A perpetual headline-maker, North Korea has recently attempted to escalate their role in world politics and spurred new and dangerous tensions on the Korean peninsula. These escalations range from the potential deployment of troops in Ukraine to sending feces-filled balloons into their southern neighbor’s territory. Through all these efforts, North Korea has managed to stay in the public consciousness and remain extremely unpredictable despite constant attempts by governments around the world to contain the nation’s behavior. After all, no government enjoys the presence of an erratic, nuclear-armed dictatorship.
The US-North Korean relationship has been fraught since the Korean War in the early 1950s. However, the 1990s saw an intense and, at the time, seemingly successful effort to convince the nation to end their nuclear weapons program. After over a year of negotiations, a 1994 deal was written where the United States would provide equipment for the production of nuclear energy in North Korea, while reducing sanctions and increasing diplomatic recognition for the isolated nation, often called the “Hermit Kingdom.” Diplomats at the time expressed a degree of uncertainty regarding whether the deal would actually hold, or whether it was a good idea in the first place.
After a 1998 North Korean missile test, the Clinton Administration began to reconsider its rather amenable position in negotiating with Pyongyang. Two years later, the new Bush administration quickly changed policy after it was found that North Korea had been secretly developing nuclear weapons, resulting in the abandonment of the 1994 deal the following year. The Bush administration again seemed to succeed in convincing the North to denuclearize in 2005, an agreement that the North seemed to forget about when they conducted their first nuclear test the following year.
This historical context is vital for two main reasons. First, North Korean foreign policy has never been transparent or entirely predictable, and intentionally. Deals will be made and then broken just years later, only to quickly return to the negotiating table. Second, constantly changing U.S. administrations frequently changes the foreign policy approach of the nation, including regarding North Korea. These trends have both been apparent in the last decade of rapidly shifting dialogue.
The Obama administration did not prioritize the peninsula, given the myriad of other pressing global wars and issues at the time, especially in the Middle East. However, the period saw a shift in thinking on how to approach the rogue nation. Especially after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test in 2016, public statements by both US political parties emphasized the perceived role of China in reigning in their much smaller neighbor.
However, the subsequent Trump Administration brought in a highly variable policy, ranging from threats of nuclear war in 2017 to a controversial series of meetings between President Trump and Kim Jong-Un in 2019, even seeing the sitting U.S. President enter North Korea for the first time in history. Ultimately, these summits had no tangible effect, although the period saw a detente and reduction of provocative weapons tests by North Korea.
The Biden Administration has been challenged by a highly active and aggressive Kim regime, with relations plummeting since 2022. First, intercontinental ballistic missile testing was resumed in early 2022, followed by the forbidding of any future negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear status by Kim that September.
2024 has seen further drastic shifts. In January, North Korea shelled near the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, in an area of water considered disputed by the two countries. This island was previously shelled by North Korea in 2010, destroying part of the town in a major escalation at the time. Fortunately, this incident did not escalate to the level of 2010, but it still raised substantial fears at the time of a potential repeat of the deadly year which had also seen a South Korean warship sunk. Throughout the early summer, North Korea also began sending waves of trash-filled balloons which have contained fertilizer, cigarette butts, toilet paper, and even parasite-filled soil potentially from fecal matter. South Korea responded to this odd type of escalation with propaganda broadcasts across the border into North Korea which had been halted years earlier.
In a more deadly form of international involvement, North Korea has taken an increasingly active role in the war in Ukraine. North Korea has supplied Russia with vital artillery shells, by now accounting for upwards of half of Russia’s ammunition on the battlefield and playing a “crucial” role in supporting Russia’s war effort. President Putin also visited North Korea in June, meeting Kim Jong-Un and signing an agreement promising mutual military aid. Russia’s poor performance in Ukraine has allowed North Korea to strengthen its position in their relationship with Russia in return for technology, trade, diplomatic recognition, and other valuable concessions in return for the heavily armed nation’s most plentiful resource: military equipment. However, headlines have turned to a more serious and pressing matter—the potential arrival of North Korean soldiers on the battlefield alongside the Russian military. Claims have circulated that North Koreans have already died fighting in Ukraine in recent days, and videos have shown North Korean soldiers in Russia receiving equipment and training for the first time.
Once again, North Korea has entered a period of escalation with the United States, eschewing negotiations and employing military power both at home and abroad in a variety of ways. The future situation on the Korean peninsula is in more doubt than most times in recent history, and fears have increased over the potential for even more significant escalations. Yet, only time will tell North Korea’s future plans.
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