chinese leader. During the two-day meeting, the leaders discussed matters of denuclearization and improving ties between the longstanding allies. This meeting was followed by others, all publicly announced, which ended up bringing China into helping to orchestrate the future Trump-Kim summit.

This was an important development as the Trump administration had insisted since the 2016 presidential campaign that China take a more direct role in resolving the nuclear issue and in upholding United Nations’ sanctions against North Korea.

Despite the trepidation on behalf of some in the administration, the U.S. began to take a more active role in setting up a summit. On April 1, 2018, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo went on a secret meeting in Pyongyang to talk about the nuclear issue and to help clear the way for the Trump-Kim summit expected in May or June as South Korea announced back in March. Of particular interest for the summit was trying to agree on a location. The Trump administration had offered four politically neutral sites, Ulaanbaatar, Stockholm, Geneva, or Singapore. It was also floated that Seoul, Pyongyang, or Panmunjom on the DMZ could host the summit.

 

Things seemed to be moving in a generally positive and forward motion until on April 29, 2018, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton referenced Libya as a model for how to deal with North Korea, as Gaddafi had given up Libya’s nuclear program for sanctions relief in 2002-03. Bolton had long been hawkish on foreign policy regarding North Korea and other “rogue nations”, and generally preferred military action to continued diplomacy.

Bolton’s hawkishness meant that his statement toward North Korea carried with it overtones of a threat, as despite the denuclearization agreement by Libya, less than a decade later, Gaddafi was under air attack by NATO forces as the Libyan Revolution raged on in 2011. He was eventually shot and sodomized in a drain culvert by opposing forces while trying to escape after the Battle of Sirte.

Pyongyang has often referred to Libya as an example of why one should never relinquish nuclear weapons and why North Korea can’t trust the United States, as the U.S. and the West eventually facilitated Gaddafi’s disposition and death (along with Saddam Hussein’s) despite their nuclear and WMD capitulation.

Indeed, Dr. Guo Yu, principal Asia analyst at the global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft said that Kim Jong-un has learned this lesson well, “We see in Libya and Iraq countries who gave up their WMD programs, and foreign power campaigns that led to a regime change,…To safeguard against that, North Korea [is] firmly in the belief that they need to have credible nuclear deterrent…”

So, whether or not Bolton’s comments were an unforced error or a less-than-subtle attempt to derail the summit process is up for debate. Regardless, with pressure from China and after some substantial “explanations” by the Trump administration, saying that Bolton was only referring to the positive outcomes of 2002-03 and not ultimately to regime change, the summit process was back on track.

This was especially true as tensions eased further after North Korea released three American prisoners it had been holding for as long as 31 months. Kim Dong-chul, Kim Sang-duk, and Kim Hak-song were released to the newly confirmed Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and landed at Joint Andrews Airforce Base in Washington, DC on May 10.

Despite the summit preparations having resumed, the risk of cancelation was always near the surface. In yet another ‘unforced error’, on May 17 President Trump threatened North Korea with “Libya’s fate” if a deal wasn’t made. Unlike Bolton’s comments earlier in the month, Trump’s comments weren’t a subtle or oblique threat to regime change. It was directly threatening war.

Trump’s words could easily be seen as hyperbole and another example of him not thinking before he spoke, but a few days later U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who was seen as a more thoughtful and reasoned person also echoed the threat, “this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn't make a deal”.

This incensed the North Koreans and vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui said that the comments were threatening a nuclear showdown. Then on May 24, Trump called off the summit citing North Korea’s “open hostility” in a letter to Kim Jong-un. However, he also left the door open for continuing talks of a summit if Kim were to “change [his] mind”.

Ironically, May 24 was also the day that North Korea demolished the tunnel entrances to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

By any historic standard of dealing with North Korea, this would have ended the entire thing. But North Korea almost reached out immediately, with Kim Jong-un saying, “We would like to make known to the US side once again that we have the intent to sit with the US side to solve problem(s) regardless of ways at any time”.

In another high-level meeting, vice chair of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Yong-chol, met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York City on May 30 to further negotiate the summit issue. He was the highest-level official to travel to the United States since 2000.

