Bad,Mad, Sad or Rational Actor? Why the ‘Securitization’ Paradigm Makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea

This article argues that the dominant paradigm for understanding and explaining north Korean domestic and international politics is in crisis. This 'securitization' paradigm is divided into its %lsquo;bad' and 'mad' elements and is derived from the crudest of Cold War politics and theories. It no longer provides a useful frame of reference for international policy-makers having to 'do business' with north Korea. The intervention of the humanitarian community in north Korea since 1995 has not only shown the obsolescence of this paradigm but also has provided the foundation for two alternative approaches—the 'sad' and the 'rational actor' conceptual framework. The article concludes by arguing for the utility of a historicized and contextualized rational actor model in offering a realistic underpinning for international policies which seriously wish to promote peace, stability and freedom from hunger on the Korean peninsula. South Korea's 'sunshine policy' is cited as one example of such an approach.     

Rebels without a cause: North Korea, Iran and the NPT

Unchecked nuclear weapons development in North Korea and the incipient nuclear weapons programme in Iran currently pose seminal challenges to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The disposition of these cases may determine the future of the NPT and will shape non-proliferation and disarmament efforts for the next decade or more. This article assesses these two challenges, focusing on the actions concerned European states might take to leverage and guide the inevitably central US role. The article concludes that, by smoothing the sharper edges of US nuclear and strategic policies, European states can promote political conditions more favourable to non-proliferation solutions in both critical cases and help reduce reliance on nuclear weapons threats in global security relations more broadly.     

Restructuring the US-South Korea alliance to deal with the second Korean nuclear crisis

As the US-South Korea alliance faces the second Korean nuclear crisis, Seoul and Washington no longer share a common unifying threat perception of North Korea. This divide has allowed North Korea to advance its interests by playing a 'South Korea card' against the United States in the nuclear standoff. The divide is not a transient problem that can be ignored or addressed with ad hoc fixes but a secular phenomenon rooted in South Korea's growing wealth and deepening democracy. What is needed now is more distance in the alliance. The alliance must be restructured to reflect the reality that South Korea can defend itself against North Korea without the help of the United States. For both Seoul and Washington, the restructured alliance would produce a more complete and robust set of options to advance their respective North Korea policies.     

Bad,Mad, Sad or Rational Actor? Why the ‘Securitization’ Paradigm makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea

This article argues that the dominant paradigm for understanding and explaining north Korean domestic and international politics is in crisis. The dominant securitization paradigm is divided into its 'bad' and 'mad' elements and is derived from the crudest of Cold War politics and theories. The paradigm no longer provides a useful frame of reference for international policy-makers having to 'do business' with north Korea. The intervention of the humanitarian community in north Korea since 1995 has both shown the obsolescence of the securitization paradigm and provided the foundation for two alternative approaches—the 'sad' and the 'rational actor' conceptual framework. The article concludes by arguing for the utility of a historicized and contextualized rational actor model which, it is argued, offers a realistic underpinning for international policies that seriously wish to promote peace, stability and freedom from hunger on the Korean peninsula. South Korea's 'sunshine' policy is cited as one example of such an approach.     

A nuclear North Korea and the stability of East Asia: a tsunami on the horizon?

This article aims to assess the strategic implications of North Korea's nuclear development. It calls into question the conventional wisdom that Pyongyang's atomic weapons will not only undermine the state of deterrence on the Korean peninsula, but also will trigger a nuclear domino effect throughout East Asia. A nuclear-armed North Korea, I argue, still cannot win a major victory over the South and the United States; Pyongyang's bombs somewhat decrease—rather than increase, as many believe—the risk of US preventive attack. And the regional US military presence as well as the available missile defence technology is sufficient to persuade Seoul and Tokyo not to pursue nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future. While I reject the alarmist view, I find that North Korea's armament nevertheless carries two significant—albeit less grave—risks that have received little scholarly scrutiny. First, I argue that the risk of inadvertent war through pre-emption will increase with Pyongyang's armament. I also argue that the strengthening of US alliances in the region as well as the US development of a missile defence capability in response to the North Korean threat could exacerbate the security dilemmas among major powers. I conclude, however, that these potential dangers do not markedly threaten regional stability.     

North Korea's diplomacy to engage the United States

For the past two decades relations between North Korea and the United States have become increasingly hostile. Pervasive and vociferous criticism of North Korea's dangerous and seemingly irrational behaviour has focused on Pyongyang's use of nuclear brinkmanship, violations of human rights and general disregard for the well-being of the North Korean people, as exemplified by its decision to develop a nuclear programme while the country suffered from widespread famine. However, an alternate view put forth by both American and South Korean experts on North Korea holds that Pyongyang's use of the nuclear wager primarily has been intended to demand Washington's attention in order to initiate bilateral talks and eventually normalise relations with the US. Certainly, Pyongyang's actions have been ham-fisted at times; however, its commitment to the goal of normalisation has been unwavering. The current controversy regarding North Korea's nuclear programme may serve as a necessary step to build trust between Washington and Pyongyang and might continue for sometime, given the short history of direct engagement. However, one thing is clear: neither Washington nor Pyongyang can afford to go back to the starting point.     

