The first and historic summit between the U.S. and North Korea was held in Singapore during Mr. Donald Trump’s first presidency on 12 June 2018. It was followed by the second summit in Vietnam on 27-28 February 2019. President Trump also briefly met with Chairman Kim Jong-un in the Korean Demilitarized Zone on 30 June 2019. There, he became the first sitting U.S. president ever to set foot on North Korean soil. Upon his return to the White House, President Trump has indicated several times that he is willing to see Chairman Kim again. On Jan. 20 2025 (the first day of his second presidency), President Trump said, “I was very friendly with him. He liked me. I liked him.” Three days later, on Jan. 23, he stated in an interview with Fox News, “Kim Jong-un is a smart guy. [You’ll reach out to him again?] I will, yeah.” Then, on 7 February, President Trump continued, “And we had a good relationship. And I think it is a big asset for everybody that I get along with him.” On March 13, responding to the question, “Do you have any plans of getting, reestablishing the relationship you had during the first mandate?” he answered, “Well, I would. I had a great relationship with Kim Jong-un.”
North Korea’s Survival
Against this backdrop, I explore the possibility of North Korea’s denuclearization. This endeavor includes the examination of the nature of the country’s nuclear program. I suggest that, if a comprehensive package deal ensuring regime survival is offered, North Korea may denuclearize. This is because, for North Korea, a nuclear program is not the goal itself, but rather the means of survival. Before discussing denuclearization, it is important to recognize that North Korea’s priority has been regime survival. This term “survival” refers to more than just the continuation of the regime. It also implies sustained economic development and prosperity in general. In other words, to persuade North Korea to denuclearize, stakeholders must offer a path to survival that does not depend on nuclear weapons.
North Korea’s nuclear program has several features: military (a powerful deterrent and spearhead for countering military imbalance), political (a key source of legitimacy and vital part of Chairman Kim’s byungjin policy), and international values (a means to pursue a hostile foreign policy and decisive bargaining chip). People might already be familiar with the military and international values. In this writing, let me focus on the political features.
In general, legitimacy means people’s beliefs about political authority or obligations. According to Max Weber, there are three sources of legitimacy: rational (legality of patterns of normative rules), traditional (belief in the sanctity of traditions), and charismatic grounds (heroism or exemplary character of a person).
North Korea’s Legitimacy
North Korea does not have any institutionalized rules on the election of its leader. In North Korea, legitimacy can be said to stem from a mandate given by its founder President Kim Il-sung, or its incumbent supreme leader. President Kim proposed the following in 1986: “The party of the working class should put forward as its successor a leader of the people who is endlessly faithful to the party and revolution, and possesses the character and qualifications to successfully realize political leadership over the entire society.” More specifically, according to North Korea’s theorists, a successor should possess several qualities: a determination to embody and uphold the revolutionary cause, loyalty to the supreme leader, and possession of the supreme leader’s revolutionary idea, outstanding leadership, and noble virtue.
In addition, legitimacy in North Korea would come from the ability to understand, execute and realize the ideology of juche in the purest and strongest possible terms, a guiding principle proclaimed by its founder, President Kim. In its original form, the juche ideology pursues self-independence in the political arena, self-reliance in the economic arena, self-defense in the military arena, and subject in thoughts. It is known that the conflict between China and the Soviet Union in the 1960s contributed to the development of the ideology, which promoted North Korea’s independence from the socialist giants. Later, juche deviated from its initial orientation in the sense that the ideology served as a justification for consolidating the Kim family’s continuous rule, particularly from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il. These two elements together, encompass rational, traditional, and charismatic sources of legitimacy. But the problem is that North Korea’s current situation is different from the 1970s or 1980s, particularly in the sense that the influence of juche has waned.
Chairman Kim was believed to be only in his mid-20s when he came to power following the death of his father, then-Chairman Kim Jong-il on Dec. 17, 2011 (his true birth year has not been confirmed. It could be 1982, 1983, or 1984. If he was born on Jan. 8, 1984, his age was 27). North Korean authorities declared on the same day, “Comrade Kim Jong-un’s leadership is a decisive guarantee that the revolutionary cause of juche, pioneered by the great supreme leader Comrade Kim Il-sung and led to victory by the great leader Comrade Kim Jong-il, can be brilliantly inherited and completed from generation to generation.” The declaration means that Chairman Kim became the world’s youngest head of state at the time. In reality, however, he was unproven in the area of leadership, and thus had a challenging task in garnering legitimacy. It appears that Chairman Kim has actively utilized a nuclear policy to consolidate his leadership and legitimacy. According to Chan Young Bang, an esteemed expert on North Korea, nuclear programs have consolidated the legitimacy of leaders while safeguarding the ideology of juche, thereby the programs have mobilized support from the military and Workers’ Party of Korea.