Then on June 1, President Trump announced that the summit would happen after all, following the "very nice statement" by North Korea sent to President Trump and other overtures. The location and date would be the same as announced (back on May 10) prior to the cancellation: Singapore on June 12.

How much of a problem the week-long cancellation caused to setting up the summit isn’t known, but both sides began final preparations without skipping a beat the moment the announcement to resume was made.

 

Singapore and Hanoi

Trump and Kim shaking hands on June 12 just before the start of their one-on-one meeting. Image source: Dan Scavino.

 Having the idea for a summit is one thing but planning it and figuring out how Kim Jong-un could physically get to the chosen location was quite another. Aside from the fact that Kim is a named individual targeted by sanctions and has been blamed for massive human rights abuses by the United Nations (which could prevent any ordinary person from traveling internationally), the DPRK national airline, Air Koryo, isn’t allowed to operate in the majority of international airspace due to safety concerns and international aviation regulations.

Although Kim has the use of a Soviet-era Ilyushin-62M passenger jet as a kind of “Pyongyang One”, the plane has been retired by all other national operators except for use in carrying cargo. Its age and the extreme distance of 4,700 km meant that Kim needed a different way to get to the summit.

After some negotiations and China playing on Kim’s fear of long-distance flights, it was decided that Kim would borrow a much more modern and safe Boeing 747 owned by Beijing, with the Ilyushin-62M traveling along as a transport for Kim Yo-jong and other officials. An Ilyushin-76 also traveled from Pyongyang carrying food and other items.

Venue scouting, security, deciding where the media events would be held, and other logistics were all finalized in June and included substantial assistance from the government of Singapore including the government’s agreement to pay for the hotel bills of the North Korean delegation. In the end, it is estimated that Singapore paid a total of $11.9 million to host the summit.

 

Kim Jong-un was the first to arrive, landing in Singapore in the afternoon of June 10. He was followed by President Trump who arrived in Singapore at 8:20 pm after having left the G7 meeting earlier than planned that was happening in Canada. Trump was excited for the summit and tweeted out, “It will certainly be an exciting day and I know that Kim Jong Un will work very hard to do something that rarely been done before. Create peace and great prosperity for his land.”

Before both men retired to their respective hotels, Kim at the St. Regis and Trump at the Shangri-La Hotel, Kim met with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Trump met with him that Monday for a working lunch.

Monday saw a series of meetings between U.S. and Singapore officials and between North Korea and Singapore, as well as several press briefings. Kim Jong-un also took this opportunity to tour the city with his sister. Kim has been known to take part in the leisure and touristy facilities available in North Korea, like enjoying rides during the opening of the Rungna Peoples’ Pleasure Grounds in 2012 and visiting the country’s ski resorts. So it was little surprise that he would want to take one the rare times he left his homeland to play tourist for the day, as the following day would be all about business.


That Tuesday began with the sun shining and both men traveling to the summit venue at the Capella Resort amid heavy security. The official start to the proceedings was at 9:05 am and they met and shook hands for the first time. Afterward, a one-on-one meeting between the leaders was held followed by an expanded meeting involving various officials from both countries.

After the expanded bilateral meeting, the two men joined each other for a working lunch and then took a walk around the grounds of the resort where President Trump briefly showed off ‘the Beast’ to Kim who seemed very interested in the presidential limousine as US Secret Service agents tried to limit access to photographers from seeing too much of the notoriously classified interior.

Soon after, Trump and Kim sat down to sign a joint statement. Part of the statement reads, “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

It also included four provisions:

  1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
  2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
  3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
  4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

Although the statement didn’t bring about any brand new agreements and wasn’t legally binding, it was nonetheless an “epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future”.

The summit closed with a U.S. press conference where President Trump called the meetings a success and unilaterally announced the end of joint military exercises with the South Korean military without first consulting South Korea. He also expressed a desire for the eventual removal of all U.S. military personnel on the peninsula. These two things have long been sought after by North Korea but the U.S. had always resisted the moves until after a denuclearized North Korea. Trump, it seems, was about to give away the store.

