The Coming North Korean Crisis

Editor’s Note: On July 16, 2024, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment alleging that Sue Mi Terry had acted as an unregistered agent of the South Korean government. Foreign Affairs requires all contributors to disclose any affiliation or activity that could present a genuine or perceived conflict of interest or call into question the integrity of their work. We take these allegations very seriously.

U.S. President Joe Biden has plenty of foreign policy crises on his hands. But unfortunately for him, as the United States heads into November’s elections there’s a high chance of yet another emergency: renewed provocations from North Korea. Pyongyang has a history of acting out during U.S. elections. Research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for example, found that North Korea stages more than four times as many weapons tests in U.S. election years than in other years.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula is already growing fraught. On January 10, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared South Korea to be an enemy state, ending all talk of peaceful reunification and setting the stage for more hostilities. Any such outburst could outstrip whatever has come before. After decades of working with Washington to control Kim and restrain his nuclear program, Beijing and Moscow have decided to embrace North Korea’s leader, allowing him to act with newfound impunity.

The real nature of any forthcoming North Korean crisis is difficult to predict. At a minimum, Pyongyang will likely carry out nonlethal provocations—such as cyberattacks on government, defense, telecommunications, and financial institutions. It could also test the Hwasong-18, its solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), in hope of improving its reliability. And North Korea could explode a tactical nuclear weapon: a small nuclear weapon designed for the battlefield.

But North Korea could also go beyond saber-rattling and launch an actual, if limited, military attack against South Korea, akin to when it sank a South Korean naval vessel and shelled the island of Yeonpyeong in 2010. Such a strike could quickly spin out of control. Current South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is an avowed hawk and has promised to respond forcefully to any North Korean attack. He is unlikely to be restrained by the fact that his party lost seats in April’s National Assembly elections. Instead, Yoon might violate North Korean airspace with unmanned aerial vehicles or fire back, hitting one of North Korea’s many artillery positions along the border.

If Yoon does respond in kind to a North Korean provocation, the peninsula could quickly find itself ensnared in a conflict that nobody wants—especially not the United States. As a treaty ally, Washington is obligated to come to Seoul’s defense, and being drawn into a war with a nuclear-armed rogue state is a nightmare scenario for already overstretched American officials. But to stop this from happening, the Biden administration must step up efforts to deter North Korea. It must dry up the illicit finance pipeline that supplies the country’s military. It must also review and update contingency plans with Japan and South Korea. That way, Washington is prepared in the event that Pyongyang does decide to attack.

BIGGER AND BADDER

Over the last five years, the Kim regime has been rapidly expanding its nuclear weapons program. Since his meetings with Trump fell apart, Kim has refused all offers of serious negotiations with the United States and tested new weapons capable of carrying nuclear warheads, including powerful solid-fuel ICBMs and an underwater nuclear weapons system. Pyongyang is also developing hypersonic missiles designed to penetrate U.S. air defenses and a large multiple launch rocket system that, according to Kim, could “collapse” South Korea’s capital and destroy “the structure of its military forces.” Meanwhile, North Korea successfully launched a military reconnaissance satellite in November, and it has vowed to put several more satellites into orbit this year. These launches will give it something it has long desired: more real-time information about U.S. and South Korean military activities on the peninsula.

Back on earth, North Korea is expanding its uranium enrichment capabilities in order to make more nuclear weapons. Kim has vowed to “exponentially increase nuclear weapons production to realize all kinds of nuclear strike methods.” At a party plenum in December, he called for an increase in the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile, and North Korea’s uranium enrichment site is now bigger than ever. Recent satellite imagery indicates that the country is expanding a suspected nuclear facility near Pyongyang. Meanwhile, intelligence reports suggest it is ready to resume underground nuclear testing at its Punggye-ri site.

As North Korea has ramped up its weapons efforts, it has also escalated its rhetorical assault on its southern neighbor. Kim has recently abandoned Pyongyang’s decades-old goal of reunification, instead declaring South Korea to be its primary adversary. In the regime’s new worldview, the two countries no longer share any kinship, and North Korea is preparing for a “military showdown” with South Korea. To prove that it is serious, the regime-run Korean Central News Agency recently deleted hundreds of texts that spoke about the possibility of unification. The regime used to refer to its country as the “northern half” of the Korean Peninsula. That phrase, along with many others, has now been expunged.

The Biden administration must step up efforts to deter North Korea.

There is no indication that Kim is gearing up for all-out war. The regime is not mobilizing troops or equipment, there is no increase in activity at its military bases, and South Korean officials have not detected a significant buildup near the border. But Kim’s rhetoric does suggest a smaller attack could be forthcoming. And if he does resolve to strike, it will be hard to stop him. Both China and Russia are now much more closely aligned with Pyongyang than with Western governments, and so they are unlikely to force him to back off. In fact, in late March, China abstained from—and Russia vetoed—a motion to extend the UN Panel of Experts, an independent body that monitors North Korea’s compliance with nuclear sanctions. Zhao Leji, one of China’s top officials, recently met with Kim in Pyongyang to increase trust and cooperation. Kim met with Putin in September 2023, and ever since, Pyongyang has welcomed a steady flow of Russian delegations—including a March visit from Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. According to The Korea Herald, Naryshkin “deeply discussed practical issues for further boosting cooperation” with his North Korean counterpart.

