Nukes and Missiles — The North Korea Problem

As the South climbed its road toward democratization and economic growth, an entirely different kind of time was passing on the northern side of the Military Demarcation Line. From the late 1980s into the 1990s, the world’s landscape transformed completely. The socialist regimes of Eastern Europe fell one after another, the Berlin Wall came down, and in 1991 the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist. The end of the Cold War was, for many countries, news of liberation and hope.

But for North Korea, it meant the loss of its backers. The aid and trade that had supported the country since its founding, flowing from the Soviet Union and the nations of Eastern Europe, were cut off, and even China, the partner it had relied upon, steered toward a market economy and established diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992. A country that should have been surrounded by allies found itself, before it knew it, isolated. The economy tilted rapidly, and it entered an era in which the very survival of the regime was in question. Within this cornered situation, one of the ways out that North Korea found was nuclear weapons.

The Arduous March — An Age of Famine

The crisis struck the people’s tables first. In the 1990s, North Korea was hit by a severe food shortage. Support from the socialist bloc vanished, fuel and fertilizer ran short, and on top of that, large-scale floods and droughts piled up, until the rationing system ceased to function. In 1994, the country’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung, died. In the era of his successor, Kim Jong-il, the famine spread across the entire nation.

North Korea called this bitter period the ‘Arduous March.’ Originally a phrase referring to the hardships of the anti-Japanese partisan years, it was now used as a slogan for enduring the famine of the 1990s. Many people are said to have starved to death during this time, but accounts of the number vary, with estimates ranging widely, from figures in the hundreds of thousands to views placing the toll above two million. North Korea strictly controls information, and the precise reality remains unclear even today.

As the regime wavered, North Korea’s leadership raised the banner of ‘military-first politics,’ concentrating limited resources on national defense. International criticism of this policy of prioritizing the military above all, even as the people went hungry, ran strong, while from the regime’s side it has been explained as a choice made to protect the system amid isolation and pressure. Assessments diverge greatly depending on one’s standpoint.

Brinkmanship Diplomacy — The Nuclear Trump Card

Suspicions over North Korea’s nuclear development surfaced as an international issue in the first half of the 1990s. North Korea had joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), but conflict deepened over inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and in 1993 it announced its withdrawal from the NPT, sending a shock through the world. This was the so-called first nuclear crisis.

At this point, tensions are said to have risen to the very brink of war. In the end, after such developments as a visit to Pyongyang by former U.S. President Carter, the situation moved toward resolution, and in 1994 the ‘Agreed Framework’ was concluded between the United States and North Korea. Under it, in return for freezing its nuclear development, North Korea would receive the provision of light-water reactors and supplies of heavy fuel oil. But this agreement, too, was hollowed out amid the chain of distrust that followed.

North Korea’s diplomacy has often been described as ‘brinkmanship.’ It has been analyzed as a method of deliberately heightening a crisis to draw the other side to the negotiating table and extract concessions or support. That said, while some see this as a clever strategy, others see it as a choice made at the end of being cornered, the means by which an isolated small nation stands against great powers. Rather than leaning toward either single interpretation, it should be viewed with both in mind.

The Six-Party Talks and the Inter-Korean Handshake

In the 2000s, as tensions rose once more, the international community sought a framework for dialogue. From 2003, the ‘Six-Party Talks,’ bringing together the six nations of the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, began in Beijing. It was an attempt to resolve North Korea’s nuclear issue by gathering the parties involved and the surrounding great powers all in one place. At one point the talks even produced an agreement under which North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapons in return for support and security guarantees.

But the talks advanced and then stalled, and the agreement was kept and broken by turns. In 2006, North Korea announced it had conducted its first nuclear test, and thereafter it continued to pile up nuclear tests and missile launches. Each time, the United Nations Security Council strengthened its sanctions. By the latter half of the 2000s, the Six-Party Talks had fallen, in effect, into a state of suspension. The calculations of each nation intertwined in complex ways, and the nuclear issue was left behind as a difficult problem with no exit in sight.

On the other hand, there were also movements toward dialogue between North and South. In June 2000, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung visited Pyongyang and exchanged a handshake with North Korea’s General Secretary Kim Jong-il. It was the first inter-Korean summit since the division. Under the Kim Dae-jung administration’s conciliatory ‘Sunshine Policy,’ reunions of separated families and economic cooperation moved forward, and hopes for reconciliation spread across the peninsula. In 2007, a second summit was held by President Roh Moo-hyun.

The Cold War ended, and the world seemed to be heading toward peace. Yet on the Korean Peninsula, the division that was the Cold War’s legacy remained just as it was, and new sparks of nuclear weapons and missiles were added to it. A North that endured famine and bore isolation while reaching for nuclear weapons. A South that grew economically prosperous while continuing to face a threat right next door. More than half a century after the armistice, the peninsula remains a place where the Cold War has not ended. And the two Koreas, in the gap between the immense forces of the United States and China, are even now pressed to make difficult choices.