However, despite the overall positive nature of the summit and the excitement for the future it generated, once Trump was back in Washington, the pragmatic realities of the situation sank back in.

Although claiming victory and tweeting that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat to the United States, his official actions told a different story. He extended Executive Order 13466 because “the current existence and risk of the proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

Continuing with the undertakings, Mike Pompeo met with WPK vice chairman General Kim Yong-chol in Pyongyang in July, but according to the North Korean’s, U.S. demands displayed a “gangster-like attitude”. Negative assessments of future negotiations that were held with Pompeo and other officials would continue to be made by North Korea, revealing deep differences between how each side viewed the proceedings and how they thought denuclearization should take place.

Concurrently, the regime still publicly claimed to hold out hope for a peace brokered directly between the two leaders.

Despite knowing that coming to peace with North Korea wasn’t actually going to be as simple as a summit and a few tweets, both men did heavily rely on their developing personal relationships with each other to try to keep the process moving forward. Trump and Kim exchanged a series of letters with Trump even exclaiming that they “fell in love” during one political rally. Analysts often say that Kim Jong-un was playing on President Trump’s ego through effusive praise and using honorifics such as “your excellency”, nonetheless, the letters did seem to extend the life of the peace negotiations.

Still, more was needed. To try and avoid having the process stall out, plans for a second summit were confirmed by the White House on Sept. 11, 2018 to be held in the “not too distant future”.


Kim Jong-un had been pushing for sanctions relief and disagreements with the U.S. over how much relief and when repeatedly became a key issue. The U.S. was also becoming frustrated by North Korea’s concessions to dismantle one nuclear or missile facility while continuing work at multiple others, all despite also saying that they no longer wished to test nuclear weapons.

These contradictions caused lower-level meetings to be canceled only to later be rescheduled. Even so, Kim said during 2019 New Years’ speech that he was willing to again meet with Trump anytime. Soon after, vice chair Kim Yong Chol traveled to D.C. to meet with Secretary of State Pompeo and President Trump.

Two months later, Trump told the world during his 2019 State of the Union address that a second summit would be held, this time in Vietnam on February 27-28.

Like his father, Kim Jong-un prefers to travel in one of his six armored trains. After the embarrassment of needing to borrow a Chinese jet to get to Singapore, Kim opted to use this slower (but far more luxurious method) of travel to Hanoi. He arrived at the Đồng Đăng railway station on Feb. 26.

The summit was held at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi on Feb. 27-28, with a one-on-one meeting held first followed by a dinner. While it seemed to have some initial success on the first day, it was abruptly ended on the second day with no further agreements reached.

Concessions, like shuttering the nuclear facility at Yongbyon, was sought by Trump and offered by Kim but the U.S. would not offer to do anything upfront, only after North Korea carried out its part of the agreement, leaving Kim with even less leverage should the administration choose not to end sanctions.

Contradictions in Trump’s demands and other statements had further added Kim Jong-un’s growing loss of patience, especially after Trump had also acknowledged North Korea’s ‘good behavior’ back in 2018, “The hostages are back. There have been no tests. There have been no rockets going up for a period of nine months, and I think the relationships are very good, so we'll see how that goes.” That good behavior had largely continued throughout 2019, so North Korea would naturally see itself as abiding by previous agreements.

The administration’s demands, however, were not viewed by Kim to be followed up with ‘corresponding measures’ such as permanently ending joint military drills with South Korea or easing specific sanctions. And it must be said that North Korea, whether earnestly seeking peace through denuclearization or not, did actively concede far more than the U.S. ever did.

Hanoi also underscored the fact that North Korea’s definition of “denuclearization” is somewhat different than America’s, with North Korea including the removal of nuclear-capable bombers from the peninsula, a nuclear no-first-use guarantee by the United States, and the quick removal of U.S. personnel from South Korea – all prior to North Korea giving up its last remaining nuclear bomb. And it underscored that the administration didn’t seem to realize North Korea viewed the world in different terms.