The North Korean–Russian partnership is, ultimately, one of convenience. But practical partnerships can still be powerful, and the Moscow-Pyongyang entente is no exception. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to a convergence of political needs and material interests that has prompted North Korea to ship weapons to Russia en masse. North Korea, meanwhile, is receiving more economic and technological assistance from Russia. Moscow, for example, appears to have aided Pyongyang with its military satellite program. Russia could soon offer North Korea assistance with space launch vehicles—assistance that would help North Korea develop better ICBMs.

For Kim, the biggest prize would be the transfer of sensitive, cutting-edge Russian military technology and advanced weaponry. He particularly wants help building solid-fuel missiles and reentry vehicles, which would advance North Korea’s nuclear program. Russia could also assist North Korea with its nuclear submarine and its submarine-launched ballistic missiles—areas in which Russia has significant experience.

Pyongyang’s relations with Beijing may seem weak compared to North Korea’s burgeoning connection to Russia. But China remains North Korea’s most valuable ally, and the two states are increasingly united by their enmity toward Washington. China is also now cooperating more with Russia, suggesting that Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang are creating a dangerous, if informal, tripartite pact. As Bruce Bennett, a defense researcher at RAND, has warned, these three countries could “convert Ukraine into a Russia-China-North Korea laboratory for examining and improving various weapons and tactics in actual warfare.” The likely result will be improved military capabilities for each. The cooperation could also increase North Korea’s willingness to take risks, raising the prospect of fresh attacks on its southern neighbor.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

So far, Biden and his aides have largely ignored the Korean Peninsula—and understandably so. With wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza and tensions rising with China and Iran, the administration has had little bandwidth to focus on Kim’s antics. But North Korea is one of only three countries, along with China and Russia, that could plausibly launch a nuclear strike against the continental United States, and it menaces two major U.S. allies, Japan and South Korea, as well. And so the administration has little choice but to focus on the peninsula.

Admittedly, Washington has few good options, particularly given that Kim is less isolated than he was even three years before. His newfound strength has prompted some Korea watchers to argue that it is time for Washington to drop its unrealistic pursuit of denuclearization and focus on risk reduction via negotiations. They urge the Biden administration to lure Pyongyang back to the negotiating table by offering to relax sanctions in return for confidence-building negotiations, such as a freeze or even a slowdown in nuclear enrichment. Such an approach could be modeled on the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which banned most types of nuclear tests and slightly thawed tensions at the height of the Cold War.

There are few downsides to exploring negotiations with Pyongyang. But the reality is that North Korea has not shown much interest in talking since Trump’s 2019 summit ended early without any agreement. The North Korean leader has even less incentive to make compromises now than he did then, thanks to the assistance the regime gets from China and Russia. And even if Kim were interested in making some kind of deal with the United States, it would make sense for him to first advance North Korea’s nuclear program as far as possible to increase his bargaining leverage. Kim might also imagine that, by making trouble for Biden, he could facilitate the return of President Donald Trump, who was eager to meet with him and even claimed that the two leaders had fallen in love. Kim was disappointed by the 2019 summit with Trump in Hanoi, but he must be even more disappointed by the Biden administration, which has largely ignored his regime. For an attention-hungry tyrant, indifference is the cruelest blow of all.

Now is not the time to lift sanctions. Now is the time to double down.

This reality means that Biden has little choice but to keep strengthening U.S. deterrence against North Korea. To that end, he should double down on his efforts to protect South Korea and enhance defense cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo. He could, for example, provide more real-time data and intelligence to South Korea and collaborate on the development of missile defense systems, surveillance equipment, drones, and weapons enabled with artificial intelligence—leveraging the technological strengths of both countries. Given the increased risk of a conventional confrontation, Seoul and Washington also need to boost conventional deterrence capabilities, including by adding more air-to-surface missiles that can attack enemy radars, such as the S-400 air defense system Russia may provide to North Korea.

There are also steps that the United States can take to keep up economic pressure on North Korea, despite Beijing and Moscow’s entente. According to Joshua Stanton, the principal architect of a 2016 bill that strengthened sanctions against North Korea, the Biden administration can build a coalition of the willing to limit Pyongyang’s access to illicit finance. The Kim regime, for example, earns revenue by sending laborers abroad to work at restaurants, construction sites, and sweatshops in countries around the world. These workers smuggle cash back to North Korea in bulk, and they engage in money laundering and cybercrimes. Washington and its allies can trace and expose the supply chains behind products made with North Korean forced labor and ban them from being sold in their borders.

There are critics of stringent approaches. For example, the historian John Delury has argued that stricter sanctions enforcement will only foreclose opportunities for diplomacy and further raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Tougher sanctions, Delury argues, are “not only futile” but also “counterproductive and dangerous.” But this analysis is incorrect. As Stanton points out, history has shown that Pyongyang is in fact more willing to negotiate when restrictions are effective and more inclined to self-isolate, proliferate, and provoke when they are not. North Korea, he observed, returned to negotiations between 2005 and 2007, and again between 2018 and 2019, following periods of relatively strong sanctions enforcement. Pyongyang’s nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, and 2016, by contrast, coincided with periods when Washington was relatively lax. Tellingly, Kim’s principal demand during past negotiations with the United States was sanctions relief. “It was all about the sanctions,” Trump told reporters in 2019. “They wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that.”

Now is not the time to lift sanctions, either. Now, in fact, is the time to double down. If Biden wants to prevent North Korea from acting out, he needs to first provide the government with new incentives to talk—and that means new restrictions Washington can use as carrots. Biden, in other words, needs to take North Korean policy off autopilot and launch a proactive effort to deter Pyongyang. Otherwise, he risks encouraging an already emboldened Kim to stage a major provocation.