Last year’s sinking of the Cheonan, the revelation of a new uranium enrichment program at Yongbyon, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island brought North Korea back to the center of worldwide attention as a rogue regime.

Although the Obama Administration shows signs of interest in dialogue, Seoul appears bent on more sanctions, military exercises, and contingency planning, premised on the belief that a North Korean collapse may be nearing.

Two major analytical failures — misreading Pyongyang’s intentions and misunderstanding its capabilities — keep the US and South Korea stuck in a North Korean quagmire.

Method in the madness: security first

The primary analytical failure consists in a fundamental misreading of North Korea’s intentions. The DPRK’s objectives are regime survival, national security and economic strength, in that order. In the absence of a negotiated process that guarantees the North’s security, normalises its diplomatic status, and provides it with energy and economic assistance; nuclear development and military conflict are bound to continue.

Washington and Seoul are treating the resumption of talks as a reward for North Korea, which underscores a fundamental misunderstanding of North Korea’s intentions. For Pyongyang, dialogue and negotiation are a means to an end, not ends in themselves. What Kim Jong Il wants from the talks is security assurances, primarily through the termination of hostile relations and diplomatic normalisation with the United States. Providing for the security of his regime would in turn create conditions conducive to a more successful push at economic development. In the absence of talks, the North will continue to develop a nuclear program, as minimal deterrence against the US threat of ‘extended deterrence,’ i.e., the US ‘nuclear umbrella’ over South Korea. North Korea’s ‘uranium breakout’ during the early Obama Administration, much like its plutonium breakout in George W. Bush’s first term, is a consequence of misreading North Korean motivation, ignoring its security interests in negotiations, and treating engagement as a reward instead of a means to resolve the issue.

Threat perception & the Yeonpyeong tragedy

A failure to understand the DPRK’s security preoccupations is also evident in the reactions to the tragic shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Seoul views the attack as a premeditated act to provoke the South, nullify the Northern Limit Line (NLL), and bolster the succession process by contriving external tension. North Korea claims that the attack was a justified act of self-defense against South Korea’s aggressive move of shelling its territorial waterway.

Given there is no mutually agreed upon or internationally recognised sea border between the two Koreas, is it unreasonable for North Korea to feel threatened by full-day, live-ammunition, heavy artillery firing into disputed waters seven miles off its coast, carried out in conjunction with war games involving 70,000 troops, during a period when inter-Korean relations are hostile? If North Korea’s purpose were to provoke and destabilize Seoul, why not attack just prior to the G20, as was feared? If the shelling were an undiluted act of aggression, why request a cessation of exercises on the morning of the altercation? The failure to take North Korea’s threat perception and security concerns seriously, ignoring explicit warnings, pushed the Korean peninsula closer to war.

The end is not nigh

The second category of analytical failure is chronic underestimation of North Korea’s capabilities — including its very survival as a regime. End of North Korean-ism, which first emerged in the early 1990s, is back in fashion. South Korean President Lee Myung Bak recently asserted that ‘an unstoppable change is taking place among the North Korean people, and the time has come for South Korea to prepare for unification.’ The South Korean policy of pressure and sanctions is justified, in turn, by the presumption that regime change may be imminent, so long as the DPRK remains isolated.

This policy approach is by and large predicated on wishful thinking. Despite economic hardship, the Kim Jong Il regime seems stable, and the succession process is, by all appearances, taking place smoothly. Broad-based elite cohesion, including the military, has maintained regime resilience despite a hostile international environment. Formidable mechanisms of state surveillance and control, combined with the absence of civil society organs, make the prospects of organised popular revolt slim. Last but not least, China is actively engaged on diplomatic and economic levels in supporting North Korea’s survival, stability and development.

Sanctions, meanwhile, may be doing more to strengthen the regime than hasten its demise. Sanctions play an important role in generating domestic support for the Kim regime and maintaining socio-political cohesion. Further, international sanctions and increased interdictions have failed to deter North Korea from enhancing its military and nuclear capabilities. In November of last year, North Korea unveiled a new ‘ultramodern’ uranium enrichment facility to American scientist Sig Hecker, despite financial sanctions vigorously pursued by the US Treasury Department, interdictions in Burma, Thailand, and the UAE related to the Proliferation Security Initiative, and ‘tough’ sanctions from the UN Security Council. Those who expected such measures to constrict or destabilise North Korea are instead confronted with clear evidence of significant improvements in the DPRK’s military and nuclear capabilities.

