being in negotiations with a world power. These pivots toward diplomacy also tend to hamper or at least weaken sanctions implementation, tamp down international demands for human rights, and of course buy time for North Korea to advance its strategic capabilities. And when called out for its illegal and inhumane activities, Pyongyang has a convenient excuse—the sanctions themselves—to assail Washington and critics for dragging their feet, while reneging on its own obligations.
Kim also had a receptive party in Seoul, finally having in South Korea a progressive government after ten years of hard-line conservative presidents whose focus was pressure rather than inducements. When Moon Jae-in was elected in May 2017 in a special election following the impeachment and removal of conservative president Park Geun-hye, the new progressive president emphasized trust building and “coexistence and co-prosperity”; in one of his first major speeches, he called for inter-Korean economic cooperation even as he called for North Korea’s denuclearization. The former chief of staff to liberal president Roh Moo-hyun—who had continued the Sunshine Policy toward the North of his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung—Moon exhorted Pyongyang to join Seoul to make the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics an “Olympic of Peace,” claiming that “sports have the power of connecting one heart to another.” Moon, who was also spooked by the tension of the summer and fall of 2017, eagerly seized on Kim’s willingness to participate in the Olympics as a positive sign to move forward on engaging the North.
But having declared that he had completed the country’s nuclear weapons program, Kim might have already been planning a pivot toward focusing on his country’s economy, regardless of maximum pressure and Trump’s threats to destroy the regime. He said in his 2018 New Year’s address that 2017 saw the “accomplishment of the great, historic cause of perfecting the national nuclear forces…[and] proving before the eyes of the world its definite success….Our Republic has at last come to possess a powerful and reliable war deterrent, which no force and nothing can reverse.” At a rare party meeting of the Central Committee in April 2018, Kim said North Korea had “verified the completion of nuclear weapons,” announced that he would suspend nuclear and missile tests starting that month, and pledged North Korea would not proliferate or use nuclear weapons unless faced with a nuclear threat. He also declared that he would shutter the Punggye-ri test site where the regime conducted six nuclear tests: “We no longer need any nuclear test or test launches of intermediate and intercontinental range ballistic missiles.” In short, Kim’s aggressive push to demonstrate ICBM capabilities might have been driven by his plan to subsequently focus on the economy side of the dual-track byungjin policy he had announced in 2013, and that now that North Korea had fulfilled the nuclear weapons prong of it, the nation was turning to the economic development prong.
And he probably saw his pivot as an opportunity to advance his strategic goals of cementing North Korea’s nuclear status and weakening the U.S. presence in East Asia, including its alliance with South Korea, perceiving that he had a receptive partner in Moon, who favored inducements over pressure, and Trump, who publicly derided the U.S.–South Korean alliance. Still, Trump took credit for the rapprochement, championing Kim’s declarations and expressing admiration for the inter-Korean summit. On the day of Kim’s speech to the party in April, Trump tweeted, “North Korea has agreed to suspend all Nuclear Tests and close up a major test site. This is very good news for North Korea and the World—big progress! Look forward to our Summit.” He saw Kim’s action as the direct result of his successful pressuring. In response to skepticism about Kim’s intentions—observers noted that he did not indicate any intent to abandon his nuclear weapons and critics excoriated the president for handing Kim a key concession, a meeting with a sitting U.S. president—Trump tweeted, “Funny how all of the Pundits that couldn’t come close to making a deal on North Korea are now all over the place telling me how to make a deal!”
Whatever Kim’s exact motivations for shedding his isolation, he learned that the old playbook still worked, at least in the immediate aftermath of his pivot. As a result of Kim’s reported intentions about working toward a new era of peace, the South Korean government agreed to stop broadcasting propaganda via loudspeakers along the border, and President Moon apparently gave Kim a USB containing a document outlining a “new economic map” and ideas for future cooperation,