Socioeconomic Influences on the Physical Wellbeing of Adults in Post-crisis North Korea: Regressing Women's MUAC on Available Household Data from a National Nutrition Survey

Nutritional adequacy in North Korea (DPRK) has remained spotlighted since the famine crisis of the mid-1990s. Data from national household surveys facilitated by UN agencies primarily focus on children, with interviews of their mothers. No data are collected on men, or specifically on adults. Survey data on adult escapees in China or South Korea are not representative of conditions prevailing in present-day North Korea. This study focuses on adults’ physical wellbeing by regressing women's mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) as a proxy measure on selected household data from the third DPRK nutrition assessment. The results—with sampling limitations qualified—showed that residence in the ‘rice bowl’ region and access to farmers’ markets contributed most to wellbeing; differences in gross nutrition, biological factors, household size and even educational attainment mattered little. Further, elites in the national capital were worse off than households in the remote northeast, where proximity to China has facilitated trade exchanges for survival needs. All these signal emergent changes in household coping mechanisms, possibly even in the status quo, in present-day North Korea.     

The Chun Doo-Hwan Authoritarian Regime’s Securitisation of Water: The Case of the Peace Dam,South Korea

This article explores the securitisation of water aimed at avoiding a political crisis for the Chun Doo-Hwan regime in South Korea (1979–1988) using the case of the Peace Dam. The legitimacy of the Chun regime was vulnerable because of diverse factors such as internal and external crises inherited from the previous regime and Chun’s rise to power through a military coup and civilian massacres. In this political situation, the securitisation of nature could be an effective method of curbing potential resistance and ruling a people facing a complex crisis. The constructed threat of an attack by flooding by North Korea and the consequent alleged need for the Peace Dam were part of a scheme by Chun to maintain political power through the securitisation of water, specifically by establishing North Korea as an external enemy and unifying the South Korean people.     

The political economy of economic reform in North Korea

For over 10 years, North Korea has undergone a severe economic crisis, including food shortages, which has inflicted great suffering upon the North Korean people. Given such dire realities, it is beyond all doubt that the North Korean government should actively carry out comprehensive economic reforms as quickly as possible which aim to transform North Korea's present inefficient socialist planned economic system into a market economic system. Many argue that such reforms would give rise to successful economic growth in North Korea, which could enhance the legitimacy of the North Korean regime. Yet, the North Korean regime has consistently avoided implementing economic reforms, even though it has had a number of opportunities to do so. The July 1st reforms, which were introduced in 2002, have been half-hearted and inconsistently applied. This then raises an important question: Why has the North Korean government avoided adopting comprehensive economic reforms? In other words, what is the crucial barrier that has hindered North Korea's implementation of economic reforms? This article pinpoints North Korea's unique political system—i.e. its monolithic system of political control and policy making which exhibits the highest level of power concentration in one individual among all political systems—as the biggest barrier to economic reforms. No doubt North Korea desperately needs comprehensive economic reforms, in light of its economic crisis and food shortages. Nonetheless, the current North Korean regime has avoided adopting such reforms since they will undermine North Korea's monolithic system. In conclusion, North Korea's monolithic system has been the biggest obstacle to North Korea's economic reforms.     

Domestic events,ideological changes and the post-cold war US–South Korea alliance

How can we account for the weakening of the US–South Korea alliance after the cold war? After the cold war, the US–South Korea alliance was expected to remain strong due to North Korea's threats of weapons of mass destruction. For the past decade and a half, this realist projection has not fully come to pass: rather, it has changed inversely. How can we account for this puzzle? In explaining this counter-intuitive development, the author employs the critical juncture approach. The author argues that in South Korea, certain domestic critical events readjusted domestic ideologies that affected its alliance policy towards the USA. With the initiation of Nordpolitik after the end of the cold war (the first critical juncture), conservative anti-communism and progressive nationalism became coexistent in South Korea, thus causing frictional policy towards the USA. The 2000 North–South Korean Summit (the second critical juncture) made the progressive nationalistic move more dominant in Korea, and this ideological change made its alliance policy towards the USA less friendly.     

Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions: Power and Position on the Korean Peninsula

The USA has long called for the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea. But is this a realistic policy option? In order to address this question, a broader question needs to be answered: What are the primary drivers of North Korea’s interest in nuclear weapons? Most answers to this question take one of two basic positions. ‘Doves’, on the one hand, see North Korea developing nuclear weapons because of the threatening foreign policies of the USA and South Korea. ‘Hawks’, on the other hand, see North Korean nuclear development as driven by factors internal to the North Korean regime, inherent in its personality. The author examines these two arguments against the evidence and finds them both wanting. In contrast, he puts forth an alternative argument focused on the power of the global hegemon, the USA, and its position on the Korean Peninsula. This power and positional alternative is shown to be better reflected in the evidence presented.     

Neo‐Colonialism in South–South Relations? The Case of China and North Korea

The past decade has seen the rapid expansion of economic ties between China and North Korea, leading to questions of whether this emerging relationship resembles neo‐colonialism or a more positive form of South–South cooperation. This article argues that China's engagement is driven in the first instance by strategic considerations, namely the maintenance of the geopolitical status quo on the Korean peninsula. However, North Korea has also become increasingly important in terms of Beijing's aims of revitalizing its north‐eastern region, and as such, economic relations are becoming increasingly market‐led. Although this mode of engagement bears similarities with China's engagement elsewhere in the developing world, North Korea's catastrophic economic decline in the 1990s largely preceded the more recent revival of relations with China. We argue therefore that bilateral relations between the two countries cannot usefully be regarded as ‘neo‐colonial’ since North Korea is receiving much needed trade and investment from China within the context of broader international isolation. As such, we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to how geopolitical specificities influence the manner in which South–South cooperation shapes the possibilities of development, and that the dichotomous terrain of the existing debate between optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints is unhelpful.     

Nuclear Sisyphus: the myth of denuclearising North Korea

Is North Korea ready and willing to give up its nuclear weapons? Proponents of arms control and sustained engagement with North Korea maintain that Pyongyang's desire to acquire nuclear weapons stemmed from ingrained insecurity vis-à-vis the United States or more specifically, the threat that the US poses to fundamental regime security.

However, the primordial source of Kim Jong Il's existential insecurity stems largely from the abnormal, structural idiosyncracies of his regime and not, as many naively believe, the hardline policies of the Bush administration. Accordingly, the Kim Jong Il regime's fundamental dilemma boils down to the fact that the domestic political costs of giving up its nuclear capabilities are just as high as the costs of retaining them.

Debunking the myth that the US, rather than North Korea, poses the greater challenge to South Korean security is as important as ensuring that North Korea dismantles its nuclear arsenal.     

Washington's failure to resolve the North Korean nuclear conundrum: examining two decades of US policy

More than two decades of nuclear dialogue between the United States and North Korea have not prevented Pyongyang from conducting four nuclear tests and building up a nuclear weapons arsenal. Putting the blame for the failure of this dialogue solely on Pyongyang ignores the hesitancy and confusion of US policy. Historical evidence suggests that the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations consistently failed to prioritize their objectives and adopted an impatient and uncompromising negotiating strategy that contributed to this ongoing non‐proliferation fiasco. Identifying US policy mistakes at important crossroads in the dialogue with Pyongyang could help to prevent similar mistakes in the future. In this regard, the following analysis suggests a new approach towards Pyongyang based on a long‐term trust‐building process during which North Korea would be required to cap and then gradually eliminate its nuclear weapons in return for economic assistance and normalization of relations with the United States. Importantly, the United States might have to resign itself to North Korea's keeping an independent nuclear fuel cycle under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as to accepting South Korea's request to independently enrich uranium and pyroprocess spent nuclear fuel. This would be a more favourable alternative to allowing North Korea to continue accumulating nuclear weapons. Moreover, if the United States continues on the Obama administration's failed policy path, then there is a better than even chance that the Korean Peninsula may slide into a nuclear arms race.     

States of Insecurity

Under Communism, Albania and North Korea rejected de-Stalinisation, clung to leader cults, and, after the acrimonious break between Moscow and Beijing, championed ‘self-reliance’. Often mentioned in passing, the Albanian–North Korean parallel has seldom been analysed. This article highlights three aspects that shaped the Communist regimes' insecurity: the social dynamics of war and early threats; the challenge presented by de-Stalinisation in 1956; and the momentous Sino–Soviet split in the early 1960s. Like the boisterous language of Marxism-Leninism and the drive to engineer a non-capitalist society, insecurity was also built into the Communist international system. Clinging to Stalinist methods, then, was also a reflection of the self-destructive potential of calls for reforming the Communist system, which threatened to tear the Eastern bloc apart. Tirana and Pyongyang pursued different paths to ‘self-reliance’, yet they could not help speaking a similar language and facing similar problems. North Korea ultimately joined the Non-Aligned Movement but achieved little success in the Third World. The irony is that tiny, isolated Albania, which shunned the Movement, ultimately ended up non-aligned: violently critical of Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, and distrustful of practically everyone else.     

