Pyongyang blustering not for war but out of economic frustration

Choo Jae-woo

North Korean leader leader Kim Jong-un has been barking so loudly that he has successfully awakened his neighbors, creating a sense of urgency. Three Americans came out and yelled that there would be a possible invasion impending from Pyongyang.

Two of them, Robert Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, argued that there is a growing danger of war on the Korean Peninsula, not because of the incremental rise in the decibel levels of bluster coming from the top dog in Pyongyang but for the change in his perception concerning world affairs and, therefore, his strategies in dealing with the U.S. and South Korea. They drew an inference from what had happened with Kim's grandfather Kim Il-sung in 1950 prior to the advent of the Korean War.

The third, Robert Gallucci, came out with a theory that may heighten the prospects of North Korea risking The Law on the DPRK’s Nuclear Forces, whereby it justifies first-strike use of nuclear weapons in the event of conventional warfare.

The two schools of thought share two common denominators in their thinking. One is the dead end that North Korea feels that it has run into by improving ties with the U.S. All three were right on the money when theyed claim Pyongyang’s ultimate outstanding goal for the last three generations of leadership has been to normalize the relationship with the U.S. For this end, Pyongyang’s nuclear aspirations, actual weapons development and the testing of the weapons were fully utilized as one of the means to draw Washington to the negotiating table. Pyongyang’s offer of denuclearization that Washington has insisted as a prerequisite for the success of normalization talks was fully utilized as bait that successfully decoyed it only to find its efforts and time were wasted.

The other is the revival of the so-called “northern trilateral camp” in the northern region of the Korean Peninsula. Long perceived as an alliance camp that vanished with the end of the Korean War, Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow are gearing up to bring back solidarity once again. Their southern counterpart, the Seoul-Washington-Tokyo grouping, saw ties consolidated at the Camp David Summit in August 2022, giving rise, as many have speculated, to the active engagement of the northern three at a level unprecedented since the 1950s. The Sino-Soviet conflict after the Korean War and North Korea’s so-called “tightrope diplomacy” between the two communist powers has seemingly lasted right up to the present day.

Pyongyang has never recovered its trust in Moscow after not getting the military support that it was once promised. Although the Soviet Union still remained the North’s largest aid provider for the rest of the Cold War period, it failed to continue playing that role after its demise in 1991. With China giving higher priority to its relations with the U.S., the North’s confidence in China has dissipated over the years. Beijing has somewhat been a player in the U.N. sanctions and even adopted its own measures against Pyongyang in 2013. China’s aid has been severed over the years, negatively affecting the sustainability of not only the North’s economy but also in and around peninsula operation activities.

North Korea’s economy has been in a dismal state since Kim Jong-un took over in 2012. In the span of 10 years, the country has recorded a positive economic growth rate only five times — in 2012 (1.3 percent), 2013 (1.1 percent), 2014 (1.0 percent), 2016 (3.9 percent) and 2019 (0.4 percent). The rest was all negative: minus 1.1 percent in 2015, minus 3.5 percent in 2017, minus 4.1 percent in 2018, minus 4.5 percent in 2020, minus 4.5 percent in 2020, minus 0.1 percent in 2021 and minus 0.2 percent in 2022.

The accumulative effects of the periods of decline overwhelm the positive growth rate as a whole. What made it worse was Kim’s execution in 2013 of his uncle Jang Song-thaek, who was the chief of the country’s foreign currency earning operations overseas. Coupled with U.N. sanctions in 2017, which prohibited North Korea from sending laborers overseas, Kim was left with no option but to resort to stealing cryptocurrencies in the virtual world. The alleged earnings may have been a lot, but he was then faced with limited ability to convert them into hard currency.

Pyongyang’s announcement on Jan. 16 that it would shut down three organizations handling inter-Korean reconciliation is another indicator of its lack of funds to operate properly. They include the Committee for the Peaceful Unification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau, and the Mount Kumgang International Tourism Administration. Kim justified the decision based on his judgment that South Korea as a partner country for unification and reconciliation was no longer worth the effort. He reaffirmed his longstanding definition of the South as the principal enemy since 2020. In realistic terms, he is basically admitting that his country lacks the revenue to support covert operations in the South, which these three organizations carried out for many years.

These organizations are not the revenue-generating machines that they were once before. Therefore, they can no longer afford to financially support those covert operations that are allegedly conducted by their moles in South Korean society. As a result of their arrest on charges of espionage and violating the National Security Law, these moles have over the years received a substantial amount of financial support from these organizations on a consistent basis. This allowed them to politically operate against the conservative party from gaining power, and remaining socially active in protests and deeply involved in labor union movements. They have one motive, and that is to subvert the country and annex it for the North.

Kim’s relinquishing the anti-South operation apparatus for financial reasons means not only that he sees no value in improving inter-Korean relations but also even intelligence operations in the South must thereafter run on a tight budget. It also indicates the financial support to dormant North Korean moles in South Korean society will significantly be withered, if not come to an immediate end.

Kim’s bluster is therefore due to his country’s damaged financial situation caused by all of the accumulated sanctions. The history of the Korean War also tells Kim that Russia’s approval of invasion on the South will be vital to militarily supplement it in case the war is prolonged. However, Moscow’s desire to evade it was also proven real, for it fears a direct battle against the U.S.

Choo Jae-woo (jwc@khu.ac.kr) is a professor of international relations at Kyung Hee University and director of the China Center at the Korea Research Institute for National Security. He was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.