North Korea’s leader is
telling Washington that his patience is wearing out. But his New Year’s Day
speech contained other fascinating clues to Kim’s ambitions for 2019—and
beyond.
By ANKIT PANDA
January 02, 2019
Kim Jong Un had a simple
message for U.S. President Donald J. Trump during his New Year’s Day address.
Echoing months of statements carried in North Korean state media since the June
12, 2018, summit meeting between the two leaders in Singapore, Kim noted that
he had followed through in good faith on measures to signal his interest in
seeing through “complete denuclearization” on the Korean Peninsula. In two
words, Kim’s message for the United States: “Your turn.”
It’s a message Kim has been
repeating since June 13, when the North Korean leader was paraphrased
in his state media as vowing that “if the U.S. side takes genuine measures for
building trust in order to improve the DPRK-U.S. relationship,” North Korea
would offer up further concessions. In Kim’s view, he had offered up ample
concessions in 2018 to merit concessions from the Trump administration, which remains
fixated on offering North Korea sanctions relief and other inducements
only after the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea
is attained.
In 2017 and 2018, Kim had a
habit of telling us what he was going to do in the year ahead and then proceed
to do it. While North Korea is often painted as an opaque state, impossible to
predict, the truth is that Kim has been remarkably transparent about his
intentions. On defense and nuclear matters, at least, North Korean policy has
remained static through his tenure.
In 2017, for instance, Kim
promised that North Korea would acquire a capability to strike the U.S.
mainland that year. By November, he showed that he had successfully overseen
that project, with two intercontinental-range ballistic missile designs having
been flight-tested successfully. Similarly, in 2018, Kim ordered the mass
production of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. Per multiple reports
last year citing U.S. intelligence assessments, that’s happened, too—even as
Kim jetted off to foreign capitals, shedding his reputation as a hermit king.
Kim recounted this history in
his speech, underlining North Korea’s internal and external promises to behave
responsibly as a nuclear weapons-possessing state. He noted that North Korea
had “declared … that we would neither make and test nuclear weapons any longer
nor use and proliferate them, and we have taken various practical measures [in
this regard].”
This line may sound new and
significant, but it isn’t. It reiterates directives dating back at least to
North Korea’s March 2013 adoption of nuclear-state status. In that
declaration, the Kim regime pledged to handle nuclear materials securely, not
proliferate them, and to only use nuclear weapons in circumstances where it
perceived its national security and survival to be threatened. (North Korea has
been promising not to proliferate its nukes for years before Kim Jong Un.)
Kim’s “your turn” message for
Trump this year shouldn’t have surprised anyone paying attention. It was, after
all, during the September 2018 summit between Kim and South Korean President
Moon Jae-in that the North Korean leader signed his name onto a statement that
suggested he might be open to the prospect of further disarmament gestures
should the United States deliver “corresponding measures.” During the North
Korean foreign minister’s address to the United Nations General Assembly in New
York that same month, it became clear that the primary North Korean demand—as
had been true for years—was the removal of international sanctions.
In April 2018, Kim had
announced a unilateral suspension of nuclear tests and tests of the kinds of
missiles that could strike the U.S. homeland. The gesture was at the time
justified on the basis of technical parameters: Kim suggested that North Korea
had sufficient testing data, had completed its deterrent force qualitatively,
and could now cease testing. In subsequent weeks, however, those measures came
to be described as “denuclearization steps” by North Korea. Kim was framing the
mere cessation of testing as a significant concession on the pathway to the
“denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
That phrase received
particular attention in Kim’s New Year’s address, too. In December, a
remarkable commentary in the state-run Korean Central News Agency attributed to the pen name Jong Hyon defined that
phrase—and its geographic contours—in stark detail. “When we refer to the
Korean Peninsula, they include both the area of the DPRK and the area of South
Korea where aggression troops including the nuclear weapons of the U.S. are
deployed,” the commentary noted, revealing North Korea’s continuing
conspiratorial belief that U.S. tactical nuclear weapons that were removed from
the Peninsula in 1991 remain there.
“When we refer to the
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it, therefore, means removing all
elements of nuclear threats from the areas of both the north and the south of
Korea and also from surrounding areas from where the Korean peninsula is
targeted. This should be clearly understood,” the commentary added.
Kim Jong Un emphasized this
same message, though less explicitly. He noted that U.S. “strategic assets”—a
North Korea phrase used to mean everything from ballistic missile defense
capabilities like THAAD to nuclear attack submarines and aircraft
carriers—“should no longer be permitted” on or around the Korean Peninsula.
