OPINION:
North Korea spent almost 30 years trying to normalize relations with the U.S., knowing it would legitimize the regime and generate international development assistance. Now, North Korea is aligned with Russia, providing artillery shells, ballistic missiles and reportedly over 10,000 special forces troops to aid Russia in its war of aggression in Ukraine.
What happened?
For 30 years, North Korea had agreed to the U.S. demand for complete and verifiable denuclearization. We had the Agreed Framework in 1994, the Six-Party Talks Joint Statement in 2005 and the Singapore Declaration in 2018 between then-President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
During most of these years, however, North Korea was pursuing a secret highly enriched uranium, or HEU, program for nuclear weapons, in violation of these agreements. At the second leadership summit in February 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam, Mr. Kim proposed lifting sanctions imposed on North Korea after 2016 in exchange for the North halting activities at its Plutonium facility at Yongbyon.
When Mr. Trump countered, asking North Korea to halt all nuclear activities, including at its nondeclared HEU sites, Mr. Kim refused, and the Hanoi Summit ended abruptly.
On June 30, 2019, Mr. Trump shook hands with Mr. Kim in the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea and took 20 steps into North Korea, making history as the first sitting president to enter the country. Since that friendly encounter, no official contact with North Korea has existed.
In the past four years, North Korea has launched hundreds of ballistic missiles, including the Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile, which is capable of reaching anywhere in the United States. Recently, North Korea publicly tested suicide drones that could be provided to Russia for its war with Ukraine.
Mr. Kim reportedly codified in North Korea’s Constitution two of its principal enemies: South Korea and the United States. He has publicly eschewed reunification with South Korea and dismantled all roads and rail lines connecting the two Koreas. This past June, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang and signed a treaty with North Korea that commits each to defend the other if attacked.
I’ve often been asked why we should care about North Korea. My response hasn’t changed over the years: We don’t want another Korean War, this time with a nuclear North Korea with ballistic missiles capable of targeting our allies in South Korea and Japan and, most recently, with ICBMs capable of targeting the U.S.
Although North Korea knows it would be suicidal to use nuclear weapons against Seoul or Tokyo, the likelihood of an emboldened North Korea, now aligned with Russia, using conventional weapons to incite conflict with South Korea, is greater now than at any time since the Korean War.
We should not give up on North Korea.
Except for the past four years, the U.S. has had routine senior-level contact with North Korea, including Mr. Trump’s two summits with Mr. Kim and his steps into North Korea. In early October 2000, then-President Bill Clinton welcomed Marshall Jo Myong-rok to the White House, the second most powerful official in North Korea.
They discussed the normalization of relations, and Mr. Clinton was invited to visit North Korea. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright then visited Pyongyang in late October and had good meetings with Chairman Kim Jong-il, the father of Kim Jong-un. They also discussed the normalization of relations, with the elder Kim committing to complete and verifiable denuclearization.
Kim Jong-un knows that North Korea’s allied relationship with Russia and its support for Moscow’s invasion of a sovereign nation will prevent North Korea from receiving the international development assistance it wants and needs and the international legitimacy it seeks. Aligning with a pariah state — Russia — that will again abandon North Korea, as it did after the implosion of the Soviet Union, is not what Mr. Kim wants.
The incoming Trump administration has the opportunity to reverse the recent negative developments with North Korea. Given the relationship Mr. Trump has with Mr. Kim, it’s likely that North Korea would respond favorably to an overture that proposes the eventual lifting of sanctions on an action-for-action basis as North Korea halts the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and halts nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches.
Obviously, keeping our allies in South Korea and Japan apprised of developments with North Korea is important while recommitting to the defense of our allies.
• Joseph R. DeTrani is the former director of East Asia operations at the CIA, former special envoy for talks with North Korea (2003-2006) and former director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed here are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.
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