Wishful Thinking & Biased Sources

Misreading North Korea’s intentions and capabilities can take the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hard-line thinking about policies toward the North gained currency starting with the new administration in Seoul three years ago, and was met with hard-line responses from Pyongyang. The combination inspired hard-line conventional wisdom in Washington. The news media has, for the most part, been content to play up the storyline about the illness, insanity, or imminent collapse of the North Korean leadership. Moderate voices in favor of engagement have been drowned out. Messages sent directly by Pyongyang are being ignored. Washington has failed to listen to what North Korea really wants, and instead projects its own fears and interests onto the ‘black box’ of the DPRK. North Korea’s demonstrated capabilities are being ignored in favor of imagining the day when its government no longer exists.

Today, there is an increasing danger that wishful thinking has become embedded in the intelligence process. Key decision makers in Seoul seem to have anchored their North Korean policy on the imminent collapse of the North. Washington has slipped into de facto endorsement of this approach.

Feeding this confusion are serious problems with information collection about the domestic situation in North Korea. Policymakers in Seoul and Washington rely heavily on information provided by North Korean defectors. Defectors and networks of informants who move across the China-North Korea border, are key sources for a new constellation of media organisations like Daily NK, Open North Korea Radio, Free North Korea Radio, Good Neighbours, Radio Free Asia (US), Asia Press (Japan). However, the new ‘media’ organisations are not staffed by independent, professional journalists. To the contrary, they are propaganda organs and advocacy organisations designed to undermine regime stability in the North. Their reports frequently lack verification, yet regularly appear in Yonhap News, the leading South Korean government news agency, without any filtering. International news media, in turn, reprint them as world news. Unverified reports and politically motivated characterisations of North Korean instability are transmuted into truth.

Fix the framework, then the policy

Today, the arteries of engagement with North Korea are clogged. US diplomats, lacking direct contact with North Korean counterparts, are in the dark about North Korea’s strategic intentions and negotiating positions. Even North Korea’s public statements are summarily dismissed as ‘empty words’ or ‘blackmail’ — even though North Korean behavior over the long term tends to conform to its high-level pronouncements. Instead of an engaged, empirical approach, policy decisions are being made on the basis of defector reports and disinformation, of preconceived ideas and wishful thinking. The response to the unsettling revelations at Yongbyon and tragic shelling of Yeonpyeong are case in point.

Ultimately, both Seoul and Washington will need to overhaul their policy approach on North Korea. We do not see signs of that happening anytime soon. In the meantime, analysts, academics, journalists, and other members of civil society have a critical role to play in correcting the analytical framework for understanding North Korea, so that when a policy review comes, it can be based on a pragmatic and empirical basis.

John Delury is Assistant Professor at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of International Studies. Chung-in Moon is a professor of political science at Yonsei University and former Ambassador for International Security Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Republic of Korea.

This is a digest version of a longer article first published here at 38 North.

1. North Korean apocalypse avoided?
2. North Korean blackmail
3. North Korean realities

The two Koreas remain engaged in a protracted arms race, jeopardising peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in the region. A numbers analysis of military capabilities between the two Koreas suggests that North Korea is far superior to the South. The South leads the North only in three areas: the size of navy personnel, armoured vehicles, and helicopters. The North leads in all other areas.

However, a qualitative analysis renders quite a different outcome. Overall conventional defence capabilities favour the South due to more modern military equipments including many cutting-edge weapons.

North Korea’s response has been the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In light of the widening economic and conventional forces gap, the North may have regarded the nuclear weapons card as the most economical and effective option.

For North Korea to become a nuclear weapon state, it must satisfy four conditions: possession of nuclear warheads, deployment of workable missiles, success in nuclear testing, and acquisition of miniaturisation technology. While North Korea has at present fulfilled three of the four criteria of a nuclear state, specialists believe that it has not yet acquired the miniaturisation technology to mount nuclear warheads.

South Korea’s response to North Korea’s nuclear threat has been two-fold. One is to seek an American nuclear umbrella within the framework of the ROK-US alliance, and the other is to further enhance its overall conventional defence capabilities.