It’s here too that Kim seized
on the tremendous progress North Korea made in 2018 to drive a wedge between
Seoul and Washington. Pointing to the success in the implementation of the
September 19 inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement, which saw a range
of tension reduction measures on land, at sea and in the air, Kim said South
Korea should cease “joint military exercises with foreign forces.” The allies
have already announced that the upcoming 2019 iterations of Foal Eagle and Key
Resolve—the large springtime exercises—will be modified to allow diplomacy to
proceed with North Korea. But separately, Kim’s speech, which was broadcast
live for the first time in South Korea, comes amid great discord between Seoul
and Washington on the finalization of an agreement to govern burden-sharing
within the alliance.
Going further, Kim encouraged
his counterpart in the South to push ahead with inter-Korean projects without
waiting for support from the United States—effectively an invitation to Moon to
recognize the historic moment and push forward in the spirit of Korean
self-determination, even if that meant violating international sanctions. Kim
dangled specifically the prospect of resuming the operations of the Kaesong
Industrial Park and tourism activities at Mt. Kumgang—two banner projects of
the “Sunshine” era of inter-Korean rapprochement in the early 2000s, during the
rule of his father, Kim Jong Il.
Zeroing in on what Kim said
about the United States misses the broader significance of his speech. Although
Kim spent about a quarter of his speech addressing inter-Korean issues and
diplomacy with the United States — generating most of the headlines — it was
primarily about internal affairs.
That other three-quarters
reveals North Korean priorities in the year ahead. Namely, the “new strategic
line” announced by Kim last year in April as a successor to the byungjin line, which sought the parallel
attainment of a nuclear deterrent and economic prosperity, is here to stay.
This strategic line remains without a name or a slogan for now, but North
Korea’s core drive now is attaining economic self-sufficiency and prosperity—an
updated version of its foundational ideology of juche.
It’s clear from his speech
that Kim hopes to see through North Korea’s economic development regardless of
changes in the external environment. He emphasizes the importance of industrial
capacity-building, improvements in management techniques for facilities,
attaining energy self-sufficiency and modernizing North Korea’s military. Last
year, despite Kim’s relatively heavy travel schedule, he conducted multiple
“on-the-spot guidance” visits to a range of North Korean industrial, health
care and commercial facilities to direct this project of economic improvement.
While Kim himself and his father and grandfather all have conducted these kinds
of visits, his tours in 2018 were notable for the push toward modernization and
development.
Kim also signaled that he recognizes
that the United States won’t be lifting its sanctions anytime soon. As a
result, North Korea intends to hedge by shifting away from its reliance on
exporting coal—a sanctioned activity—to using it domestically. Kim additionally
referenced “atomic power” in his speech, perhaps suggesting that 2019 may see a
new push by North Korea to finalize and announce the operation of a new
facility thought to be an experimental light-water reactor at its Yongbyon
nuclear complex.
Kim did leave one warning on the
table that should be taken seriously by Trump and his national security team.
He warned the United States not to insist on his unilateral capitulation as it
has been and, in the process, test North Korea’s “patience.” If it does,
Pyongyang may “be compelled to find a new way for defending the sovereignty of
the country and the supreme interests of the state and for achieving peace and
stability of the Korean peninsula.” Kim conveyed again his willingness to
meet Trump—and only Trump—but he also made clear that a second summit will have
to open a door to the concessions that North Korea seeks from the United
States.
What exactly Kim wants is left
ambiguous, but even Trump—who has repeatedly tweeted about how much he
appreciates the cessation of nuclear and missile testing—can guess what might
lie on the other side. At some point in 2019, if the “corresponding measures”
North Korea has been seeking from the United States fail to arrive, Kim will
likely turn back to his old ways. The missiles will begin flying again as North
Korea showcases the fruits of its qualitative and quantitative attainment in
2017 and 2018.
A North Korean statement in the final days of 2018 alluded to
this, suggesting that the U.S. State Department was “bent on bringing
DPRK-U.S. relations back to the status of last year, which was marked by
exchanges of fire.” Given progress on the inter-Korean front in the meantime,
Kim may be betting that South Koreans supportive of Moon’s inter-Korean peace
push will be eager to blame the collapse of diplomacy on the United States,
dealing a blow to the already-troubled U.S.-South Korea alliance in the
process.
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