North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear and missile capability and its declared readiness to use them against South Korea, the US and Japan is escalating tension in East Asia. In the US, the Trump administration is responding by deploying strategic assets such as B-1B bombers and teh USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier to waters around Korea; in Japan, alarm over Pyongyang’s repeated missile launches has helped return the conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to power in the recent parliamentary election, allowing him to seek his chief political agenda of revising Japan’s peacetime constitution to permit the island nation’s rearmament.

The UN Security Council has responded to reckless brinkmanship of the Kim Jong-un regime by adopting Resolution No. 2375, tightening a variety of sanctions already in force. Under the latest sanctions, North Korea is prevented from earning foreign exchange through textile exports or manpower earnings. Any country that trades or deals with the North economically will be slapped with a secondary boycott, meaning forfeiture of the privilege of trading with the US. It represents the toughest sanctions yet imposed by the five permanent powers including China and Russia. It was the ninth such resolution imposed so far on the North by the UN.

Pyongyang’s demand to be recognized as the ninth nuclear state alongside the eight countries who already have their nuclear arsenals recognized is running into stiff resistance from the international community for obvious reasons. While India, Pakistan and Israel maintain nuclear options mainly as insurance against outside attacks, North Korea employs it for offensive purposes.

In view of its repeated underground nuclear tests, so far counting six such tests, coupled with a volley of ballistic missiles to develop an nuclear weapon that can be used internationally, the Pyongyang regime is making its objective clear for the world to see.

In defiance of objections from its neighbors China and Russia, North Korea continues firing missiles above the skies of Japan, in a clear message of menace to the west coast of the US. Kim Jong-un has explicitly threatened to attack the US and Japan with his nuclear missiles.

He argues that he would never give up his nuclear arsenal, citing the cases of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, who he claimed was toppled and met a tragic end after giving up his nuclear option. It is a highly self-serving argument, given that Gadhafi’s nuclear program had never reached the stage of actual testing, nor did Libya ever claim it was intended for attacking the US.

All five recognized nuclear powers take an exception to the North Korean nuclear option because of the regime’s uniquely roguish nature. Kim has pursued nuclear weapons in contravention of the six-party anti-nuclear agreement that Pyongyang signed in 2005 in exchange for food and fuel. While it has broken that agreement after taking compensatory aid, the North is the only country that brandishes its nuclear arsenal as an employable weapon against the world’s hegemonic powers. It defends its nuclear choice as a way of countering the “hostile” policy of the US and South Korea. This logic, however, is untenable because the US removed all of its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1992 following the North’s agreement to forsake nuclear weapons.

Not only has Pyongyang violated this agreement by going nuclear, it seeks to use the weapons of mass destruction as a bargaining chip to remove the 28,000 US ground troops that are based in the South to deter another invasion from the North. Devoting massive resources to foment an indirect form of aggression, North Korean troops have resorted to periodic provocations, internal sabotage and terror, and ceaseless infiltrations of espionage agents to destabilize the South.

Constant military provocations make it clear that North Korea’s nuclear programs are aimed at changing the peninsula’s balance of power. For years, North Korean officials have claimed that their nuclear capability is aimed at “countering US hostile policy.” But in a recent interview with CNN in Pyongyang, a senior Foreign Ministry official implied that his government was looking for recognition of North Korea as a strategic power in the region. In short, its atomic weapons are not so much meant to deter the US and South Korean military power as to act as an instrument of policy to change the current geopolitical picture.

It’s not difficult to fathom Pyongyang’s ambitions. On the back of its nuclear blackmail, Kim Jong-un is pressing for a peace treaty to replace the current armistice agreement with the US. In the past, it claimed South Korea, with a population twice the North’s size, should be excluded from negotiations leading to this peace treaty as Seoul had refused to sign the 1953 armistice agreement. Also this peace treaty would presumably require the withdrawal of foreign troops, meaning US forces. Such an arrangement will pave the way for the nuclear armed North Korea to take over the South in a manner that North Vietnam took over South Vietnam in 1975 with a blitzkrieg invasion. In sum, North Korea’s nuclear capability represents a short-cut to reunification under Pyongyang’s control.

The five established nuclear powers including China and Russia must squarely face the implications of North Korea’s nuclear acquisition, and what its ultimate objectives are. Failure to reverse its nuclear and missile programs will inevitably trigger a nuclear domino effect in the region, as South Korea and Japan come under pressure to defend themselves. Japanese Prime Minister Abe is campaigning for revision of the Japanese constitution’s anti-war provision. In South Korea, recent opinion polls showed over 60 percent of the public espousing an independent nuclear arsenal to counterbalance the North. Such a consequence could clearly lead to nuclear development for Taiwan, a situation that will eventually erode China’s preeminent status as the biggest military power in Asia.

Given the US role of imposing the global denuclearization regime, there’s scant possibility of Washington reinstating tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea or allowing it an independent nuclear acquisition. Nor would the Trump administration accept North Korea’s nuclear status. US Defense Secretary James Mattis, in Seoul recently for the bilateral annual security consultation, reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to a “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea, categorically rejecting any chance of the US compromising on this point. In the event of a full-scale war, he noted the North stood vastly overmatched by the combined strength of the US and South Korean armed forces as far as conventional strength was concerned. In short, the North will risk a nuclear war only at the risk of its own annihilation.

The outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula would mean catastrophic consequences for the entire peninsula, with millions of casualties in life and property. The most desirable course for the North and South is a peaceful resolution of the North’s denuclearization. This is the logic behind opinions in the South that the top leadership in Pyongyang should be decapitated before Kim and his party supporters bring about the total destruction of their country while at the same time incur a South Korean devastation. This is why we should all strive for denuclearization of the North even if that involves the risk that come with trying to remove the North Korean leadership through means outside the scale of war.


By Lee Young-il

The writer is a former three-term legislator of the National Assembly who served as the chairman of Korea-China Politico-Diplomatic Forum. The views reflected in the article are his own. -- Ed.