Only one week after proposing and then pulling the plug on inter-Korean dialogue over protocol differences, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)’s National Defense Commission on June 16 issued a surprise proposal for “high-level” U.S.-DPRK talks on easing of military tensions, establishment of a peace regime, and “various other issues both parties want to address, including the building of a nuclear-free world proposed by the United States.”

A White House statement in response to the offer emphasized the necessity of North Korea taking actions to show its commitment to denuclearization before the United States would accept talks. It stated that such actions would involve North Korea “living up to its obligations to the world, including compliance with the U.N. Security Council resolutions, and ultimately result in denuclearization.” In other words, without accompanying actions that show a North Korean willingness to enter “authentic” negotiations, the Obama administration assesses North Korea’s proposal as a non-starter.

While it is certainly preferable for North Korea to pursue diplomatic rather than missile or nuclear tests, all of North Korea’s neighbors by now are well aware of North Korea’s history of diplomatic initiatives as just another tool through which North Korea has sought to consolidate gains following periods in which North Korean brinkmanship has driven political tensions to high levels. To simply accept North Korea’s dialogue proposal and come back to the table as though nothing has changed since the last six party talks were held in 2008—or since North Korea’s dramatic reversal only two weeks after concluding the 2012 Leap Day understanding—would imply acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear  and ballistic missile tests.

South Korean media report that Xi Jinping flatly opposed a proposal from North Korea’s top military official Choe Ryong-hae during his visit to Beijing in late May that China accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. One of the major accomplishments of the Xi-Obama summit talks at the Sunnylands estate was the securing of a public pledge from China’s top leader that China will not accept a nuclear North Korea, while China continues to emphasize that the standoff be resolved peacefully through dialogue.

The timing of North Korea’s proposal to resume direct talks with the United States appears primarily designed to discern fissures in the converging positions of the United States, China, and South Korea on North Korea’s denuclearization. The North Korean proposal tests Sino-U.S. relations since the United States has conveyed that North Korea must take concrete actions to show its sincerity as a precondition for the resumption of nuclear talks while China has emphasized the importance of returning to dialogue even while affirming it will not accept a nuclear North Korea. It also tests the U.S.-ROK alliance by tempting the United States to bypass resumption of inter-Korean dialogue only a week after the North refused participation in proposed talks with Seoul in favor of U.S.-DPRK negotiations that would marginalize South Korea.

Regardless of the intention behind North Korea’s proposal, the National Defense Commission statement begins to lay the foundations for a North Korean climb down from its assertion of nuclear status through its statement that “the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is the behest of our leader and our general and the policy task that must be carried out by our party, state, and millions of soldiers and people without fail.” Since this statement stands at odds with North Korea’s inclusion of its nuclear status in the preamble of its constitution and its acknowledgment of nuclear weapons development as one of Kim Jong-il’s main contributions, sincerity of the statement will remain suspect absent accompanying concrete actions reinforcing the statement’s credibility.

Although North Korea’s statement provides Pyongyang’s first public recognition of the need for an exit strategy from its current situation, it is cloaked in defiance and makes an odd call on the United States to drop preconditions for talks while adding preconditions of its own. The preamble to North Korea’s offer of “high-level” dialogue demands that the United States stop “all forms of provocation, including sanctions.” In addition, the National Defense Commission statement claims that “our legitimate status as a nuclear weapons state will be maintained without the least wavering, regardless of whether others recognize it or not, until the denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula is realized and nuclear threats from outside are put to an end completely.” In other words, North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons program when hell freezes over, but let’s talk about it.

When the United States and China move closer to each other, leaders of the two Koreas are apt to start talking. An unanticipated side effect of Nixon’s rapprochement with China in the early 1970s was that both Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee established secret talks in response to a new strategic reality in which their respective patrons had established dialogue. Those talks led to a landmark inter-Korean joint declaration on July 4, 1972. Although the Obama-Xi Sunnylands summit was advertised as an introductory session not designed to produce deliverables, one indirect effect of the summit is that it has jumpstarted inter-Korean dialogue. The first working-level inter-Korean talks between the Park Geun-hye and Kim Jong-un leaderships is being held at Panmunjom nearly simultaneously with the Xi-Obama summit.