Under Chairman Kim, North Korea has conducted four nuclear tests from 2013 to 2017. Right after the first test, on 1 April 2013, the Supreme People’s Assembly adopted a law titled “On further consolidating the status of a self-defense nuclear power.” The law was later replaced on 9 September 2022 by “On the nuclear force policy of the DPRK [North Korea].” Going further, Chairman Kim proposed a motion to change the Constitution and the Assembly approved it on Sept. 28, 2023: “Article 58 of Chapter 4 of the Socialist Constitution of the DPRK stipulates that the development of nuclear weapons will be advanced to secure the country’s right to survival and development, deter war, and protect peace and stability in the region and the world.” In a nutshell, according to North Korea, Chairman Kim led the country to become a “proud nuclear state that can repel any aggressor force with a single blow, firmly defend the socialist system, and firmly guarantee the people’s happy life.” Of course, it remains to be seen whether ordinary people in the country would agree with this statement. But at least in theory, North Korea’s nuclear weapons work as a source of legitimacy and national pride.
North Korea’s Policy
On March 31, 2013, Chairman Kim launched the byungjin policy, which pursued economic development and nuclear weapons simultaneously. The Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea presented a “new strategic line for parallel development of economic construction and nuclear force construction.” Just before and after the launch of byungjin, as mentioned earlier, North Korea conducted its nuclear tests on Feb. 12, 2013; Jan. 6, 2016; Sept. 9, 2016, and Sept. 3, 2017. Then on April 20, 2018, Chairman Kim decided not to continue this policy and called for the need for a “new strategic line to focus all efforts on economic construction.” This is likely because pursuing both economic and military development simultaneously is unfeasible in North Korea, where its economic structure is overly dysfunctional that it would never achieve sustained development and economic modernization without a decisive and radical reform. Under this already unfavorable and discouraging circumstance, what would happen to its economy if North Korea keeps developing nuclear programs? A nuclear weapons project, while cheaper than a conventional weapons program, costs a lot. Its total expenditures include building and deploying the bomb, targeting and controlling the bomb, defending against the bomb, nuclear waste management and environmental remediation, and consequences of nuclear secrecy, among others.
Chairman Kim may have thought about choosing between economic development and nuclear weapons. Improving North Korea’s economic situation and its people’s living standards has been Chairman Kim’s core mission. In his very first speech on 15 April 2012, he declared that “it is our Party’s firm determination to ensure that our people never have to tighten their belts again and enjoy the prosperity and wealth of socialism to their heart’s content.” It is also important to recognize that Chairman Kim put economic development first even when he announced the byungjin policy in 2013. Moreover, in his New Year’s address on 1 January 2019, Chairman Kim employed the term economy 38 times, while he referred to nuclear programs just two times (“complete denuclearization” and “we will no longer make, test, use, proliferate nuclear weapons”) (Anna Fifield presents factually inaccurate accounts of this address: “the economy thirty-nine times […] the only time he mentioned his nuclear program”). The problem is that Chairman Kim cannot just announce the discontinuation of byungjin, as it has been his signature policy. Abandoning it would damage his legitimacy. Still, by his own account, he successfully advanced nuclear weapons in the name of byungjin (despite Chairman Kim’s contention, North Korea’s nuclear potential has not been clearly verified). From his perspective, this may have constituted an overwhelming and undeniable achievement completing his grandfather Kim Il-sung’s and his father Kim Jong-il’s unfinished task. And this would provide his people with some justification.
During the course of byungjin, from Chairman Kim’s perspective, it may have been difficult to give up nuclear programs. Such an action could have directly undermined the legitimacy of his core policy. But with byungjin no longer in place, and with the implementation of a new strategy solely focusing on the economy, he might now be willing to abandon nuclear weapons. This could be in exchange for a comprehensive package deal ensuring regime survival that entails, for example, sufficient economic benefits and credible security guarantees. North Korea may have been sending a signal just before the inter-Korean summit on April 27, 2018, and the Trump-Kim summit in June the same year. In other words, Chairman Kim was suggesting that he would give up nuclear weapons in order to more vigorously and genuinely pursue economic development.
North Korea’s Denuclearization
Some people say that there is no possibility whatsoever for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons, and that there is no incentive that could be offered to the country. This observation disregards past U.S. experiences of negotiating with North Korea. At the first summit between the U.S. and North Korea in June 2018, Chairman Kim reaffirmed his commitment to complete denuclearization under the condition that President Trump provides security guarantees to North Korea for peace and prosperity. Looking back further to the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea agreed to halt its nuclear program, provided that the U.S. and North Korea would move toward full normalization of diplomatic and economic relations. Thus, there are clear incentives that can be offered to Pyongyang, such as solid security guarantees and reciprocal economic measures. These incentives could compensate for the values of North Korea’s nuclear program: the means of guaranteeing security, maintaining legitimacy, constituting a vital part of Kim’s policy, and maximizing a bargaining chip. If so, there is the possibility that Chairman Kim may denuclearize.
[Image credit: KCNA]
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect TGP’s editorial stance.
Dr Sungju Park-Kang is Research Fellow at the DPRK Strategic Research Center, Assistant Professor of International Relations, and Founder of Kang Scholarship at KIMEP University, where he is also acting as President’s discussion partner. In addition, Park-Kang is Adjunct Professor at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Finland. He was formerly Assistant Professor of Korean Studies and International Relations at Leiden University, the Netherlands and the University of Central Lancashire, UK. His work has appeared in Review of International Studies, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Asia Europe Journal, Polity and The Geopolitics, among others. Park-Kang is the author of Tears of Theory: International Relations as Storytelling and Fictional International Relations: Gender, Pain and Truth.
