There are some very smart, experienced people in the U.S. intelligence community whose jobs center on this very question.
North Korea is a highly reclusive country. So, to the extent the United States has access to what is actually going on within the corridors of power in Pyongyang, the information largely comes from the occasional high-profile defector. The last two months, however, have been especially dizzying for U.S. intelligence.
The circus-like ride started in late July, when the North Koreans decided to reopen their communication hotlines with South Korea. Those hotlines were severed last summer in protest of anti-Kim leaflets flying across the border. Then, just as soon as the hotlines were up and running, North Korea refused to answer the phone as South Korean officials were calling on the other line. It appeared to be a message that no calls could occur while the U.S. and South Korea were engaging in military exercises.
In September, Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, blasted South Korean President Moon Jae-in for calling the North’s latest missile launches a provocation. This is the same Moon who has done nearly everything in his power to try to reconcile Seoul’s bilateral relationship with the North, a personal project since he assumed the presidency in 2017. It was also a busy month on the missile front. North Korea launched cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles over a span of two to three weeks.
Then, just when you thought North-South relations would have been strained for the rest of the year, the mood lifted somewhat.
On Sept. 22, Moon addressed the U.N. General Assembly and proposed a negotiation about a possible end-of-war declaration. Days later, the Kim dynasty appeared to turn the other cheek. Kim Yo Jong, who has made a career out of mocking Moon at every opportunity, didn’t entirely dismiss the end-of-war proposal, calling such a signing possible if Seoul did its part to establish a degree of trust.
The dynamics between the U.S. and North Korea have been just as topsy-turvy.
Between 2018 and 2019, one could be excused for believing that Washington and Pyongyang were a few inches short of making history and moving into a new era where constructive relations were possible. Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump were meeting in person, writing letters filled with flowery compliments to one another and talking as if peace was around the corner. Of course, by the time Trump left office, U.S.-North Korea relations remained stuck in a rut; the North had its nuclear weapons and was working to improve its missile capabilities. The U.S. continued to prosecute a strong sanctions regime toward Pyongyang.
The negativity has only gotten worse since then.
At least during Trump’s term, U.S. and North Korean officials were talking. Now, there is not even a whimper of dialogue on the horizon. The Biden administration reached out to the North Koreans during their first month in office, but the entreaties were ignored. Sung Kim, President Joe Biden’s special envoy on North Korea, has spent months speaking with his colleagues in the region. He has stressed that Washington is willing to meet with North Korean officials anytime. The Kim regime, however, is not in the mood for direct diplomacy. For U.S. officials, Pyongyang’s cold silence is enormously frustrating.
We tend to explain all of this away by telling ourselves that Kim Jong Un is extremely unpredictable, if not irrational. To many U.S. politicians, the back-and-forth, hot-and-cold rhetoric blowing from the North over the last two months is a reconfirmation that it’s all but impossible to deal with the Kim dynasty.
Yet, this assessment is mistaken. The missile tests, the insulting statements, the tentative olive branches, and the quasi-flirtation with an inter-Korean peace agreement are not a series of disjointed, random acts. Far from it — this is how North Korea negotiates, flexing muscle to demonstrate it wouldn’t be coming to the table empty-handed, even as it keeps the flame of diplomacy lit for another day.
So, what is Kim Jong Un thinking?
Probably what he has been thinking ever since he assumed power from his late father a decade ago: If you, the U.S., think I’m dumb enough to give away my nuclear insurance policy, then you might as well go home. But if you are open to dropping denuclearization as the end goal, perhaps we may have something to talk about.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
