leadership and initiative, allies and partners, including China, to maintain vigilance against North Korean violations, and a unity of purpose and understanding that sanctions implementation is necessary if there is to be any chance of North Korea abandoning its nuclear weapons.
The importance of coordinated international action was highlighted by the March 2019 release of the annual report of the U.N. Panel of Experts, the group in charge of monitoring the implementation of U.N. Security Council sanctions on North Korea. The report documents the breadth of sanctions violations and evasion tactics used by North Korea and its third-party facilitators. Singaporean companies reportedly have knowingly shipped banned luxury items to North Korea. South Korean government officials transferred petroleum products to the North, despite a U.S. warning that Pyongyang had already exceeded the cap on such imports, and Seoul also failed to report these transfers, flouting U.N. regulations and requirements. North Korean representatives of the regime’s financial institutions continue to travel freely and do business in a number of different countries, including China, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia. The international community must also work harder to deter North Korean cyberattacks, which the U.N. report indicates are used to evade financial sanctions. The cooperation of Beijing in particular is required to shut down malicious cyber actors using Chinese networks or operating in China, a favored location due to its permissive environment. Together, these violations keep the Kim regime afloat and feed its defiance of international rules and norms.
Third, Washington should intensify efforts at sustained and institutionalized dialogue with regional stakeholders through five-party talks with South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia as a signal of international unity of purpose. The group can use this forum to discuss the range of economic and other benefits that the community is willing to grant if Pyongyang makes the strategic decision to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and assuage Pyongyang’s concerns about the sustainability of any deal beyond electoral events and leadership changes in the region and in the United States. The stakeholders should also develop scenarios and responses in anticipation of potential future North Korean actions designed to surprise, confuse, and diminish international cooperation.
Fourth, we must direct our efforts to erode the infrastructure of repression that the Kim family has built and Kim Jong Un has buttressed with modern tools and techniques. The United States and the global community should seek to increase stress on the North Korean regime, and the U.S. president should appoint a special envoy on human rights, a position that the Trump administration jettisoned. A lifting of sanctions without a discernible loosening of Kim’s cruel grip on his people would make it impossible to verify any potential denuclearization steps in the absence of an open information environment in North Korea, in which scientists, technicians, and military officials are free to provide accurate data without fear of reprisal from the government.
Finally, the United States should invest in programs that encourage information penetration into North Korea, as well as craft and disseminate a credible, alternative vision for a post-nuclear era that would help to increase regime fragility or Kim’s perception of regime fragility to encourage him and his leadership to be more responsive to internal pressures. The goal would be to tap into a mostly neglected group of stakeholders—the North Korean people. After ten years of study and countless hours interviewing hundreds of North Korean defectors, Jieun Baek, author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution, has stressed the necessity of increasing the flow of information into North Korea in order to create positive change: “Information dissemination is significant because North Koreans are demanding it….Access to more information gives North Korean people the agency, self-determination, and knowledge to write their own future and destiny as a nation.” The former director of national intelligence James Clapper, for whom I served as the deputy national intelligence officer for Korea at the National Intelligence Council, would have concurred with this assessment. In his memoir he lamented that we had “limited means to satisfy the [North Korean] citizens’ hunger for information” and concluded, “I believe, and have advocated, that to counter North Korea, the United States needs to consider capitalizing on our greatest strengths: openness and information.” Empowering the North Korean people toward creating an internal environment to shape Kim’s choices in a positive direction is a necessary component of the external pressures of sanctions and diplomacy.
There are no silver bullets, and any policy must be sustained over time before it shows any demonstrable effect. A policy