South Korean President Lee Jae-myung recently quipped in Washington that he looked forward to US President Donald Trump’s next meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-un, complete with a Trump Tower in North Korea and a round of golf. The remark was playful, but it raises a serious question: what would it actually take for Trump to get his round of golf in North Korea?
Any successful negotiation would require Trump to put forward an offer Kim cannot refuse – one that brings the DPRK back to the table, whether through the Six-Party Talks or another framework, and that guarantees regime survival, spectacular economic development, secure hereditary succession, and peace on the Korean Peninsula.
This article, the first in a two-part series, turns to the foundation of such a deal: legitimacy. For Kim Jong-un, legitimacy is not merely about survival but about legacy, rooted in hereditary succession and reinforced through nuclear weapons. Unless Washington acknowledges and engages with this reality, no deal – however ambitious – will endure.
Introduction
The issue of North Korea’s legitimacy has long been underestimated in US policy. Unless American negotiators recognize and engage with this reality, the next round of talks risks repeating the failures of the past. In 1996, I was approached by Kim Yong-sun, then Party Secretary and Chairman of the Chosun Asia Pacific Commission, who acted directly on behalf of Kim Jong-il. I later came to understand that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), facing acute desperation, reached out to a number of economists and policy experts.
The central issue that emerged from those early interactions remains as relevant today as it was then: legitimacy. For the DPRK, legitimacy is not an abstract concept but the foundation of the regime’s survival, the justification for hereditary succession, and the rationale underpinning its nuclear program.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the entire socialist bloc disintegrated. Trade relations and economic aid that North Korea had relied on from socialist allies came to a halt almost overnight. The flow of materials and assistance simply disappeared. The leadership, faced with desperation, turned to two strategies that ultimately ensured the country’s survival.
The first was Songun, or the “military-first” policy. North Korea could no longer depend on the protection or support of the Soviet Union or China, particularly after China normalized relations with South Korea. As part of this policy, then-Chairman Kim Jong-il pursued nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantee of security and regime survival.
The second was what might be called “benign neglect” – allowing limited marketization from below. Out of necessity, the state tolerated the growth of informal markets, Jangmadang, even though these markets directly contradicted socialist principles. This shadow economy provided people with a means of survival and helped stabilize society when the state could no longer provide food and other goods for its citizens.
Together, these two measures saved the North Korean state. Nuclear weapons became essential both as a means of survival and as a source of regime legitimacy. At the same time, the tolerated shadow economy gave people a lifeline: what began as an emergency and temporary response has since become an enduring part of North Korea’s political and economic system.
The foundations of legitimacy: Juche ideology
The term Juche was officially coined by Kim Il-sung in his speech “On the Construction of Socialism in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the South Korean Revolution” delivered at the Aliarham Academy of Social Sciences in Indonesia on 14 April 1965.
North Korean Juche ideology theorists identify four guiding principles for establishing Juche across all activities of the Party and state for the revolutionary struggle: subject in idea, self-preservation in politics, self-reliance in the economy, and self-defense in national defense. These principles have profoundly influenced economic activity and resource allocation by regulating the content and direction of economic management mechanisms and policymaking.
After succeeding his father in 1994, Kim Jong-il amended the Juche ideology and attributed two meanings to the concept of the “subject in idea.” First, it refers to fostering the working masses’ awareness of themselves as masters, their understanding of their country’s revolution as their primary concern, and their perspective and attitude of solving each problem with their own wisdom and strength. Second, it means arming oneself with Juche ideology and the party’s line and policies formed through its implementation, and establishing the monolithic ideological system. Here, the monolithic ideological system means that no other ideology is recognized or permitted other than the Juche ideology.
The Juche ideology was said to be created for generations, after generations, for 1,000 years to come. To be preserved and implemented, the regime needs a successor, who has to fulfill the following three conditions: 1) the successor must demonstrate absolute devotion to Juche and be prepared to dedicate his or her life to the socialist revolution, 2) he or she must possess exceptional personal qualities such as leadership ability, noble character, and moral discipline, and 3) he or she must embody unwavering fidelity to Kim Il-sung and his revolutionary line, proving incapable of betrayal or deviation.
The integration of these three specific conditions into a theoretical framework helped to justify the succession on a hereditary line. Thus, it provided the basis for transferring power from Kim Il-sung to his son, Kim Jong-il. This justification for hereditary succession was mostly intended for the outside world, especially other socialist countries, rather than for the North Korean people.
Byungjin experiment
In March 2013, Kim launched the Byungjin policy by pursuing nuclear weapons and economic development simultaneously. The economic development arm of the Byungjin policy has undoubtedly failed.
However, there is a common misconception among scholars who study the DPRK to account for the diversion of economic resources to the nuclear program for this failure. This view overlooks the fundamental reasons that provide a more comprehensive understanding of the DPRK’s economic system. For instance, Hojye Kang’s article published in 38 North states, “military expenditure is a direct obstacle to economic development, particularly regional economic development. In other words, North Korea could only fully commit itself to regional development when military spending was deprioritized.” This line of reasoning is insufficient, as it fails to address the fundamental drivers of the DPRK’s economic failure.
