By: Phillip Orchard
Two years ago, during his annual New Year’s Day address to the nation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un effectively declared that the North was ready to shed its moniker as the Hermit Kingdom.
The North, according to Kim, had “completed” its nuclear deterrent against the United States. Kim hinted at a new openness to diplomacy and economic integration with the outside world.
Three months later, he announced a landmark shift away from Kim Il Sung’s 1960s-era “byungjin” policy, which called for parallel development of the military and economy, in favor of one focused primarily on restoring national prosperity.
A string of historic summits with the South Korean and U.S. presidents quickly followed, as did a two-year freeze on nuclear and long-range missile tests. But, critically, what didn’t follow was relief from the crippling U.S.-led sanctions regime, much less an end to joint U.S.-South Korean exercises – nor even lower-hanging fruit like an official declaration ending the Korean War.
As a result, Pyongyang welcomed the 2020s by turning back the clock – but also by displaying signs that something wasn’t quite right in the capital.
In a speech at the Dec. 28-31 Workers’ Party of Korea’s Central Committee plenum, Kim restored the byungjin doctrine, announced the end of Pyongyang’s moratoriums on nuclear and long-range missile tests, boasted about a “new strategic weapon” and warned of hard times to come in the “long-term confrontation with the U.S.”
He also presided over a sweeping politburo reshuffle, reportedly dumping economic reformers and diplomats who had been central to negotiations with the United States in favor of figures whose backgrounds point to a renewed emphasis on weapons development and ties with countries like Russia.
Curiously, he then ghosted on his New Year’s Day address for the first time, drawing parallels to 1957, when his grandfather skipped the speech following a major purge of political opponents.
Kim then disappeared from what passes as the public eye in North Korea for more than a week – coincidentally, the same week that the U.S. killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the U.S. reportedly increased surveillance flights over the North, and reports emerged in South Korean media that the U.S. had deployed Reapers to the South ahead of purported decapitation strike drills in the fall.
North Korean state media barely mentioned the killing, something out of character for a propaganda machine wired to seize any opportunity to paint the U.S. as the demogorgon. All the while, the North's repeatedly threatened “Christmas surprise” – expected to be some kind of missile test if the U.S. didn’t meet Pyongyang's end-of-year deadline for progress in negotiations – never arrived.
The curious confluence of events fueled all sorts of regional speculation about chaos in Pyongyang. Had divides in the North over the path forward ruptured, leading to a paralyzing power struggle that sent Kim scrambling for cover? Had the Soleimani killing put Kim on notice? North Korean palace intrigue is simply too murky to say much definitively.
But Pyongyang has good reasons to think a window of opportunity to begin integrating with the international community has closed. Just don’t expect Pyongyang to be content with staying out in the cold for long.
Threats at the Door
To discern the state of play in Pyongyang, it’s worth examining each of the recent developments individually, starting with the hot topic of the day: Is a decapitation strike against Kim by the U.S. or its allies a real possibility?
The Kim regime is famously paranoid about assassination. This is partly why Kim Jong Un refused for six years to leave the North after taking power and still does so only swaddled in bubble wrap. It’s not completely unfounded; South Korea has for years been boasting about a plan known as “Kill Chain,” involving new capabilities to launch surgical preemptive strikes if war appears imminent.
And the Trump administration openly debated plans for a “bloody nose” strike against the North in 2017. Kim, meanwhile, likely ordered the execution of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, in 2013 out of fear he might plot with Beijing to oust the young leader. Similar fears compelled him to dispatch a pair of unwitting, VX-toting femme fatales to take out his brother, Kim Jong Nam, at the Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017.
Shortly after Kim Jong Nam’s demise, evidence emerged of a foiled assassination plot against Kim Jong Un being staged out of Chinese and Russian border regions. Pyongyang, moreover, is no stranger to the assassination game itself; in 1983, it attempted to kill South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during a visit to Burma.
The question really comes down to U.S. capability and interest. The U.S. could certainly use a number of precision-guided missiles to go after Kim. But succeeding would hinge on targeting intelligence that the U.S. is highly unlikely to have in all but a narrow set of circumstances. U.S. Reapers can’t just hang out above Ryongsong waiting for a kill shot the way they could in Baghdad.
And even if the U.S. did have an opportunity to take Kim out, it would be exceedingly risky to use it. To be sure, North Korea could experience a dramatic transformation following the death of Kim, whose cult of personality is central to the regime’s legitimacy. But taking out Kim wouldn’t do anything about the North’s nukes, nor the thousands of missiles and conventional artillery within range of Seoul. And it would risk kicking off a civil war in a nuclear state known for institutionalized paranoia and questionable command and control structures.
Either way, what matters most here is that Kim, like his father and grandfather, consistently behaves in ways that suggest he believes the threat of decapitation is real. This fear was illustrated by state media’s silence on Soleimani; the Kim regime evidently can’t even stomach public awareness of the fact that assassinations happen. And for any number of reasons, this has only deepened their conviction that regime survival requires both a viable nuclear arsenal and a willingness to use it if an attempt to end the Kim era appears nigh.
Threats From Within
The second question worth investigating is: Do the Central Committee purges, doctrine reversal, and evidence of internal divides suggest that pressure on Kim is approaching a breaking point?
