October 7, 2024,(0)
This past January, Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker, both experienced Korea-watchers, caught many by surprise when they wrote that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is preparing for war. That may be an exaggeration, but the concern is not misplaced. I have worked on the Korea nuclear problem in and out of government over the past three decades, and the Korean Peninsula seems more dangerous and volatile than at any time since 1950.
Since 2019, there have been three interrelated strategic shifts around the North Korean nuclear problem that have invalidated the core assumptions guiding United States and South Korean diplomacy since 1992. First, following the failed 2019 summit in Hanoi between Kim and former U.S. President Donald Trump, Kim revealed a five-year plan in 2021 for a major nuclear and missile buildup, including solid-fuel ICBMs, miniaturized warheads, tactical nuclear weapons, and hypersonic missiles. North Korea’s investment in its nuclear-industrial complex, along with Kim’s emphatic statements that it will not give up its nukes (which is embodied in its constitution and preemptive nuclear doctrine) underscore the strategic shift in posture.
These new capabilities and stated intentions have changed the strategic balance in Northeast Asia, posed new credibility questions about the United States’ extended deterrence, and fueled South Korea’s desire to obtain its own nuclear weapons.
Then there’s Pyongyang’s geopolitical repositioning. It began with Kim discarding the long-term North Korean goal of normalizing ties to the United States, aimed at balancing major powers. This underpinned the logic of three decades of nuclear diplomacy.
At the same time, Pyongyang bolstered ties with China, which had become tense after Beijing backed tough United Nations economic sanctions after North Korea’s nuclear tests in 2016 and 2017. Kim visited Beijing in January 2019, and Chinese President Xi Jinping followed with an exchange visit to Pyongyang that June. China, along with Russia, has since blocked U.S. efforts to impose new sanctions for North Korea’s ICBM tests.
The geopolitical shift intensified as Russia formed its new security partnership with North Korea after the Ukraine invasion, trading economic and military aid for ammunition and missiles. This move made China uncomfortable, as conveyed in private discussions with Chinese officials and thinktank experts. They fear Russian President Vladimir Putin is displacing Beijing’s leverage and creating a situation much like the 1950s and ’60s, when Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, played the two communist powers against each other.
The third shift is no less profound: In January, Kim abandoned a 70-year-old policy of reunification of what both North and South Korea defined as one familial nation divided by history, and declared South Korea as a “principal enemy.” He called for a change to North Korea’s constitution—erasing a commitment to reunification—dismantled agencies that handled North-South reconciliation, and tore down a reunification monument in Pyongyang that his father built.
Recent events reinforce these changes. For Kim, U.S. election cycles are often fun messaging opportunities. In September, Pyongyang launched a barrage of short-range ballistic missile tests, Kim vowed to make his nuclear force ready for combat with the United States, and then, for good measure, he published a rare photo of himself strolling through a top-secret uranium enrichment plant and pledged to build more nuclear weapons. But this is just a sneak preview of what we can expect.
Why does all this matter? For now, at least, Kim has taken both denuclearization and North-South reunification off the table—regardless of the fact that those remain the policy goals of the United States and South Korea, respectively.
The Korea problem is now embedded in zero-sum, great-power competition. The trend is toward two opposing blocs in Northeast Asia: There’s China, Russia, and North Korea, and then there’s the United States, South Korea, and Japan. The shared concerns about nuclear proliferation that enabled China and Russia to cooperate in the Six Party Talks (involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea) are no more. Kim is now emboldened as never before by his evolving nuclear and missile arsenal, support from Putin, and, at worst, indifference from China.
But don’t take my word for it. A 2023 report from the National Intelligence Council on North Korea outlined the new risk environment. Its judgment:
North Korea most likely will continue to use its nuclear weapons status to support coercive diplomacy, and almost certainly will consider increasingly risky coercive actions as the quality and quantity of its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenal grows.
While the report assessed that Kim will not use nuclear weapons unless he “believes the regime is in peril,” it hinted at the specter of miscalculation by stating, “He may be willing to take greater conventional military risks, believing that nuclear weapons will deter an unacceptably strong US or South Korean response.”
While the report said “an offensive strategy that seeks to seize territory and achieve political dominance over the Peninsula” by force is “less likely than the strategy of coercion,” it makes an important caveat that I suspect the council might revise in hindsight:
An offensive strategy would become more likely if Kim believed he could overmatch South Korea’s military while deterring US intervention and maintaining China’s support, or if he concluded that a domestic or international crisis presented a last chance to accomplish revisionist goals.
What scenarios might result from such a strategy? One flashpoint that could escalate is the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the maritime border between North and South Korea. The NLL was delineated by the U.N. Command around the time of the armistice in 1953, but it is disputed by North Korea and is the source of long-standing grievances and episodic military clashes. In 2010, Pyongyang fired on Yeonpyeong, one of the five islands that the NLL defines as South Korean. The attack killed two Republic of Korea (ROK) Marines and also sunk a South Korean ship. North Korea also fired artillery shells near the island earlier this year.
In the same January speech where Kim called for the constitution to be changed and declared South Korea as his “principal enemy,” he also alluded to revising NLL border claims at a future Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) meeting: “As the southern border of our country has been clearly drawn, the illegal ‘northern limit line’ and any other boundary can never be tolerated, and if the ROK violates even 0.001 mm of our territorial land, air and waters, it will be considered a war provocation.” Kim has scheduled an SPA meeting for Oct. 7.
The risks arising from these realities on the Korean Peninsula and the geopolitical predicament in Northeast Asia suggest some dangerous, but plausible scenarios. First, there is the nuclear shadow scenario foreshadowed in the National Intelligence Council report and by South Korean analysts:
After denouncing a US-ROK military exercise, Pyongyang begins what appear live fire drills near two of the islands, then fires a barrage of artillery shells at them followed by troops landing on Yeonpyeong island. US efforts to restrain South Korea fail, and Seoul sends air and naval forces to the area, firing on North Korean ships and lands Marines on the island. As fighting ensues, Pyongyang fires a tactical nuclear weapon on a nearby uninhabited island.
Would the United States or South Korea respond militarily and risk escalation? Would China veto a U.N. Security Council resolution in the face of the first nuclear use since Hiroshima—or work with the United States to contain the situation? At a time when both the United States and South Korea lack reliable diplomatic or military channels of communication with Pyongyang, it could easily spin out of control.
A still more alarming scenario is a two-front war in Asia involving simultaneous Korean and Taiwan crises. In an in-depth 2023 report based on wargaming, interviews with officials, and workshops, Markus Garlauskas, former national intelligence officer for North Korea, detailed how deterrence could fail, and the logic and dynamics that could, for example, lead Kim to attack South Korea if China invaded Taiwan and the United States intervened militarily, diverting focus and resources. Or, conversely, the possibility of coordinated simultaneous offensives, where both China and North Korea launch attacks on Taiwan and South Korea.
Three nuclear weapon states in conflict (and one might speculate how Putin would act) may sound fantastical or, as some fear, sleepwalking toward Armageddon. While such worst-case scenarios are unlikely to occur anytime soon, North Korea’s geopolitical repositioning has raised the possibility of a dramatic move by Pyongyang in the next six to 18 months.
Both the United States and China lack a sense of urgency around the Korean Peninsula. Beijing, as Chinese officials tell me, sees Pyongyang’s actions as the fault of U.S. sanctions—not their problem. With conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East raging, and zero-sum competition with China high on the agenda, North Korea is and will likely continue to be on the back burner. But Kim Jong Un may have something to say about that.