What factors then account for the dynamics of inter-Korean military spending and arms races? Although South Korea has used the North Korean threat to justify its military spending, the pattern of defence spending in the South did not respond to threats from and/or military spending of the North. The South tends to regard the threat from the North as constant. As such, a routine bureaucratic increase has become a major variable affecting the level of defence spending.

Overall macro-economic conditions have played an equally important role in shaping the level of South Korea’s defence spending. Acute fiscal crisis has often entailed a sharp decrease in defence spending as shown by the Lee Myung-bak government’s recent efforts to reduce the defence budget to cope with economic difficulties followed by the global financial crisis in 2008.

Alliance effects also appear to have profound impacts on defence spending. When there was a strong US security commitment, South Korea’s defence spending was minimal. But when the United States showed signs of disengagement or waning security commitment, South Korea proceeded to increase its defence spending.

What counts most in the domestic political landscape is executive leadership. Defence spending has by and large been shaped by the political leader’s preference and style. Park Chung-hee’s commitment to over-spending and Kim Dae-jung’s preference for less spending can be accounted for by leadership preference and style.

How about North Korea? The North did not respond to South Korea’s defence spending either as expected under the logic of conventional arms race. Nonetheless, its threat perception has continued to shape its arms race behavior, if not its defence spending. North Korea’s decision to go nuclear appears to be affected by two factors: its threat perception of American nuclear and ROK-US combined forces’ conventional forces, and the need to seek the most economical way of dealing with such threats. Protracted poor economic conditions and difficulties in acquiring advanced weapons and equipment from foreign countries could have justified and fostered such behaviour.

North Korea’s rapid increase in defence spending can also be explained in part by the adoption of the ‘military-first politics’ (seongun jeongchi). Given that North Korea does not have any alliance comparable to that of ROK-US, the alliance effects hypothesis may not be applicable. Historically speaking, however, North Korea’s defence spending used to be affected by the varying nature of its security ties with China and the Soviet Union. When military assistance from these two countries was robust, North Korea’s defence spending rose slowly, whereas it increased rapidly when such assistance was withheld.

Failure to block North Korea’s full-fledged nuclearisation could set off a nightmarish nuclear domino effect in the region. But denuclearisation of North Korea cannot be realised without addressing and assuring its security concerns. In this regard, trust-building with North Korea through the lifting of economic sanctions should be a useful first step, which should be followed by an American assurance of non-hostile intent and policy as well as concrete measures for peaceful co-existence, a peace regime replacing the armistice agreement, and diplomatic normalisation with Pyongyang. North Korea should also show its sincere efforts and concrete moves toward denuclearisation.

Chung-in Moon is Professor of political science at Yonsei University, and formerly served as Dean of Yonsei’s Graduate School of International Studies and Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asian Cooperation Initiative. Sangkeun Lee is a Ph. D. candidate specialising in North Korean politics at the Department of Political Science, Yonsei University.

This article is a summary of a paper originally published in Asian Perspective 33(4), 2009, 69-99, which can also be found here.

1. Russia-North Korea: Denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula
2. Political surprises dominate the Korean peninsula in 2011
3. Park Chung-hee, the CIA and the bomb

At the historic North-South summit in Pyongyang on June 15, 2000, there was a sense that lasting peace on the Korean peninsula lay just around the corner. I still cherish that moment when I was witness to a foundation of mutual trust being built through the expansion of cooperation and exchange between the two countries. The dismantling of the Cold War structure that had haunted the peninsula for decades never seemed more achievable.

As we reach the ninth anniversary of that hopeful event, the Korean peninsula is caught by a dramatically different vision, one in which the hard-earned progress of recent history has unraveled and left us worse off than where we began.

Given the success of the Clinton years and the diplomatic posture promised by President Obama, I anticipated that the new administration would adopt a more progressive policy towards North Korea based on the Clinton-Kim Dae-jung model.  Yet, a number of major domestic and international issues including the economic crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Palestine rendered North Korea a low policy priority for the Obama Administration.

That was until the April 5 rocket launch.

