Book review: Scott A. Snyder and Kyung-Ae Park,(Eds.),North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Kim Jong-Un Regime in a Hostile World .

North Korea is an enigma and studying its politics, economy and society is a daunting task because of lack of access. It may be said that comparatively, it is easier to write about North Korean foreign policy as one can look at its relations with other countries and try to decipher North Korean foreign policy. But still the process of foreign policy making, actors in foreign policy making and intent of foreign policy of North Korea remain challenging for scholars. North Korean official pronouncements about its foreign policy are very few, superficial and largely rhetorical.

In such a context, Scott A. Snyder and Kyung-Ae Park must be commended for compiling a book on North Korea’s foreign policy during the Kim Jong-un era. Both the editors have followed Korean issues for decades and have written extensively. To produce this book, the editors have gathered renowned scholars in the field to write about various aspects of North Korea’s foreign policy. There have been few notable books on North Korea’s Foreign Policy (Caisova, 2009; Kim, 2011; Koh, 1969; Kwak & Joo, 2009; Kwon & Zhang, 2023; Park, 2010) but only the last two of them deal with North Korean foreign policy during the Kim Jong-un era. Thus, the publication of this book is indeed valuable. The book has an introduction and it is divided in three parts—Understanding North Korea’s Foreign Policy under Kim Jung-un, North Korea’s Summit Diplomacy under Kim Jong-un and North Korea’s Diplomacy toward the World.

In the first chapter, Andrei Lankov tries to explain the most central element of North Korea’s policy during the Kim Jong-un regime—Byungjin. Byungjin policy was adopted by Kim Jong-un in 2012 and it emphasised that North Korea would seek both economic development and military strengthening simultaneously. Lankov brings historical context of the Byungjin policy and describes various reforms in North Korea under the Kim Jong-un era. It is a well written chapter but the author has not provided the source of a claim that North Korea needs 1–2 billion USD assistance annually to remain afloat (p. 19). Similarly at another place the author mentions ‘Cold War 2.0’ (p. 21) which has not been discussed in the entire chapter.

Kim Byung-yeon covers the first part of North Korea’s foreign Policy—economic development strategy. Kim characterises North Korean economic development strategy as ‘market-led growth within socialism’ or ‘pragmatic socialism’. The chapter enumerates several reforms which were important in the context of new sanctions by the UN after North Korean nuclear tests in 2016. The chapter argues that these reforms have been withdrawn in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic but the author is not sure whether this action is temporary or a change of direction of North Korea policy.

In the third chapter, Virginie Grzelczyk presents a historical and factual account of North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons. She underlines that there has been a departure from the norms under the Kim Jong-un era from the past through codifying, consolidating and supporting them with missile tests. She indicates that North Korean nuclear weapons are part of its quest for survival, prestige, and revenue-making (p. 56). She speculates that North Korea can generate revenue through its nuclear technology sales but evidence of such acts are lacking. At one place she writes that NK has twice secured direct talks with a sitting US President’ (p. 56) but in fact it has been thrice.

Haksoon Paik has well-articulated contexts of inter-Korea summits and tries to decipher the motives of North Korea for these overtures. He compares the benefits incurred by North and South Korea by these confidence-building processes and also assesses their impacts on inter-Korea relations, the US–North Korea relations and the US–South Korea relations. He concludes that the US approach of ‘denuclearization first, others later’ (p. 82) has been unacceptable to North Korea and it has led to derailment of the US–North Korea and inter-Korean engagements.

Yun Sun has not only analysed the process of the restoration of North Korea and China connections during the Kim Jong-un era but also described the historical course of summits between the two countries. In the context of the first summit between NK and China, Yun Sun’s claim that NK threatened China to extend an invitation to Kim Jong-un is very unique and the source of such a claim should have been provided.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo covers the US–North Korea relations and very aptly says that after 2017 ‘a new element to the complex relationship between Washington and Pyongyang’ has been added in the form of ‘high-level summitry’ (p. 107). He underlines that some structural and other more specific’ reasons have been there for these summits and he concludes that even though these high-level contacts are important, they can not be a ‘magic bullet’ to resolve the long hostility between the two countries.

Another important bilateral relation of North Korea with Russia has been analysed by Artyom Lukin. After describing the bilateral relations during the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il eras, the author characterises the Kim Jong-un era as an era of ‘quasi-friendship’. However there are various claims in the chapter which are not supported by evidence. For example, the author claims that ‘Kim did not go to Russia in 2015 because he had reserved his first foreign visit to China’ (p. 134), ‘Kremlin has little interest in North Korea’ (p. 139) and ‘it is almost certain that (Putin) never will’ go to North Korea (p. 141). Actually one of these claims has proved to be incorrect within just one year of the publication of the book.

Justin V. Hasting in his chapter dealt with the UN sanctions on North Korea which has impacted North Korea’s economy and diplomatic strategy. The author has also dealt with the role of China in implementing these sanctions as well North Korea’s other sanction avoiding efforts. Author presents the case that even though the sanctions are biting, North Korea tries to bypass them. The author says that these sanctions have impacted its foreign relations.

Mechael Raska tries to decipher North Korea’s evolving cyber strategies and operations and characterises them as Weapons of Mass Effectiveness. His chapter on North Korea cyber strategy is one of the best chapters in the book as it covers a wide ambit of North Korean cyber tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). The process started in the 1990s and has gone through four phases so far. The two figures in the chapter Figure 9.1 which depicts North Korea’s cyber organisational structure (p. 180) and Table 9.1 which presents North Korea’s Cyber Activity Clusters based on TTPs are very diligently prepared and quite useful.

Sandra Fahy in her chapter about human rights and North Korea’s conduct in the UN has well presented the case of the UN body’s attempt to put pressure on North Korea and North Korea’s mechanisms of avoidance. The author has analysed that even though North Korea has not been cooperating with the UN efforts, there have been a few responses by North Korea which could be seen by some as a silver lining. The chapter concludes that the UN efforts may not be ideal but it is needed and we need to remain optimistic about them.

The last chapter by Kyung-Ae Park is another revealing study of North Korea’s Track-II Knowledge Diplomacy. The author has described in detail, Canada-DPRK Knowledge Partnership Programme (KPP) and its activities. There have been visits of foreign scholars and professionals to North Korea and vice-versa after the establishment of the KPP in 2010. The Track 1.5 process has created human capital in North Korea, helped North Korea to make SEZs, develop tourism, cope up with food shortages, and achieve Sustainable Developmental Goals. The author says that because of the Covid-19 the process has been affected but she is optimistic about it in future. It is important to underline that she herself has been one of the key architects of the KPP and her first account is really valuable.

Overall the book is indeed an important addition to the literature available till date about North Korean foreign policy. It may be compared to Kwon and Zhang (2023) book which was published in the same year and incidentally by the same publisher. Although Kwon and Zhang’s book has chapters on North Korean relations with Japan, Iran and Global South in which at least two are important to indicate North Korea’s new foreign policy orientation, Snyder and Park in their book bring out more diverse issues in the North Korean foreign policy and present them in a thematic way. It would have been better if a coherent framework of omission and commission of themes had been provided at the beginning of the book. Anyway, it is a worthwhile book for the general reader as well as scholars of the field.