For a country ever on the brink of mass starvation, the DPRK in 2008 appears to have inched yet closer to an economic abyss that may generate famine and starvation not seen since the mid-1990s. This comes at a time when the Six Party Talks have reached what could be a turning point. In the talks, North Korea's decrepit economy serves as a primary source of leverage that parties in the talks are wielding to move decision making forward. “Great Leader” Kim Jong-il, who ever portrays himself as invincible, may find that the economy is his Achilles heel.
The Republic of Korea (ROK) requires a new strategic vision and a workable new strategy befitting a changing security environment and changing national interests. Having been preoccupied with an engagement policy toward Pyongyang, South Korea seems to be lacking a long-term strategic vision beyond the peninsula. In other words, its national strategy is not well defined. Moreover, the South Korean people are sharply divided over their country's security and foreign policies.
In a nutshell, the ROK-US alliance faces the following problem: for some time the military and political dimensions of the alliance have been out of alignment on adjusting to the international and national security issues that concern the alliance. In many ways the alliance should be doing well. After all, over time North Korea has become steadily weaker as an international actor, while those who explicitly oppose many elements of its foreign and domestic policies have grown in number, including all its immediate neighbors. The promising opening to the outside world that the North undertook after signing the Agreed Framework has been sharply devalued and it is back to being quite isolated. The economic recovery the North had begun earlier in this decade seems to have slowed. It is difficult to see how the North has benefited in any serious way from its missile tests or its test of a nuclear device. The alliance's goal of containing and deterring North Korea is well in hand – the DPRK has made no great breakout politically from containment and is militarily even weaker relative to the alliance than before, despite its missile and nuclear weapons programs. In addition, the alliance partners have been doing reasonably well in the East Asian system: flourishing economically, modernizing militarily. Despite all this the alliance has been under great strain in this decade, with much recrimination between the allies, so numerous analysts have suggested that it is not at all healthy. In this case, at least, success has been breeding decay.
The reality of a rising “nuclear” North Korea, with its testfiring of seven missiles on July 5, 2006, and underground testing of a nuclear device on October 9, was met by world-wide condemnation and emergency sessions of the United Nations Security Council. The world had not yet gotten accustomed to the two UN Security Council resolutions (1695 and 1718), imposing limited economic sanctions on North Korea, when it was surprised once again by the breakthrough announcement of February 13, 2007: the Six-Party Talks Accord on “Disabling the North Korean nuclear program.”
The issue of North Korea's inclusion on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism has been in U.S.-North Korean diplomacy since 2000, but three stages are of particular importance: the first in 2000 in Clinton Administration-North Korean negotiations; the second during the 2003-2004 Six Party negotiations over the North Korean nuclear issue; and the third in the diplomacy around the Six Party nuclear agreement of February 2007. Until 2000, the core element of U.S.-North Korean diplomacy was the Agreed Framework, which Washington and Pyongyang signed in October 1994. It dealt primarily with North Korea's nuclear program, but U.S. obligations specified in the Agreed Framework included economic and diplomatic measures. However, the issue of removal of North Korea from the U.S. terrorism list was omitted from the Agreement. The issue appears not to have been a major object of the negotiations in 1994.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of East-West and Sino-Soviet competition for influence in the Korean peninsula after the cold war, Beijing adjusted Chinese relations to take advantage of economic and other opportunities with South Korea, while sustaining a leading international position in relations with North Korea. In contrast with steady Chinese efforts to use post cold war conditions in order to advance China's relations with South Korea, Chinese foreign policy toward North Korea has been characterized by reactive moves in response to abrupt and often provocative behavior of North Korea, and, to a lesser degree, the United States.
Political Geography:
United States, China, Beijing, North Korea, and Soviet Union
The United States and the ROK have had a very close association for more than fifty years, but in recent years that relationship has experienced considerable stress and strain. Many analysts now express great concern about its future prospects In fact, it is getting more difficult to defend the continued existence of the alliance. The strains are manifest and multiple. The two governments have been living with them for some time, with neither willing to make the strenuous efforts required to either reverse the deterioration or abandon the alliance as incompatible with their contemporary security concerns and perspectives. So the alliance is limping along. As is the security situation on the Korean peninsula that the alliance has existed to deal with – it is limping along as well.