A Year in Brinkmanship on the Korean Peninsula

2022 was a record-breaking year on the Korean Peninsula, though not the sort one would hope for. As of Dec. 19, North Korea launched a dizzying spate of ballistic missile tests—65 in total, eight of which were intercontinental ballistic missiles. The tests prompted sharp criticism from Washington and its allies as well as tit-for-tat responses from South Korea.

By most accounts, the next item on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s agenda seems to be a nuclear test—the nation’s first since 2017. With few tools left in its diplomatic toolbox, the Biden administration has responded with what amounts to a shrug—a recognition that there is little it can do to stop North Korea. As one South Korean official told FP’s Robbie Gramer, a North Korean nuclear test is more a matter of “when,” not “if.”

The Biden administration’s North Korea policy has taken a back seat to other world crises, but it has repeatedly said it’s open to talks with North Korea anytime, anywhere, and without preconditions. These offers have been echoed by South Korea’s Yoon administration. Yet both continue to insist on denuclearization as their ultimate policy goal.

After years of trying, the sticks have become dulled, and there are no more carrots in sight—leaving North Korea’s reclusive dictator little incentive to approach the negotiating table or abandon the military programs that he has deemed essential to his regime’s survival. Unless there is a major shift in strategy, Pyongyang will likely continue giving the silent treatment in the year ahead.

2022 proved to be a game-changing year for South Korea as well. In March, voters elected Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative leader, to succeed Moon Jae-in. Where Moon hoped to mend fences with the North, Yoon has taken a tougher line and prioritized strengthening the alliance with the United States and mending fences with its neighbors. Yet ongoing anxieties about the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence, coupled with a desire for increased strategic autonomy, has stirred significant public support for South Korea to build its own nuclear arsenal to deter Pyongyang.

Symbolically, 2023 will be a historic year for the Korean Peninsula, marking both the 75th anniversary of North Korea’s founding and 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War. The open question is whether the coming year will write diplomatic history too—or, more ominously, a new chapter of military history.

1. North Korea’s Tactical Nuclear Plans Are a Dangerous Proposition

by Ankit Panda, April 28

2022 made it clear that North Korea is maturing as a nuclear state—and so is its defense industry. Long gone are the days when Kim’s military modernization goals could be easily dismissed as mere propaganda. Nowadays, his weapons arsenal is perhaps best understood through the metaphor of Chekhov’s gun: If he promises a capability in the first act, then he will likely deliver by the third.

In an argument from April, Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, analyzes the next big item on Kim’s wish list: tactical nuclear weapons, which, if developed and fielded, would lower the already-low threshold for the use of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

Further, Panda argues that these weapons would incentivize the adoption of more dangerous nuclear command-and-control practices, which could create new pathways to unintentional or inadvertent nuclear use. Sure enough, by September, North Korea had rewritten its nuclear doctrine to do just that.

2. The U.S. Should Get Out of the Way in East Asia’s Nuclear Debates

by Robert E. Kelly, July 15

As hesitant as the United States is to recognize one nuclear state on the Korean Peninsula, it may have to prepare itself to recognize two.

In 2022, South Korea’s long-simmering nuclear debate came to a boil. Facing an increasingly hostile and well-equipped neighbor to the north and unconvinced that the United States will really come to South Korea’s defense in times of crisis, many have called for Seoul to build its own nuclear weapons.

Robert E. Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University, made waves in July with his original take on the debate. He defends nuclear proliferation in South Korea not for its own sake or because the United States has proved untrustworthy. Rather, he makes a case against hegemony: As a liberal alliance leader, the United States should not tell its partners what to do nor what they may even debate. If allied democracies want nuclear weapons—if their foreign-policy elites and voters decide to take this step—then the United States should accept that this is their choice.

3. The U.S. Will Trade Seattle for Seoul

by Zachary Keck, Oct. 17

Foreign Policy illustration/Getty Images and archival document

In a year rife with tension and conflict, many analysts have tried to make sense of today’s politics by delving into the past. (We at FP certainly did, with our Summer 2022 Back to the Future issue.)

Not all historical analogies are winners. But particularly for the field of nuclear nonproliferation—one with very few case studies as precedent—historical analogies are an important tool for understanding how policymakers weigh their interests against the background of a potential nuclear war.

Defense analyst Zachary Keck, in part as a response to Kelly’s argument above, offers new insight into the U.S. government’s thinking. Keck shares a previously unpublished archival memo from former U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s conversation with former French President Charles de Gaulle that shines a new light on the infamous quote about America’s willingness to trade New York for Paris.

The history described in Keck’s article sheds new light on the problem of extended deterrence in the Korean Peninsula and suggests that maybe more nukes aren’t needed to solve it, after all.

4. How North Korean Paranoia Entrapped an 85-Year-Old American

by Mike Chinoy, May 1 

There’s no shortage of ideas for how relations with North Korea might be improved. Yet, as with all diplomacy, even the most incremental progress cannot be made in the absence of trust among all parties.

In this piece, Mike Chinoy, a nonresident senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute, tells the complicated story of Merrill Newman, a well-meaning U.S. military veteran whose visit to North Korea got him detained—a plight that soon involved the U.S. State Department, international news media, and (by all accounts) Kim himself.

Although not strictly geopolitical in nature, this story shines a light on North Korea’s acute historical memory and still-present paranoia, which drives much of its quest for security today.

The incident also speaks to the larger, more difficult diplomatic work ahead that must be done in pursuit of peace on the Korean Peninsula. The fundamental task ahead of any negotiators—nuclear or otherwise—is to facilitate some belief among parties that others will honor their promises and the rules they have agreed to.

To that end, any prospects for diplomacy in 2023 and beyond require a reckoning with issues much deeper and more complicated than missiles.

5. Ending North Korea’s Isolation Is the Only Solution Left 

by Howard W. French, June 15

As military balance on the peninsula has evolved, the diplomatic tools and approaches used to address the risks have not. In 2022, many experts particularly lamented the United States’ unwillingness to acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear state and its continued insistence on Pyongyang’s denuclearization without meaningfully offering any concessions that might coax Kim to the negotiating table.

In this piece, FP’s Howard W. French reflects on his decades of experience as a journalist, offering an historic overview of the mostly futile approaches that have been tried thus far to extinguish the North Korean nuclear threat.

He comes to the somewhat disheartening conclusion that however desirable or even urgent seeming the crisis is, no one—least of all Washington—has the ability to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Washington and Seoul may not be ready to hear it, but it’s time for a different approach. The piece is a call to policymakers for humility and, ultimately, courage.