The development of a nuclear weapons program does not prevent economic development – countries like the UK, France, China, and India are proof that it is possible to achieve economic development and nuclear weapons simultaneously. North Korea’s economy was weak prior to the launch of the country’s nuclear program, and it would have been impossible to achieve economic development, even if the DPRK had never pursued nuclear weapons.
For North Korea to achieve sustained economic development, it must dispense with its extractive economic system and transform into an intensive economic system – a socialist market economy that sanctions property rights and allows private enterprises. This requires overcoming the ideological barriers of Juche ideology and embracing market-oriented economic reforms and opening in order for the DPRK to break away from its current system which like all extractive systems, “impede[s] and even block[s] economic growth” as Nobel Prize laureates Daron Acemoglu and James R. Robinson stated in their book Why Nations Fail.
Erosion of legitimacy
Legitimacy, in theory, was meant to be achieved by implementing and accomplishing the vision of an ideal socialist state – or a “workers’ paradise” – where everyone would live without alienation and have their needs fully met. Goods would be produced according to demand: if someone fell ill, they would receive medical care; if parents needed education for their children, it would be provided.
In reality, however, this vision never materialized. Instead, the system gave way to the shadow economy. Services such as medical care broke down, and what should have been guaranteed by the state often had to be purchased in informal markets. For example, even when the government imported basic medicines like aspirin or antibiotics, hospitals frequently had none available. Doctors and staff, unable to survive on meager salaries worth only a few cents, would sell these supplies in Jangmadang. Ordinary citizens, desperate for treatment, had no choice but to buy them there.
As time passes, the legitimacy of the North Korean regime continues to erode because it cannot deliver economic development. With economic promises unfulfilled, Kim increasingly relies on nuclear weapons as the sole visible achievement of his regime. The program is presented domestically as essential for survival in the face of US and South Korean aggression.
The greatest threat to the regime is not external military threats like those of the United States or South Korea, but structural internal flaws: unfulfilled promises, systemic corruption, deepening repression, and popular discontent. Kim’s reliance on nuclear weapons cannot mask these failures.
Therefore, if a peace agreement were reached tomorrow, it would not strengthen Kim Jong-un’s position but instead further undermine his legitimacy. Peace by itself would not deliver prosperity to North Korea, since the country’s economic problems stem from internal structural weaknesses rather than external tensions. At the same time, the very existence of peace would render nuclear weapons redundant. They would no longer serve any meaningful purpose, nor could they provide the regime with legitimacy.
What nuclear weapons mean for North Korea
The role of nuclear weapons in North Korea’s strategic calculus is often misunderstood: more than an end unto themselves, nuclear weapons are a means of survival for the country. Nuclear weapons fulfill five functions for the regime: a) they are a means of deterrence to both real and imagined threats, b) they provide legitimacy to the regime as a great achievement, c) the nuclear program is a pillar of the Byungjin policy, simultaneously pursuing a militarily powerful state and economic development., d) it is a means of counterbalancing the South’s overwhelming economic and military superiority, and e) a means that enables Kim to wage a hostile foreign policy. To succeed, any offer regarding the DPRK’s denuclearization must more than compensate for all these attributes that nuclear weapons bring to the Kim regime.
One nuclear weapon may provide deterrence, but the tenth or the hundredth no longer delivers the same benefit as the first. North Korea’s reliance on nuclear weapons as its primary survival strategy, therefore, suffers from diminishing returns. Continued investment in the arsenal only provokes sanctions and deepens international isolation, gradually undermining the very legitimacy the weapons were intended to secure.
Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), only five states are officially permitted to possess nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan are not parties to the NPT, but implicitly, other nuclear powers have accepted both countries as nuclear states, because their arsenals do not threaten the broader international order: North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not framed as a limited deterrent but as part of an ideological confrontation with the international order.
This makes Pyongyang’s arsenal a challenge not just for South Korea or the United States, but for liberal democracies worldwide, elevating the issue from a regional security dilemma to a profound international problem.
Conclusion
As former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev said, foreign policy is a continuation of domestic policy and domestic policy is an embodiment of ideology. In the same vein, Eduard Shevarnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister said in his book: “Coexistence based on such premises as non-aggression, respect of sovereignty, noninterference in internal affairs, and so on is incompatible with class struggle.” Consequently, it should be noted that, as long as the DPRK holds on to its hostile ideology, neither peaceful coexistence with different systems, nor economic development can be achieved.
The DPRK’s system is built on a hostile ideology and a confrontational foreign policy modeled after the Soviet Union. While these foundations were inherited, Kim now fully recognizes the limitations they impose. However, Kim is not prepared to relinquish the “cat that cannot catch mice,” as Deng Xiaoping eventually did. He continues to hold onto a distorted socialist economic system, hoping it will somehow deliver results, but the reality is that it never will.