The launch appears to have been undertaken to test the Obama Administration’s intentions toward, and perception of, North Korea.  The US regarded the rocket as a missile and accused the North of violating the UN Security Council Resolution 1718.  Despite North Korea’s claim that it launched a satellite as part of its commitment to the peaceful use of space, the act was interpreted as a provocation, which threatened the US and her allies in the neighbourhood.  Compounding this, a second nuclear test on May 25 underscored the interpretation that North Korea now appears determined to act on its own accord, following its own timetable.  This has heightened diplomatic pressure from Japan and South Korea, and forced the US to harden its stance on inducing North Korean policy change through tougher policies centered on isolation and containment.

Should North Korea continue to reject international pressure and persist with provocative actions, the US might have to entertain a resolution to the nuclear issue through regime change in the North. The US has even given the impression that it would be willing to take military action through close US-South Korea cooperation should any military conflict arise as events unfold.  The deep concern is that any military escalation might not end in a conventional military conflict as North Korea nears the possession of operational nuclear weapons.

The June 16 US-South Korea summit meeting seems to have further aggravated situation on the Korean peninsula.  The South Korean government might have pacified security concerns of its own people by securing American reassurance of ‘extended deterrence’ including a US nuclear umbrella over South Korea.  But the move ended up justifying and recognizing fait accompli of the North as a nuclear state and would inevitably trigger a nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula. The opening of such a Pandora’s Box would spell a security disaster from which there would be no easy exit that would embroil the region and the world.

The United States for the first time officially supported the Korean reunification based on market economy and liberal democracy at the summit meeting.  North Korea views it as a hostile move to foster regime transformation in the North and to facilitate ‘Korean reunification through absorption’ a la mode Germany. And Seoul’s move to isolate the North has become all the more explicit during the summit  as President Lee Myung-bak proposed to hold five party talks excluding North Korea.   Overall, the June ROK-US summit meeting reaffirmed a strong alliance between the two countries at the expenses of improved inter-Korean and North Korean-US ties, clouding peace and security on the Korean peninsula.

Pressures alone cannot help resolving the North Korean nuclear problem. There are a number of issues in defining an alternative way forward that the Obama administration could well consider:

1.  The Obama administration might reflect on the lessons learned from the ‘five lost years’ of the Bush administration and re-examine the merits of the ‘Clinton-Kim Dae-jung’ model. In particularly, it should look to the successes of the first and second inter-Korean summit meetings and consider seeking a breakthrough based on summit diplomacy.

2.  Resolution of the North Korean issue requires, as a prerequisite a symbolic and substantive paradigm shift. President Obama’s speech delivered at Cairo University on June 4 touched the entire Islamic world and laid the groundwork for severing what has been a cycle of ‘suspicion and discord’ between the US and Islamic countries. The US needs also to make a similar political gesture of comparable scale and scope to North Korea, through which it can restore a sense of hope and possibility. At the same time, the US needs to send explicit signals that it will change its North Korean policy to back up the rhetoric.  Only a bold and comprehensive approach will be able to resolve the current impasse.

3.  The Obama administration needs greater empathy in evaluating the situation from the perspective of North Korea. It needs to acknowledge North Korea’s position and identity, in order to create and coordinate a more appropriately targeted stance against North Korea. Washington needs to listen not only to functional experts who specialize in the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction but also those who specialize in North Korean affairs. Washington has many amateur generalists on North Korea: the specialists now need to be heard.

4.  The current structure of the Six-Party Talks lacks an adequate system of checks and balances. China and Russia have been increasingly diminished in the face of the concerted hard line position adopted not only by the US, South Korea and Japan, but also by North Korea. Without the prospect of a middle ground, the Six-Party Talks have lost their bearing and are at risk of losing legitimacy. The US needs to immediately re-establish the equilibrium, and China, as the host of the Six-Party Talks, needs a more active diplomacy. South Korea needs to realize that its tough stance against North Korea is not the whole solution.

5.  The people of South Korea would not approve of a strategy of hostile neglect based on isolation and containment nor any consequent military action. If tension builds on the Korean peninsula as North Korea is relentlessly pushed into a corner, the anti-American sentiment witnessed between 2002 and 2003 is likely once again to spread like wildfire. The Obama administration needs to take action based on negotiation to resolve the issue, or the Korean peninsula may well become the Obama administration’s first diplomatic failure.