Kim was taught from a young age that the best way to navigate the ruthless political environment in Pyongyang was to eliminate potential rivals long before they become an actual threat. As a result, shake-ups, purges, rehabilitations and executions at senior levels are fairly routine in Pyongyang.
Still, the fact remains that the North has failed to get out from under excruciating sanctions pressure, and it’s now facing contentious decisions on, for example, whether or how much of its nuclear and missile programs to bargain away in pursuit of relief – plus likely divides over Kim’s outreach to the South, his efforts to keep China and Russia at arm’s length, and his nascent steps toward economic liberalization.
As noted, the North Korean government’s legitimacy, and thus the fortunes of the North Korean elite, is deeply tied to the Kim family’s cult of personality.
And by assassinating his brother, Kim likely eliminated the only realistic replacement – though his sister, Kim Yo Jong, is worth keeping an eye on. She was promoted at the plenum and has reportedly been issuing orders to the military. The two siblings are believed to be close, with Kim Jong Un keeping her in the spotlight during high-profile summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump, for example. Still, whether her promotion is evidence that the North Korean leader is merely tightening his inner circle and short on loyalists or that he’s unwittingly grooming a potential successor is impossible to say.
Most likely, the dynamic in Pyongyang is a more extreme form of the one surrounding Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has succeeded in intertwining his fate with that of the Chinese Communist Party more broadly. Kim probably cannot be ousted altogether, but he can be gradually stripped of powers and relegated to figurehead status.
If such a scenario comes to pass, managing relations with the North would become ever more complicated.
‘Eating Grass’ vs. Playing Hardball
The developments of the past few weeks likely point to a somewhat more mundane reality: Pyongyang is simply digging in for another spell of belt tightening in the endless campaign to “defeat imperialism” – or, as Vladimir Putin put it, “eating grass” if that’s what it takes to hold on to its nukes.
Absent a willingness to risk the staggering costs of attempting to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear program by force, the U.S. just doesn’t have the leverage to force Pyongyang to budge.
But Pyongyang likewise hasn’t demonstrated the capability to force the U.S. to give up its demand for complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement. And until the U.S. backs off from its maximalist demands, there won’t be much room for Pyongyang to open up to the world on its own terms or force other regional powers to play ball.
The North will push Russia and China to continue their nascent efforts to unwind U.N. Security Council sanctions. If the international sanctions regime were to collapse, the U.S. would likely keep its sanctions in place – not to mention its troops within striking distance. But with the North capable of finding relief elsewhere and holding a major military deterrent, it could live with a quiet impasse with the U.S. and refrain from provocations aimed at pushing Washington back to the negotiating table.
Thus, the U.S. may eventually be inclined to tacitly consent to such a move by Moscow and Beijing. But for the time being, Moscow and Beijing both have bigger fish to fry with the U.S. and are unlikely to act on Pyongyang’s behalf unless doing so strengthens their position somehow in other negotiations with Washington.
The North will also continue probing for ways to deepen the wedge between South Korea and the U.S. (One official who survived the recent politburo reshuffle was an architect of the North’s outreach to the South.) Reunification is an imperative for both Koreas, and Seoul has been openly frustrated at the lack of progress on cross-border economic measures aimed at coaxing Pyongyang out of its shell.
But meaningful reconciliation with the South would be exceedingly fragile even in the best of circumstances. As it stands, the South remains unwilling to defy the U.S. by embracing Pyongyang too closely, and it needs the leverage it derives from its alliance with the U.S. to manage the rapprochement.
Perhaps the only real card the North has to play, then, is a resumption of long-range missile testing. There are any number of plausible explanations for why Pyongyang stood pat over the holidays. It’s possible that the lack of a test is the result of internal divides. It’s possible that Pyongyang thought twice about provoking the U.S.
It’s possible that it felt it succeeded in getting Washington's attention – or that it received a small concession from, say, China in exchange for holding off. It’s also possible that the “new strategic weapon" just isn’t ready for testing yet. (The North has far more ambitious goals for its missile program than the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missiles it tested in 2017, and systems like solid-fuel long-range missiles, particularly submarine-launched ballistic missiles, are an order of magnitude more difficult to develop.)
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Whatever the case, don’t be surprised when North Korea starts back down this road.
The foremost risk of crossing the U.S. red line by testing another ICBM is that it provokes a U.S. military response. Just how big this risk is depends on how willing you think the U.S. is to go to war with a country that would, at minimum, impose staggering casualties on U.S. and allied troops – and that may very well be capable of plopping nukes down on U.S. bases around the region and beyond.
The game has changed since the days of endless fruitless negotiations with the “ferocious, weak and crazy” country led by Kim’s father. To be clear, war with the U.S. is a big enough risk that the North likely won’t jump straight to ICBM tests.
The primary goal for the time being will remain getting the U.S. to put sanctions relief on the table in exchange for a permanent freeze. So expect it to toe the line with, say, shorter-range tests or other demonstrations of new capabilities before crossing it.
Even then, it would leave the U.S. room to convince itself it need not retaliate, for example by leaving doubt about whether it has finally mastered the all-important issue of ICBM reentry and targeting systems. But the lesson from 2017 for the North was that high-profile tests are the only way to get the U.S. to the table. And it won’t be content to eat grass forever.
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