It can’t be said that the summit failed just due to the Trump administration, as North Korea’s public words and covert actions rarely lined up together, but the possibility of a summit without any new agreements could, in the words of Ankit Panda, be seen a mile away exactly because of these misunderstandings and lop-sided actions.

The view that total disarmament before sanctions relief was doomed to failure (and that an incremental arms control policy would bear more fruit) was echoed by Doug Brandow, a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, who said that “[Trump] apparently pushed for the full monty, an all nukes for all sanctions deal, which was never realistic.” And then he compared the US-DPRK summits to that of the US and the USSR at Reykjavik in 1986 saying, “A failure to agree does not doom the relationship. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev did not join in Reykjavik to eliminate nuclear weapons. But they ultimately agreed to other arms limitations and ended the Cold War.”

Making matters worse, it was later revealed by John Bolton that Trump had given Kim a note during the second day telling him to surrender all of his nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel to the United States before any sanctions relief. It was at that point that Kim Jong-un canceled the rest of the summit.


The Party Ends, Back to Isolation

In one last attempt at getting things back on track, Kim Jong-un sent Trump another letter. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry also released a statement calling President Trump the “supreme leader of the United States”; once again playing to his ego. Through these overtures, Kim asked for another meeting with Trump.

The final Trump-Kim summit was held on June 30, 2019. This trilateral meeting involved President Trump, Kim Jong-un, and South Korean president Moon Jae-in, but it was little more than a photo opportunity as President Trump stepped over the military demarcation line (the de facto border) at Panmunjom into North Korea. No further deals were made and the meeting only lasted a few hours.

Symbolically, this gave Kim Jong-un an enormous domestic boost as this was the first time a sitting American president had been on North Korean soil, but nothing of substance was achieved.

With Kim walking away with greater domestic legitimacy (having been the first North Korean leader to bring the Yankees to heel) and with denuclearization becoming an intractable issue yet again, the gulf between the two countries became even more clear.

Momentum toward a substantial, enforceable agreement began to stall even though lower-level talks continued, and as domestic forces in South Korea and the U.S. started to draw attention away onto other matters.

Even after President Trump eventually fired John Bolton, citing his Libya comments, tensions still rose. North Korea conducted missiles tests in August 2019 for the first time since November 29, 2017 and joint US-ROK military drills also began again.

But despite relations cooling between Pyongyang and the rest of the international community, the situation didn’t immediately devolve into disaster. Some of the agreed upon measures between North and South Korea were still carried out including the establishment of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong and on Nov. 24, 2018, the United Nations greenlit the inter-Korean joint field study on connecting the two countries via rail. The project’s groundbreaking followed on December 26 (although, there has been little additional progress).

And in one of the more visually dramatic moves of the 2018-2019 peace process, both countries carried out the demolition of several guard posts along the DMZ in late 2018 as a gesture showing their commitment to eventually dismantle the Demilitarized Zone.

 

Although bilateral relations between North and South Korea have improved in the last few years, particularly as Moon Jae-in has sought to maintain a personal relationship with Kim, things have not been without substantial controversy that could usher in more opposition politicians as elections are held in South Korea.

Creating particular consternation within South Korea has been Moon’s willingness to step on freedom of speech and other civil liberties in an attempt to appease Kim Jong-un. This includes banning sending balloons and leaflets across the border and cracking down on human rights activists. This has created a lot of internal pressure to change tactics regarding North Korea and made it more difficult for Moon to carry out his preferred policies toward the DPRK.

 

Evidence of continued hostile feelings and cracks in the process were obvious even throughout the summit process. Even though Kim Jong-un held three summits with President Trump and three with President Moon, the threats coming from North Korea didn’t stop. And sometimes, they were quite severe.

Following the summits, this boiled to the surface. As part of Kim Jong-un’s pressure campaign on President Moon, he had Kim Yo-jong write on June 13, 2020 what can only be described as an op-ed in her own name (an extremely rare occurrence in North Korea) threatening to pull out of the 2018 Panmunjom Declaration if activists weren’t stopped from sending balloons over the DMZ. This was followed up a day later by a statement from the Workers’ Party of Korea in support of the threats.