Chung-in Moon is Professor of Political Science at Yonsei University, has been Korea’s Ambassador for International Security Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asian Cooperation Initiative, a cabinet-level post, under president Roh Moo-Hyun. He attended the first and second Korean summit as a special delegate.

1. North Korea: Showing off nukes, shelling the south
2. South Korea changes course on the North: back to the F word
3. Dilemmas and policy options for US aid to North Korea

East Asia is likely to draw less attention from the Obama administration given the current preoccupation with Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the United States shows no sign of lessening its engagement in the region.

A prudent realism under the Obama administration will seek a more active cooperation with China, while maintaining existing bilateral alliances with Japan and South Korea. In so doing, the Obama administration is likely to seek a new regional security architecture that combines a bilateral alliance system with a multilateral security cooperation regime. We can expect the US will shift its emphasis from the logic of balance of power to that of the power of balance.

Domestic issues will be the first order of business for President Obama. However, the North Korean nuclear issue is not likely to be left idle, as Obama has defined the prevention of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and defeating global terrorism as the twin pillars of his national security agenda. Hillary Clinton, his nominee for secretary of state, also made it clear during her Senate confirmation hearing that she will deal with the North Korean nuclear issue with urgency.

The Obama administration should use diplomatic normalization with North Korea as a more flexible and effective bargaining card. It may well consider offering a basic treaty on normalization with the North in return for an acceptable verification protocol involving sampling, forensic activities, and access to suspected nuclear sites as well as the transfer of a sizable amount of nuclear materials. The option of ‘dismantle first, then we will normalize ties with you’ was tried under Bush and failed.

Since both the ROK and the US have learned from past mistakes with regard to North Korea, they are more likely to work together by narrowing policy differences. I believe both Lee and Obama are united in their purpose of denuclearizing North Korea, though differences in the implementation of this policy goal exist.The Obama administration would likely expedite rapprochement with Pyongyang if North Korea is willing to make major concessions in verifiable dismantling of its nuclear programs and weapons. The Lee government, for its part, would not oppose such a move provided that progress is made.

The proposed trilateral US-China-Japan commission ought to be seen as a positive step, since cooperation among the three most powerful regional actors is vital to peace and stability in Northeast Asia. It could mitigate a tense rivalry between China and Japan, as well as a potential conflict between China and the US that will emanate from power transition. In fact, Kurt Campbell, a nominee for the Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs, has been a staunch advocate of this approach.

But institutionalization of such a trilateral summit could cause serious security concerns in South Korea because of its potential exclusion. Most Koreans still remember how Korea was arbitrarily divided by the calculus of the major powers after World War II. North Korea and Russia will also oppose the trilateral formula. South Korea would be far better off proposing a six party summit among China, Japan, Russia, the US and both Koreas or a ‘6-1’ summit in case North Korea does not show up.

The ROK-US alliance will face its own challenges, as in order for an alliance to persist, there must be a shared perception of a common enemy and threat. Shared values alone cannot guarantee the longevity of any alliance. But South Korea, as also the United States, cannot regard China and North Korea as potential or actual threats.
A regional multilateral security cooperation scheme similar to the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe would be much more beneficial in helping South Korea escape from a perpetual security dilemma. But such security architecture is not conceivable without American commitment.

South Korea’s diplomatic role in the region should be a focus of policy. South Korea should play a ‘soft balancing role’ by providing new and innovative ideas, facilitating the diffusion of common, comprehensive, and cooperative security in the region, and steering the process of regional security cooperation: but the US is vital to any of these measures.
Moving closer to China at this stage is viewed by most South Koreans as premature and even dangerous, but such a move by South Korea entails neither ‘bandwagoning’ with China nor adopting a strong ‘balancer’ role.

More generally, South Korea needs to develop a grand strategy that can assure its security and prosperity through engagement, balancing and hedging.

Obsession with short-term gains, tactical and impromptu maneuvering, excessive value orientation, and the politicization of security and foreign policy issues need to be avoided. The Lee government needs to improve relations with North Korea by enhancing mutual trust, recognizing its regime identity, sending coherent policy signals, and promoting exchange and cooperation.

The alliance with the US should be further strengthened, while Korea also ought to pledge to share its associated costs. South Korea should also take maximum advantage of the trilateral summit among China, Japan, and South Korea, while deepening existing trilateral consultative ties with Japan and the US.

