Engaging North Korea: Issues and Challenges
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The six-party agreement of February 13, 2007 opens the way to a sustained multilateral engagement of North Korea by the other five interlocutors, most notably America and Japan, while also obliging North Korea to take steps towards denuclearization and reciprocal engagement with those states. This new framework strongly suggests that the six-party talks have all along been about more than denuclearizing North Korea. Rather they have to a great extent been about engaging it or trying to find a framework for doing so. As a result it has become obvious that engaging the DPRK is essential to any government who wishes to continue to play a meaningful role in the Northeast Asian security agenda. Thus, by refusing to undertake this engagement, the United States has paid a serious price which it only is beginning to rectify since the February agreement. This essay analyzes the extent of that price paid by Washington in this context and also cites the developing international competition among the other parties to the talks to gain access to and influence upon North Korean policy. At the same time though, North Korea must undertake its own long-term engagement with all the parties and especially with the United States as it has long sought to do. Such an engagement cannot but exert substantial impact upon the domestic structures of North Korean politics. Evidence from North Korea points to its becoming a state governed by the rivalry among bureaucratic factions largely split between emphasizing economic reform or military-first policies, among them nuclearization. Compliance with the February agreements and the opening of its relations with all the parties, up to and possibly including even normalization with Washington, imposes upon the DPRK the necessity of opening up its politics. In tandem with sustained engagement by the parties, again particularly America, this agreement also creates possibilities for influencing a long-term reorientation of North Korean policy to emphasize economic reform over the military-first program. Thus North Korea too will find that this new multilateral engagement will force it to transform its policies too.
Abstract
The six-party agreement of February 13, 2007 opens the way to a sustained multilateral engagement of North Korea by the other five interlocutors, most notably America and Japan, while also obliging North Korea to take steps towards denuclearization and reciprocal engagement with those states. This new framework strongly suggests that the six-party talks have all along been about more than denuclearizing North Korea. Rather they have to a great extent been about engaging it or trying to find a framework for doing so. As a result it has become obvious that engaging the DPRK is essential to any government who wishes to continue to play a meaningful role in the Northeast Asian security agenda. Thus, by refusing to undertake this engagement, the United States has paid a serious price which it only is beginning to rectify since the February agreement. This essay analyzes the extent of that price paid by Washington in this context and also cites the developing international competition among the other parties to the talks to gain access to and influence upon North Korean policy. At the same time though, North Korea must undertake its own long-term engagement with all the parties and especially with the United States as it has long sought to do. Such an engagement cannot but exert substantial impact upon the domestic structures of North Korean politics. Evidence from North Korea points to its becoming a state governed by the rivalry among bureaucratic factions largely split between emphasizing economic reform or military-first policies, among them nuclearization. Compliance with the February agreements and the opening of its relations with all the parties, up to and possibly including even normalization with Washington, imposes upon the DPRK the necessity of opening up its politics. In tandem with sustained engagement by the parties, again particularly America, this agreement also creates possibilities for influencing a long-term reorientation of North Korean policy to emphasize economic reform over the military-first program. Thus North Korea too will find that this new multilateral engagement will force it to transform its policies too.