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The 2021 North Korea Party Congress
On January 9, the DPRK’s Permanent Mission to the UN sent out a press release reproducing a portion of a much longer report that North Korean media sources had released on the first days of the Party Congress. It appeared to contain a mildly hopeful message, taking note of the Singapore summit declaration that “assures the establishment of new DPRK-U.S. relationship.” Could the Biden administration perhaps avoid the downward spiral both Obama and Trump faced in their first years in office?
The Obama Administration and North Korea in 2009 Part 3: The Lessons of the First Year
With Joe Biden headed to the White House, North Korea watchers are speculating how the incoming administration will deal with this long-standing foreign policy irritant. One place to look for cues is to review the spate of Obama-era memoirs to outline his administration’s first year with North Korea. In Part 1 and Part 2, I detailed the early Clinton gambit on denuclearization, its swift rejection by the North Koreans in their satellite launch of April and the nuclear test in May, and the passage of UNSC Resolution 1874. In this post, I consider the effort to restart talks. This is the third in a three-part series.
The Obama Administration and North Korea in 2009 Part 2: Negotiating Multilateral Sanctions
With Joe Biden headed to the White House, North Korea watchers are speculating how the incoming administration will deal with this long-standing foreign policy irritant. One place to look for cues is to review the spate of Obama-era memoirs on his administration’s first year with North Korea. In a previous post, I detailed the early Clinton gambit on denuclearization and its swift rejection by the North Koreans in their satellite launch of April. This is the second in a three part series.
The Obama Administration and North Korea in 2009 Part 1: Satellite Launch Hardens Positions
With Joe Biden headed to the White House, North Korea watchers are speculating how the incoming administration will deal with this long-standing foreign policy irritant. One place to look for cues: how Obama’s first year with Kim Jong Il panned out. In doing so, we now have the advantage of several new memoirs—from Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes and from President Barack Obama himself—in addition to others, such as those by Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and Jeff Bader that came out earlier. Memoirs—like journalism—are first drafts of history, capturing how the principles viewed the problem. Equally if not more interesting are their silences: the way other issues seemed in retrospect more pressing and consequential, particularly for the president. Obama’s account of his first year in office, for example, gives little attention to North Korea after the satellite launch in April. Today, I start with the administration’s initial approach and how it was dashed by that test.
North Korean Peace Proposals: A Long-run View
Over the last thirty years, North Korea has periodically made reference to the importance of reaching a “peace agreement” or negotiating a “peace regime.” Most recently, The Panmunjom declaration suggested the parties might exchange denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula for a peace agreement (평화협정). The historic Trump-Kim summit made reference to “building a lasting and stable peace regime (평화체제) on the Korean Peninsula”; indeed the reference to a peace regime appeared in the summit document even before mention of denuclearization.
North Korea Turns to Bonds to Address Financial Distress
According to a story in DailyNK by Jang Seul Gi, the North Korean government has taken the initiative to issue government bonds; several astute analysts of the Korean economy have picked up on the story (Tom Byrne at Foreign Policy here and Benjamin Katzliff Silberstein at 38North here). As with all such stories, we need to take it with the appropriate grain of salt. Nonetheless, the particular details reported by their informants are highly plausible. The episode provides another piece of evidence that the regime is coping with significant financial distress from the combination of sanctions and the economic effects of the border closures with China as a result of COVID-19. And it is also likely to show that as in the past, this distress is going to lead to a struggle for resources between the regime and the private sector.
Disrupting Supply Chains: Evidence on the Japan-Korea Conflict
The economic success of the Asia-Pacific has rested in no small measure on its finely-tuned supply chains. These global production networks are coming under stress from the COVID-19 crisis, but also from the new political economy of trade. The U.S.-China trade war has had as one of its stated objectives a “decoupling” from China, which of necessity means reducing American dependence on Chinese suppliers.
North Korea and the COVID Crisis: The Sanctions Angle
Humanitarian disasters in closed, authoritarian regimes pose particular challenges to the international community. Government actions can exacerbate or even create crises; this was certainly true of the great famine of the early 1990s. Yet the victims of the regime’s choices are innocents, including overstretched but dedicated doctors and health care workers. If the sanctions regime is impeding an outside humanitarian response, it needs to be adjusted–and quickly. There is evidence—outlined below—that sanctions exemptions are being granted to multilateral institutions and NGOS with greater speed. But by sheer proximity, China and South Korea are best positioned to play a role, and should exploit the discretion they are being given to act.
The China-Russia Security Council Resolution Part 2: Chinese Motives
In the last post on the proposed China-Russia Security Council resolution, we showed that exempting just two product categories—seafood and textiles—would restore as much as 50% of North Korea’s exports. But that does not capture the full extent of China’s ability to keep the regime afloat, even if we set aside the inevitable leakage in the sanctions regime (on that issue, see the August 2019 interim Panel of Experts report).
The China-Russia Security Council Resolution Part 1: Sanctions Relief
As 2020 gets underway, it is hard to avoid the obvious: diplomacy surrounding the Korean peninsula is stuck. The core question that divides the parties is—as it has long been—a tactical one. Are North Korea and the United States willing to trade incremental moves on the nuclear issue for partial sanctions relief?