This week’s summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin was of historic significance. It extended the global tensions that began two years ago with the Ukrainian conflict all the way to the eastern tip of the Eurasian continent, where the Cold War started in 1950. It could have unfathomable consequences.
It also unravels years of patient and painstaking efforts to engage Pyongyang in seeking different solutions to an intractable problem – a paranoid, autocratic, yet nuclear-armed hermit statelet sitting at the doorstep of economic powerhouses like South Korea, Japan, and China.
There is a western twist here. Trying to recover czarist glory in Europe, Putin was obliged to bend the knee to Kim’s humiliating extravagances. The irony won’t be lost in Russia and might have a long-lasting impact. Russian history underlines the fact that the first Czars emerged by shaking off the Mongol yoke and conquering Asia.
Still, the result unfolding today is a military technology transfer from Russia to North Korea, which could escalate tensions in East Asia with unpredictable global fallouts.
Experts are particularly concerned. Former US Ambassador Joseph DeTrani – whose involvement with North Korea lasted for many years including the period from 2003-2006 when he was George W Bush’s special envoy for the Six Party Talks with North Korea and the US representative to the Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO) – has sounded an alarm that things could spin out of control:
This alliance with Russia may embolden Mr Kim to do something provocative toward South Korea; something that could escalate quickly. It has also emboldened Mr Putin to persist with his war in Ukraine, with the prospect that he won’t stop, regardless of the outcome.
However, diplomacy may still have a chance. In a recently published memoir DeTrani details how he personally experienced North Korea’s eagerness to open a dialogue with America on partial nuclear disarmament.
Dispatched by President Barack Obama on a secret 2011 visit to Pyongyang to propose resumption of disarmament negotiations, DeTrani met Jang Song Thaek, second in command in Pyongyang and the brother in law of then-leader Kim Jong Il. Jang welcomed the American overture, saying “in a soft and non-confrontational voice that the United States should remove its hostile policy toward North Korea and work to improve relations through dialogue” – at the highest level.
As DeTrani tells it:
I heard this often in official talks with North Korean interlocutors: North Korea wants a normal relationship with the US. This was repeated often in Track 1.5 meetings with North Korea’s Vice Foreign Ministers and in the 2018 Singapore Summit of former President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un.
The problem was – and is — North Korea wants normal relations and acceptance as a nuclear weapons state, like we managed the nuclear issue with Pakistan. North Korea was told that we will not accept them as a nuclear weapons state. Complete and verifiable denuclearization is the path to normal relations, they were told.
Coming out of DeTrani’s promising 2011 meeting with Jang Song Thaek, the two sides failed to reach agreement. Kim Jong Il died at the end of that year. In 2013 Kim Jong Un, who had succeeded his father, had Jang – his uncle and erstwhile mentor – tried and executed for alleged treason.
Jang’s tragic demise could be a reminder that political autism is not just a North Korean hallmark. Propelled by its domestic agenda, the US can be oblivious of its international obligations, driving countries away.
For instance, Muammar Ghaddafi’s Libyan experience is not forgotten in Pyongyang. In 2003, Ghaddafi gave up his program to produce weapons of mass destruction. It was in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent US attack on Iraq, which had been justified by the charge that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Ghaddafi bought himself just a short lease on life. In 2011, he was toppled and killed in a US-backed revolution.
North Korea followed those events and drew an eerie moral from them: Had Ghaddafi or Saddam possessed nuclear weapons, the US would not have interfered with them. Therefore, the North Korean nuclear program is seen as a life policy for the regime, and it’s steadfast about it. Yet, DeTrani argues, it’s necessary to talk with North Korea and try to find ways forward:
This is the time for the US, unilaterally or with the assistance of China, to use the tools available to us to reengage with Kim Jong Un.
The North Korean maze should lead to a profound rethinking of US global policy. Great power comes with greater responsibilities that can’t be ignored or spun away from overnight. Had Ghaddafi met a better fate, and had Saddam and Iraq not been turned into ashes, US diplomacy would have stronger arguments with Kim.
This context is not lost on larger, more complex countries like Iran, Russia, or China. Their analysts may have reasons to doubt the US’s real long-term commitments.
Domestic upheavals
Meanwhile, North Korea appears to be undergoing seismic changes that could impact foreign policy further. At the beginning of the year, North Koreans were asked to take loyalty oaths to their leader Kim Jong Un. A ceremony to that effect is believed to have occurred on January 8th to celebrate the leader turning 40. In April, the country stopped marking the “Day of the Sun,” the birth anniversary of its founding leader, Kim Il Sung.
Russia, which supported the grandfather eight decades ago, now pleads for his grandson’s aid. All of this projects 40-year-old Kim to a larger stage than the dynastic regime’s founder; in fact, there are indications that Kim the 3d is steering his kingdom in a different direction.
The real number two in the regime is his sister, Kim Yo Jong (born September 26th, 1987), who emerged into the limelight in 2020 when her brother Jong Un mysteriously disappeared amid rampant rumors about his health.
The heir-apparent is not male but “Respected Daughter” Kim Ju Ae (born possibly in 2012–2013). Kim Ju Ae is believed to have an older brother born in 2010 and a younger sibling of unknown sex born in 2017. Both seem to have been bypassed in the succession choice. The presence of two women in the top leadership is a rare event in male-dominated East Asia. Kim III’s assertion of power could indicate a significant reshuffle in the North Korean power structure.
The North Korean constitution recognizes the rule by “blood right” to the Kims. There are semi-religious rituals performed in honor of Kim’s long-dead father and grandfather. The entire North Korean procedures and trappings remind one of Central Asian shamanism, in which women are believed to command more power than men.
This might indicate that Kim Jong Un is ready for more theatrics and surprises, the substance of which the world and the US can only guess.
Francesco Sisci, an analyst and commentator on politics with over 30 years of experience in Asia, is the director of Appia Institute, which originally published this article. It is republished with permission.