More importantly, South Korea should explore new multilateral initiatives by going beyond traditional bilateral maneuvers.

Chung-in Moon is Professor of Political Science at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and was formerly Korea’s Ambassador for International Security Affairs. This article is adapted from an interview given to the Korea Herald by Professor Moon.

1. North Korea – the US still caught between speaking with the enemy and listening to allies
2. The Lee-Obama summit: alliance for peace and unification
3. Obama in Asia: more than a sentimental journey

On December 2, the United States Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, in a bipartisan report entitled ‘World at Risk’, listed the halting of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs as one of the biggest priorities in state affairs for the Obama administration when it takes office.
The report also highlights the fact that although peaceful solutions to the issue may be sought through diplomatic efforts such as direct negotiation, if these fail, the use of threats such as military activity must be considered.

But what is important at the present time is not a hard-line policy on the presumption of diplomatic failure but the refinement of a diplomatic solution.

There are two diplomatic courses available for future negotiations with North Korea. One of them is carrying out, within the framework of the six-party talks, the negotiations for ,verifiable dismantlement’, the third stage of the February 13 agreement that is a political legacy left behind by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill. The other is the method of starting anew with the ‘broad-minded’ negotiations with the North halted because of the Bush administration’s ‘ABC’ (Anything But Clinton) policy. This would be an extension of the October 2000 North Korea visit of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

To be frank, the former approach offers little guarantee of success.

Assistant Secretary of State Hill employed his outstanding imagination and diplomatic ability to seek breakthroughs in negotiations with the North in states of crisis. Under the Obama administration, it will not only be difficult to find someone to replace Hill, but even if they do, that person is liable to become a sacrifice to the hotbed of Washington bureaucratic politics if he or she produces a response at the level of the Assistant Secretary of State. The United States could end up once again making an everyday practice of the same, dull ‘tit-for-tat’ negotiations steeped in bureaucratic inertia, while Pyongyang responds with its ‘salami strategy’ (developing its negotiation cards), leading to another state of crisis, like a second nuclear test, as the negotiations fall into an impasse.

As President-elect Obama has emphasized on numerous occasions, the time has come now to break out of the past bureaucratic negotiation practices with the North Korean nuclear issue and find a solution through the opposite approach, with broad-minded diplomatic thinking. Indeed, the October 2000 visit of Madeleine Albright to North Korea was a reconnaissance survey for a visit by then-President Bill Clinton. As an extension of that, Obama should send former President Clinton to North Korea as a special envoy early in his term and seek a historic reversal. If, as a special envoy, Clinton presents a specific plan for verifiable nuclear dismantlement while communicating the Obama administration’s message that it is prepared to sign a basic pact for the easing of hostile U.S.-North Korea relations and the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries, I believe that North Korea will present a corresponding response.

The core of the message shown to Pyongyang here is that the normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations is not just the final stage of negotiations, but can be offered as an incentive in the early stages of verifiable nuclear dismantlement as well. At the current round of six-party talks in Beijing, diplomatic relations between the United States and Pyongyang are a card worthy of consideration as recompense for accepting a specific schedule for dismantlement as they enter the third stage following basic agreement on a verification protocol, including the extraction of samples, surveillance activity and access to suspected nuclear facilities. This follows in line with the authenticity of the ‘change’ emphasized by the Obama team thus far.

While the card of diplomatic relations can function as the most attractive lure for North Korea, it should also be kept in mind that the threat of severed diplomatic relations can be a more powerful means of pressure in the event of non-cooperation than military action. Such a good card should not be left until the last stage of negotiations.
An unconventional form of high-intensity, high-level diplomacy with Pyongyang that represents a departure from the current approach, including a North Korea visit by former President Clinton as a special envoy and the proposal of normalization of diplomatic relations, could put some new flexibility into the six-party talks and assist in the smooth execution of ‘verifiable nuclear dismantlement.’ One looks forward to President-elect Obama using broad-minded diplomacy to provide a turning point in the early resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue.

1. Resolving the North Korean nuclear impasse: a Russian perspective
2. North Korean nuclear weapons: Lessons from Libya
3. The North Korea nuclear crisis: Five guiding principles