The enforcement problem in Resolution 2094 and the United Nations Security Council sanctions regime: sanctioning North Korea

This article deconstructs United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2094 through the preambulatory statements, objectives, obligations, and implementation and enforcement provisions of UNSC Resolution 2094. The article proceeds in three parts. First, it reviews the academic literature on UNSC sanctions and their application in the North Korean case. Second, it deconstructs UNSC Resolution 2094 according to the common structural components of international legal instruments to assess the level of congruence between the objectives of UNSC Resolution 2094, its enforcement mechanisms and outcomes. Third, it explores the weaknesses of UNSC Resolution 2094, focusing on the gap between the objectives and enforcement mechanisms found in the resolution. The inability of the UNSC sanctions regime to prevent North Korea reaching the cusp of becoming a nuclear weapons power is evidence of the international community's weak leverage over Pyongyang, a situation arising from the vulnerability of South Korea to a North Korean attack and the cross-cutting strategic priorities of China; the absence of economic linkages between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the primary sanctions-sender state in the USA; and North Korea's commitment to a nuclear weapons capability as the foundation of its medium-term economic development strategy, its institutional governance structure and associated ideological commitments.     

Italian political culture in historical perspective

This article examines Austrian policy towards the Italian states from the Congress of Vienna to the revolutions of 1848. It argues that the paramount concern of Habsburg policy was not revolution, but rather the maintenance of a hegemonic position in the peninsula against threats from the Habsburgs’ traditional enemy ‐ the French. Revolution caused significant concern only because it might provide the French with a pretext for intervention in the peninsula. Consequently a number of strategies were adopted both to forestall insurrection (vigorous policing, encouraging moderate reform programmes, armed intervention), and to retain influence over the peninsula's rulers (diplomatic pressure, dynastic and military alliances, promises of assistance against unrest). However, by the 1830s the Austrians were faced by increasing challenges to their position of dominance. This was in part because of the personal ambitions of individual Italian rulers, but it also reflected the changing situation in Paris after the July Revolution, and in Vienna after the death of Francis I.     

The Politics of Crisis Policymaking: Chernobyl and Swedish Nuclear Energy Policy

Public policy scholars often accentuate the key role of crises in explaining policy change; however, much empirical work still remains to be done in order to explain crisis‐induced policy outcomes. This article explores the prediction of the Advocacy Coalition Framework that stable coalitions and impediments to learning reduce the likelihood for policy change after a crisis. Strategic action is emphasized as a supplementary variable focusing on the role of political motivations in post‐crisis policymaking. Sweden's decision not to accelerate the nuclear power phaseout following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster provides a case study to assess the utility of these explanations. Findings corroborate theoretical expectations about stable minority coalitions, cast doubts over the presumed rigidity of policy core beliefs, and emphasize strategic action and cognitive heuristics as important motivations for policy choice. The article concludes by outlining three sector‐specific variables (ideological salience, level of conflict, and previous crisis experiences) that add to the explanation of crisis‐induced policy outcomes.     

The dual Green Revolutions in South Korea: reforestation and agricultural revolution under the authoritarian regime

In South Korea, the Green Revolution has been commonly understood as the development and dissemination of new rice varieties ('Tongil' rice) and the rapid increase of rice yield in the 1970s. However, revolutionary success in agriculture was not the only green revolution South Korea experienced; another green revolution lay in the success of reforestation projects. In the 1970s, South Korea's forest greening was closely related to its agricultural revolution in several ways. Therefore, South Korea's Green Revolution was an intrinsically linked double feature of agriculture and forestry. This two-pronged revolution was initiated by scientific research - yet accomplished by the strong administrative mobilization of President Park Chung Hee's regime. The process of setting goals and meeting them through a military-like strategy in a short time was made possible under the authoritarian regime, known as 'Yushin', though the administration failed to fully acknowledge scientific expertise in the process of pushing to achieve goals.     

Portrayals of Non-North Koreans in North Korean Textbooks and the Formation of National Identity

This article examines the portrayal of non-North Koreans in North Korean textbooks to assess the influences on the formation of North Korean identity, and how such identity formation is important in Kim Jeong-il's retention of power. This study not only looks closely at textual representations; it also examines how political and ideological changes in North Korea had a critical influence on these texts. The study encompasses both lexico-grammatical analysis and the analysis of textual and visual images, based on an examination of six North Korean language textbooks published from 1954 to 2000. It demonstrates that North Korean identity is defined through the portrayal of non-North Koreans, particularly enemy others. The portrayal of non-North Koreans facilitates the formation of a solid North Korean identity – an identity that entails serving their political leaders, remaining vigilant against threats to their country, and liberating South Koreans from poverty and oppression by America and its puppet states.