The positive effects of high-level Sino-U.S. dialogue on inter-Korean relations can be shortlived. A spike in inter-Korean tensions following North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island in November 2010 drove North Korea up the agenda of U.S.-China relations as both countries prepared for Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington in January 2011. In anticipation of Hu’s White House visit, North and South Korea announced high-level talks between military officials, but by the time that meeting was held, momentum had shifted and inter-Korean military talks failed.

This time, the first step in relaxation of inter-Korean tensions accompanied Secretary Kerry’s first visit to Beijing as Secretary of State in mid-April. A series of high-level visits by U.S. officials including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dempsey accompanied North Korea’s familiar tactical shift from brinkmanship to charm offensive in May. Following the announcement of the Xi-Obama summit later that month, North Korea’s top general Choe Ryong-hae delivered a letter to Xi from Kim Jong-un. However, Xi and his colleagues met Choe with a consistent and stern public message that “all the parties involved should stick to the objective of denuclearization, safeguard peace and stability on the peninsula, and resolve disputes through dialogue and consultation.” This rhetorical reordering  of Chinese priorities placing denuclearization equivalent with stability was a clear message to North Korea. For his part, General Choe pledged North Korea’s commitment to renewed dialogue, but neglected to mention denuclearization.

Days in advance of the Obama-Xi summit, North Korea suddenly offered and South Korea rapidly accepted resumption of inter-Korean talks. Representatives of the two Koreas agreed  in meetings at Panmunjom the day after the Sino-U.S. summit to hold “government talks” in Seoul on Wednesday and Thursday of this week to discuss resumption of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the future of the joint Mount Kumgang resort, and reunion events for families separated by the Korean War– all of which are projects that would benefit North Korea economically if they are resumed. South Korea resisted North Korean demands to hold non-governmental meetings to commemorate the anniversary of the June 15, 2000 and July 4, 1972 joint declarations.

Both Koreas have a strong incentive to advance inter-Korean talks prior to Park Geun-hye’s visit to Beijing scheduled for the end of June, where reports are that President Xi is prepared to roll out the red carpet for her. Having solidified the U.S.-ROK alliance during her early May visit to Washington, a step forward on Trustpolitik would help Park in relations with Beijing, while Pyongyang has a double economic and political incentive to cooperate with Seoul both to forestall greater Sino-ROK cooperation on North Korean denuclearization and to lessen growing economic dependency on Beijing.

In his readout to the press following the Obama-Xi summit, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon emphasized Sino-U.S. “alignment” on North Korea, including Chinese pledges to deepen “cooperation and dialogue to achieve denuclearization.” Donilon’s characterization of the outcome of the conversation was that both sides will “apply pressure both to halt North Korea’s ability to proliferate and to make clear that its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons is incompatible with its economic development goals.” By pushing for a U.S.-(ROK)-PRC alignment in opposition to a nuclear North Korea, the Obama administration is reaching a crunch point in its efforts to prove to North Korea’s leaders that Pyongyang’s nuclear development efforts are regime-endangering, and that the future of the North’s economic development—and regime survival—in fact turn on North Korea’s denuclearization.

North Korea’s efforts to legitimize itself as a nuclear weapons state and its cut-off of access to the Kaesong Industrial Complex have diminished prospects for peaceful coexistence on the Korean peninsula. American and South Korean tolerance of North Korean provocations has waned, and it is increasingly clear that strategic patience in dealing with North Korea may only result in increasingly unattractive options.  When they meet today, Presidents Park and Obama must pursue an even more closely coordinated effort to change the North Korean leadership’s calculus sooner rather than later or North Korea’s capacity to impose higher costs and burdens on the allies will only grow.

Kim Jong-un’s pride in North Korea’s nuclear deterrent and satellite launch capabilities has fed the perception in Pyongyang that North Korea can enhance its deterrent and gain respect through intimidation of the United States and South Korea.  Far from driving up the price that North Korea might demand for keeping the peace, Kim Jong-un has priced the nuclear program out of the market and raised the risk premium on inter-Korean economic cooperation to unacceptable levels.  No negotiation with the United States will yield acceptance of a nuclear North Korea, and North Korea’s abandonment of Kaesong has wiped away a decade of South Korean investment in a peaceful and stable modus vivendi with the North.

North Korea has overplayed its hand and faces either a humiliating climb down or the prospect of losing it all. But either scenario will impose unwanted costs on North Korea’s neighbors.  Kim’s neighbors will have to save his face as the cost of avoiding immediate conflict.  But the cost of buying time will include further provocations from an insecure North Korean leadership whose strategy for survival imposes instability on its neighbors.