Another one of the threats was to shutter the Inter-Korean Liaison Office located in the Kaesong Industrial Region that had been established in 2018.

Establishing the office, which had been placed inside of an existing building, cost South Korea $8.6 million in renovation expenses and was meant to serve as a de facto embassy as neither country has formal diplomatic relations with the other.

The threats were soon seen through when on June 16, 2020, an explosion rocked Kaesong. The Inter-Korea Liaison Office had been blown up. The demolition occurred on what was the 20th anniversary of the first inter-Korean summit.

While South Korea said it would “respond strongly” if North Korea continued to raise tensions, nothing of note actually happened in retaliation.

And in protest to joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises that began on August 16, 2020, Kim had the Seoul-Pyongyang Hotline cut in September. The phone line connects the two countries and is also supposed to allow for direct communication between both leaders in the event of an emergency. It wasn’t until October 4 that the hotline was confirmed to have been restored.

 

Rising tensions on the peninsula are only one facet of North Korea’s slide back toward belligerence and isolation.

North Korea has tested missiles 39 times since the start of 2019, returning to the pre-2017 era when Kim Jong-un had tested more missiles than Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il combined. Reports on their nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, Kangson, and Pyongsan all prove that North Korea’s nuclear program is still very much active. And the United Nations has released multiple Panel of Expert reports detailing North Korea’s illicit trade activities ranging from smuggling in oil to selling coal and counterfeit goods.

North Korea also took an active role in isolating itself further in response to COVID-19. Scores of diplomatic staff and their families have been forced to leave the country, even via hand-powered, open-topped rail trollies in freezing weather.

It has been theorized that the real reason behind this expulsion of foreigners is to further limit the flow of information into the country which strengthens the regime. Additionally, Pyongyang has engaged in crackdowns on “non-socialist behavior” as several new restrictions, particularly aimed at North Korean youth, have been implemented since the start of COVID.

COVID also provided a raison d'etre to further attack market activities and strive for greater centralization, with Kim reversing his more open attitude toward economic activity in his early days.

Even the World Food Program left the country, leaving North Korea with no UN or NGO workers in the country and almost no foreign nationals of any kind.

While 2021 has provided minor hope that the ‘blockade’ of trade and travel won’t last forever, as preparations are being made to resume limited trade with China, there are no signs that North Korea will soon return to a pre-COVID state.

 

Conclusions

Stories of national salvation have helped propel and preserve the Kim family’s power. Kim Il-sung saved the country from the Japanese and later from the Americans. Kim Jong-il saved the country from being overrun during its weakest point since the Korean War as a result of famine and the collapse of international communism. Kim Jong-un, it would seem, has been attempting to save the country for its own future. He has focused on ‘moving the revolution forward’ to create a North Korea capable of standing alone on the world stage with both military credibility and diplomatic credibility.

He has thus far accomplished this through parallel tracks of weapon development and diplomatic maneuvering; however, the lasting effects of Pyongyang’s engagements are in question. Although Kim did manage to buy time and to bully South Korea into passing some very undemocratic laws, he seems to have squandered much of the goodwill and international willingness to cooperate through his actions since the summits.

While the country is preparing to resume trade with China as the threats posed by COVID-19 wane, the broader international community appears to be even less willing to engage as Pyongyang’s illicit activities have been described in ever greater detail and as North Korea gets back to missile testing.

Despite the initial promise of the summits with South Korea and the United States, North Korea seems to be just as isolated as a decade ago.

Complicating matters has been that the new Biden administration has been slow to develop its own North Korea policies and didn’t appoint a special representative for North Korea until May 21, 2021. This limits Washington’s ability to engage with the country and made high-level talks far less likely for the near future. This leaves Kim up to his own devices to drive events, as he continues to search for ways to bring the U.S. back to the table in the hopes of ending sanctions and gaining other concessions.

~ ~ ~ ~ 

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series, and can get access to the underlying data behind the supplemental reports.

Supporters at other levels will be sent each new article a day before it’s published and will also receive a mention as seen below.


I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, Rinmanah, Russ Johnson.

--Jacob Bogle, 11/30/2021
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