North Korean leader Kim Jong Un couldn’t have been any more emphatic during his address to the Supreme People’s Assembly on Thursday.
Kim’s regime will “never give up nuclear weapons, and there is absolutely no denuclearization, no negotiation, and no bargaining chip to trade in the process.” In Kim’s mind, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is what’s keeping much stronger adversaries like the United States from contemplating a regime change operation against him. It doesn’t matter that U.S. officials have repeatedly stated they aren’t interested in pursuing such action.
Yet, if the Biden administration was still under the illusion that Kim could be pressured or coaxed into denuclearizing (North Korea’s full, complete, and unverified denuclearization is still official U.S. policy despite the decades of failure), then it should no longer amuse itself with that delusion. The time for a nuclear-free North Korea was in the 1990s, when the reclusive, isolated nation was still in the early stages of constructing a nuclear infrastructure complete with plutonium reactors, enrichment facilities, and cooling towers. The Clinton administration tried to nip the problem in the bud in 1994, when Washington and Pyongyang signed the Agreed Framework, a brief accord that essentially traded U.S. fuel oil, economic assistance, and steps toward political normalization for a dismantling of North Korea’s graphite reactors. For a variety of reasons, that deal collapsed due to both sides’ lack of implementation.
But those days are long gone. There isn’t much evidence the North Koreans are even considering diplomacy with the U.S. The Biden administration’s contention that it’s willing to meet “anytime, anywhere” has been slapped aside. Instead, Kim’s going all steam ahead with his nuclear and missile programs, trying to get it into the Americans’ thick heads that he values a nuclear deterrent far more than any economic or political goodies Washington can offer. According to a new assessment from nuclear experts Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda, North Korea may have enough nuclear material for 44 to 55 nuclear warheads, in addition to the 20 to 30 warheads the country has already paired with its medium-range ballistic missiles.
This, along with Kim’s blunt talk, should be more than enough evidence for U.S. officials to drop the denuclearization pipe dream.
But in case it isn’t, Kim also shepherded a new law through his rubber stamp parliament that codifies the role of nuclear weapons in North Korea’s defense strategy. The law not only elevates the importance of nuclear arms, calling it a “main force of the state defense,” but outlines conditions in which the North would actually use them, such as responding to an attack against the North Korean leadership or staving off a crisis deemed existential by the state. The law also allows the automatic use of nuclear arms against an adversary if Kim himself is killed or incapacitated during an attack.
Kim is sending a clear message to the U.S.: You can sanction us all you want, but we aren’t going to budge from our position. The North Korean leader is also sending a barb to the new conservative South Korean administration in Seoul as well. President Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office in the spring after a razor-thin election victory, is developing a military plan referred to as the “Kill Chain,” which calls for the preemptive targeting of North Korean leadership in the event of an imminent North Korean attack. The purpose of the strategy, of course, is to make Pyongyang think twice before engaging in a rash action. Instead, it seems to have prompted Kim to widen the scope of scenarios in which employing nuclear weapons is acceptable. Kim is calling Yoon’s bluff: If you are truly reckless enough to strike me, you should prepare yourself for the possibility of a nuclear exchange.
Whether the Kim dynasty would actually use nuclear weapons is a matter of debate. A nuclear attack against the South would do unquestionable damage but would also see the Kim dynasty’s own destruction. The Korean Peninsula will therefore remain in a state of suspended animation, with brinkmanship rubbing up against common sense.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