Despite the Korean Workers Party’s recent commitment to the dual priorities of nuclear and economic development, North Korea is in a cul de sac.  It insists on pursuing nuclear development as a right of self-defense in the face of international condemnation, but its expanding threat capacity undermines the likelihood that nuclear North Korean leaders can ever be accepted in the international community.

At present, there is no intersection of interests between the positions of North Korea and the United States that can justify a return to negotiations.  North Korea demands the end of U.S. hostility toward the North as a prerequisite for denuclearization, while the United States seeks North Korea’s denuclearization in return for an improvement of relations based on the 2005 six party joint statement.  The loss of Kaesong represents a lost decade of sunk costs in infrastructure inside North Korea, returning the inter-Korean relationship to square one.  New South Korean investment cannot continue until economic governance trumps the whims of North Korea’s political leaders as the guiding principle for managing North Korea’s external relations.

A combined U.S.-South Korea vision should urgently insist that North Korea must change, but the allies have not yet developed a detailed joint strategy for bringing about those changes. Diplomatic engagement with North Korea should be a part of the strategy, but diplomacy should not enable North Korea to buy time, lead to acceptance of a nuclear North Korea, or extend its disruptive influence in the region.

The United States and South Korea should reach out to China based on the understanding that there is a time limit for North Korea to come back to negotiations and that denuclearization must be a main agenda for any new dialogue, recognizing that China is vested in the status quo.  Only by trying to bring China along will it be possible to prove that peaceful options for transforming North Korea have been exhausted.

The two presidents should also deepen coordination designed to prepare for the possibility that there is no pathway to peaceful co-existence under the North Korean leadership.  This approach would involve a joint examination of the most severe potential costs of confrontation with North Korea and develop strategies to minimize the costs if North Korea continues down the wrong path.

The muting of North Korean threats toward the United States has dropped it from the American headlines in recent weeks, but stepped up inter-Korean tensions over the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) have consumed the time and attention of South Korean policymakers. Since April 3 Pyongyang has blocked the entry of South Korean people and goods for the complex and on April 9 withdrew its North Korean workers. In response, South Korea issued an ultimatum on April 25 demanding that Pyongyang agree by that day to negotiations on renewed access to the site. KIC hosts 123 South Korean companies, provides employment for 53,000 North Korean workers, and generates labor and tax payments to North Korea, which in 2012 amounted to $90 million in cash payments. (For an excellent review of Kaesong’s history and development, see Patrick Cronin’s CNAS report “Vital Venture.”)

When North Korea refused South Korea’s ultimatum, the South Korean government began to withdraw hundreds of remaining South Korean company representatives who were at the site but had dwindling access to supplies and food as a result of the North Korean border closure.  All but seven remaining South Korean company representatives left the complex on April 29, with the remaining South Koreans held back to negotiate outstanding North Korean financial claims against South Korean companies for labor and taxes owed.  As these negotiations drag on, they form a disturbing backdrop and focal point for President’s Park’s first summit at the White House on May 7 with President Barack Obama, who faces his own hostage challenge as American citizen Mr. Kenneth Bae, a tour operator held in North Korea since November of last year was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor for crimes against the North Korean state.

KIC had been the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement and had survived South Korean reprisals for North Korean provocations in 2010, including the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel and the North Korean artillery shelling of Yeonpyong Island.  The project survived primarily because the option of pulling the plug on Kaesong would result in a lose-lose scenario in which North Korea would lose South Korean company payments for North Korean labor while the South Korean government would have to reimburse its own companies for losses incurred as a result of the complex shutdown. Particularly on the North Korean side, a shutdown of the project seemed like a classic case of biting the hand that feeds it.

Analysts have struggled to identify a compelling rationale for North Korea to force a shutdown of the complex given the direct material costs to North Korea resulting from the shutdown.  One plausible rationale has been that with Kaesong remaining operational, North Korean threats of war with South Korea had lost their credibility, undermining North Korean efforts to mobilize their own population or escalate tensions with the outside world and thereby improve Pyongyang’s  future negotiating position.  But the most compelling explanation for Kaesong’s failure may be that the North Korean regime began to realize as part of its drive toward political consolidation that Kaesong provided a compelling and damning alternative narrative to its own list of “accomplishments,” including nuclear deterrence against external aggressors.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s first visit to Northeast Asia came against the backdrop of increasing tensions stoked by North Korean evacuation announcements and missile-launch threats.  His meetings with new leaders Park Geun-hye, Xi Jinping, and Abe Shinzo succeeded in changing the tone of the conversation about North Korea from a military to a diplomatic focus and to strengthen  diplomatic consultation processes with new administrations in South Korea and China, but it remains to be seen whether there will be substantive shifts in the respective policies of the various governments.

