North Korean leader Kim Jong Un went to China to celebrate China’s so-called Victory Day on Sept. 3 and engage in national security diplomacy. For the first time, he stood alongside Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and other world leaders on the high rostrum of Tiananmen Square. The South Korean and international press made a big fuss over the value and significance of the “full shot” of Kim, Xi and Putin standing together. We’re on the threshold of the Kim Jong Un era.
What should we think at this moment? I first think of all the government officials who have long made one-sided arguments. As Kim Jong Un and his sister have said, there’s no need to divide between progressive and conservative. In international relations, and especially inter-Korean relations, anachronistic fixed notions, childish confirmation bias and wishful thinking detached from reality are pitfalls to be avoided. Yet such thinking has dominated Korean society in the past and remains essentially unchanged today.
“Kim Jong Un is in poor health and will soon die.” “The North Korean regime is on its last legs.” “North Korea’s troop deployment to the Russia-Ukraine war will hasten the regime’s end.” “North Korea has neither the will nor the ability to develop nuclear weapons.” “If we treat Kim Jong Un with goodwill and cooperate with him, he’ll abandon his nukes and engage in dialogue and cooperation.” “Kim Jong Un might participate in the APEC summit in Gyeongju.” How many times have we heard these things? Such talk is nothing but shortsightedness and sophistry.
In international relations, including the North Korean nuclear issue, one must view facts as facts and craft precise strategies and tactics, but we often refuse to see things as they are, instead wearing rose-tinted glasses. We can no longer do so. We must now adopt a cool-headed approach.
The judgments and suggestions I’ve made in my five books, including “Analysis of Kim Jong Un,” and columns haven’t been 100% correct. However, they’re clearly starting points from which to engage in broader consideration. Today, I’d like once more to highlight and discuss how we must never underestimate or simply trust Kim Jong Un, how we must more seriously understand the dual nature of the Korea issue (as both a Korean national issue and an international issue), and how we must approach Korean issues from a three-dimensional, realistic and global perspective rather than a one-sided, wishful or nationalistic one.
Six realities we must face
First, Kim Jong Un is an adventurer with complexes and ambition. He suddenly finds himself in his 15th year as the country’s leader. We must not view wholly negatively or lightly his purges and politics of fear, his hell-bent development of nuclear weapons, his strategic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, his deployment of troops to the Russia-Ukraine war, and his multilateral diplomacy debut during China’s Victory Day. Not every leader could do those things. He may have abandoned the concept of cooperative reunification based on united front tactics due to unfavorable circumstances, but he’s strengthening his nuclear weapon-based strategy of “territorial integrity” — in other words, reunifying the country by conquering the South.
Second, the Kim Jong Un regime is unlikely to face sudden changes in the near future. Many people say the Kim regime could collapse due to economic difficulties, but structurally speaking, North Korea’s traditional leadership system and powerful police state are operating effectively. The North Korean people’s familiarity with poverty and North Korea’s slowly recovering economy due to fissures in the international sanctions regime (namely, the intensifying alliance between the North, China and Russia) make this improbable.
Third, North Korea will no longer give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily. The international community is trying hard to ignore the North’s advancement of its nuclear and missile capabilities and its enshrinement of its nuclear doctrine in its constitution and legal code. However, as time passes, North Korea’s nuclear capabilities will grow, China and Russia will give the North their tacit consent, and the U.S. Trump administration’s jitters will increase as the midterm elections approach.
Fourth, Kim Jong Un’s “two hostile states” doctrine outwardly appears to reject the ideas of a shared Korean identity and national reunification and favor the North’s status as an independent state, but in fact, it’s a “cultural war” to completely eliminate South Korean pop culture, which has spread throughout North Korean society. Accordingly, North Korea has no reason to restart inter-Korean exchanges that could fundamentally shake the proverbial tower Pyongyang worked so hard to build.
Fifth, the North Korean people are outwardly enduring the government’s crackdowns on South Korean pop culture under the name of the “two hostile states” doctrine, but inwardly, they still thirst for outside knowledge, and if the chance emerges, they’ll endure the risks to consume it.
Sixth, policies based on one particular South Korean political camp’s ideas — whether a progressive government’s policy 2.0 or a conservative government’s policy 2.0 — will no longer work. Only a fusion of progressive and conservative policies will work. Only then will Seoul be able to engage properly with Kim Jong Un or Trump, consolidate national opinion, and draw closer to the North Korean people.
I’m not a working-level official in the Korean government. My advice is based on long experience. I hope today’s talking points help government officials and readers consider Kim Jong Un, North Korea and the situation surrounding the Korean Peninsula.
The path forward
I’ll stress it one more time. North Korea’s “two hostile states” doctrine is a life-or-death gamble that rejects the sacred precepts of Kim’s ancestors — the single Korean nation and national reunification. It’s a form of “Kim Jong Un-style martial law.” When education and crackdowns failed to halt the spread of South Korean pop culture, and even a series of vicious laws carrying extreme punishments proved ineffective, the doctrine was the strongest card Kim could play. Of course, the policy carries several inherent strategic and tactical goals, but the central one is to blind and silence the North Korean people — whose eyes have opened to information from the outside world, the biggest headache for the regime — while securing the Kim family’s perpetual rule through nuclear weapons and the politics of fear.
Moreover, world leaders, such as Trump, continue to court Kim Jong Un. We’re on the verge of the Kim Jong Un era. With things going this way, North Korea has no reason to touch the drug that is South Korea. Therefore, the Lee Jae-myung administration must recognize that when Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, said Seoul’s hopes were nothing more than a “pipe dream,” she wasn’t joking.
Thus, we must take a long breath and secure South Korea’s national security and national interests while simultaneously pushing dialogue with Kim — but not getting hung up on them — and undertaking multilateral activities to approach the North Korean people. When a direct path is blocked, you go around. Now is such a time, with the Kim regime likely to focus for the time being on cutting itself off from South Korea, cooperating with Russia and China, and, when necessary, striking a major deal with the Trump administration. I recall the words of one former diplomat who said, “Please, let’s engage in bold diplomacy, just like Kim Jong Un.”
