Abstract
The denuclearization of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been a common interest for Northeast Asian security. Each government in the region agrees on a general perspective of denuclearizing North Korea, but it is difficult to tune each individual government’s particular strategies and tactics to approach the objective due to the lack of a mature multilateral security regime in the region. The North Korea Crisis and Regional Responses examines these various viewpoints towards North Korea, questioning whether an effective regional response to the DPRK crisis is possible. In order to answer this question, the book is divided into 11 chapters each looking as specific element of the North Korean situation. However, these chapters can be effectively grouped into discussions of the following subjects: North Korea’s foreign policy, nuclear issues, the humanitarian implications, economic engagement, the North Korea policies of the relevant regional actors, Taiwan and North Korea’s similar roles in the power plays between Beijing and Washington and common interest.
In Chapter 1, Jina Kim highlights Pyongyang’s objectives and sources of its foreign policy. She argues that North Korea seeks status as a revisionist state by pursuing these three goals: (a) overcoming its inferiority to South Korea in conventional forces by developing asymmetric capability, (b) disrupting the relations between Seoul and Washington by weakening domestic support in South Korea for the US military presence and (c) spreading the revolutionary ideas and causing South-South conflict within the South Korean society (p. 6). According to Kim, North Korea’s foreign policy is essentially formed as a response to external threats in order to maintain its own social structure of Juche-oriented socialism.
Shinichi Ogawa (Chapter 2) and Denny Roy (Chapter 4) address the North Korean nuclear crisis. Ogawa discusses specifically North Korea’s nuclear development, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the potential strategic impact of North Korea’s nuclear weapon on regional security. Throughout Chapter 2 it is noted that both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) failed to compel North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and return to the NPT. Ogawa argues that the IAEA and the UNSC’s lacklustre responses vis-à-vis North Korea were due to China’s half-hearted support for the punishment of North Korea. He posits that China must convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons as the role of North Korea as a buffer state for China is diminishing. Otherwise, Pyongyang’s nuclear activities would drive South Korea or Japan to reconsider their non-nuclear status. Roy analyzes security impacts on South Korea, Japan, China and the US of North Korean nuclear weapon crisis. Their individual policies towards North Korea were not effective in preventing nuclear proliferation and in persuading North Korea to dismantle its programme. They share similar view that the North Korea nuclear programme is a strategic problem, but they are dissimilar in approaching solutions.
Utpal Vyas (Chapter 3) assesses the humanitarian issues in North Korea and regional responses to it. He argues that neighbouring countries have little public enthusiasm for humanitarian aid to North Korea due to the nuclear crisis. He claims that humanitarian assistance to North Korea should be considered strategically as a means of stopping and eliminating nuclear programmes. He argues that without considering regime transformation or collapse, expanding trade and investment would improve the humanitarian situation in North Korea.
Yoshinori Kaseda (Chapter 5) discusses the extent of economic engagement of South Korea, Japan, China, the United States and Russia with North Korea. He urges China, Russia and South Korea to engage in North Korea’s economic development actively. According to his opinion, the expansion of engagement might make North Korea more willing to refrain from the military provocation. Besides the strategic purposes, many of North Korea’s attractive factors such as geographic location, natural resources and cheap labourers can be beneficial to these three countries. A similar positon is adopted by Jihwan Hwang (Chapter 6) who claims that South Korea should promote the economic reform in the DPRK and the policy of increasing Pyongyang’s dependency on Seoul.
Jiyong Zheng (Chapter 7) explains China’s policy towards North Korea that opposes the nuclear development due to environmental and security concerns. It is argued here that China opposes the DPRK’s development of a nuclear capacity because of its concern of a possible nuclear domino effect in Northeast Asia, but also the moral challenge that North Korea poses to China as a UNSC member. For China’s own good, he claims that the Korean Peninsula should not fall into a security dilemma. To sustain its economic development and improvement in people’s livelihood, China should supply public good in Northeast Asia such as norms for regional peace and stability.
Yoichiro Sato’s analysis on Japan’s North Korean policy (Chapter 8) has three factors: the US alliance, South Korea relations and Japanese domestic politics. He says that Japan’s policy towards North Korea is foremost conducted within the framework of the US–Japan alliance, used as a bargaining chip with South Korea as a reminder against its excessive anti-Japanese rhetoric, and shaped by domestic political issues relating to the abduction issue and the compensation issues on normalization with North Korea.
Nicolas Hamisevicz (Chapter 9) notes short-term security problems for the United States relating to the North Korea nuclear weapons. Washington’s interest involves protecting its assets in Northeast Asia such as the US military presence in South Korea and Japan, many American businesses and non-proliferation. As such it is revealed that continuous debates on engagement and deterrence are dominant in the United States’ dealings with North Korea.
Ching-Chang Chen (Chapter 10) addresses the power dynamics between Washington and Beijing relating to Pyongyang and Taipei. Taiwan and North Korea seem unrelated, but both of them remain as the diplomatic leverage of the United States and China. Washington’s ‘Taiwan Card’ which is US arms sales to Taipei can be exchanged with Beijing’s greater pressure on Pyongyang; Beijing’s ‘North Korea card’, which is backing up the Kim regime, can be against punishment of Washington for supporting Taiwan.
The concluding chapter is written collaboratively by the three editors and highlights seven key approaches in dealing with the North Korea crisis discussed throughout the book. These approaches are about North Korea’s status as a nuclear state, regime change, initiating China not to support North Korea, increasing confidence in inter-Korea relations. However, they admit the limitations of each view.
There are some contentious points that have not been clearly discussed and potentially limit the strength of this book. First, regarding the humanitarian situation in North Korea, Vyas (Chapter 3) suggests that increasing the volume of trade and investment may lead improvement of humanitarian situation in the North. However, his argument is speculative. The extreme poverty is one of the major factors of poor human rights in the North. However, top political executives and the Korean People’s Army maintain their luxurious lifestyle and the rest of the population is forced out to die of hunger. The nature of the Kim regime should be the foremost factor of the current humanitarian situation in North Korea. In other words, the poor human rights in North Korea are based on the nature of regime itself more than the bad economic situation.
Second, Kaseda (Chapter 5) contends that expansion of engagement might make North Korea more willing to refrain from making military provocations. However, how much Pyongyang can actually guarantee returns of profits to foreign investors in order to attract external investments is questionable as the regime in Pyongyang is notorious for lacking transparency.
This said, these shortcomings do not weaken the importance of book’s overall arguments and indeed such limitations provide for students of International Relations potential future avenues of research. All in all The North Korea Crisis and Regional Responses lucidly and helpfully outlines the various security issues in the Northeast Asia relating to DPRK and identifies limitations of each approach of dealing with North Korea.