Kerry’s first-ever visit to Seoul provided an opportunity for newly-elected President Park Geun-hye to lay out a hopeful vision for the future of the Korean peninsula and to signal a public willingness to move from confrontation to dialogue.  But North Korea wasted no time in shooting down Park Geun-hye’s public calls for diplomacy,  referring to it as a “crafty trick” to pursue dialogue and confrontation at the same time.   Kerry issued a surprisingly strong call on North Korea not to conduct a missile test at a moment when there were expectations for an imminent missile launch, along with assurances that the United States is prepared to defend South Korea, and he can count it a success that the North Koreans decided not to step over this red line before he was able to return home.  Presidents Park and Obama will meet at the White House on May 7 to affirm their close coordination.

In Beiing,  the anchor stop on Kerry’s itinerary, the change in tone included high expectations for Chinese cooperation and an apparent downplaying of the “rebalance,” or pivot, which patiently awaited Kerry’s last stop in Japan before meriting public mention.  The shift toward diplomacy with North Korea drives up expectations for Chinese performance.  But despite the change in tone and Kerry’s apparent willingness to put missile defense improvements on the negotiating table, it remains to be seen whether China’s policies toward North Korea will shift or whether North Korea is prepared to reciprocate the shift in public emphasis on diplomacy as opposed to confrontation.

In rhetorical terms, there was absolutely no sign of change in China’s goal of maintaining peace and stability and denuclearization or the shared goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula through peaceful negotiations.  One potentially positive development was the establishment of a series of high-level dialogue opportunities over the next few months, including the planned visit of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, intelligence exchanges, and the Strategic and Economic Dialogue set to take place in July.

In advance of Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States in January 2011, intensified Sino-U.S. consultations appeared to serve as a brake on further escalation of inter-Korean tensions following the North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010.  That period also contained combined U.S.-ROK efforts to reinforce deterrence and Chinese diplomatic outreach to Pyongyang.  An intensified Sino-U.S. consultation process over North Korea in the coming months might delay North Korea’s January pledge to conduct more missile and/or nuclear tests following the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2087.

Secretary Kerry’s visit to Tokyo seemed to underscore the difficulties that the United States faces in effectively finding the right mix of deterrence and diplomacy necessary to catalyze united and firm regional support for U.S. denuclearization and nonproliferation objectives in North Korea.  For Japan, Kerry’s apparent dialing back on deterrence in favor of diplomacy appears to have raised anxiety levels in Tokyo.  Japan’s response underlines the question of whether the United States can now advance its diplomatic efforts toward North Korea on a new model, without such an approach being perceived as a return to the regular cycle of brinkmanship-negotiation-and reward. The Obama administration continues to face the burden of showing that a return to negotiations with North Korea will not represent what former Defense Secretary Gates referred to as buying the same horse for a third time.

But the most difficult critics of any administration’s policy toward North Korea have always been found on the home front. With the emergence of public differences within the intelligence community over North Korea’s capabilities, as revealed by last week’s leak of a Defense Intelligence Agency estimate assessing that North Korea may already have attained the capacity to place a nuclear weapon onto a missile, the Obama administration’s challenge of managing a new policy initiative in the face of Congressional scrutiny just got harder.  This is too bad, because the administration will increasingly find itself in the middle of a paralyzing fight over North Korea policy, when arguably the policy toward North Korea that the U.S. government can least afford is to stand by and do nothing.

Given the threat-a-day nature of North Korean actions in recent weeks, I have noticed that many of the media headlines on North Korea are including the word “again.”  I can almost imagine North Korea’s repetition of threats turning into a college drinking game.

Despite the fact that the North has already promised more threatening action, I had thought last week that the U.S. show of force might introduce an element of sobriety into North Korea’s responses. However, this proved not to be the case.  So it is worth looking forward to see what the North Koreans have already pledged will come next.

Following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2087 in January condemning North Korea’s December satellite launch, the DPRK foreign ministry issued a statement on January 23 that 1) rejected “the unjust acts of the UNSC aimed at wantonly violating the sovereignty of the DPRK,” 2) pledged to “continue to exercise its independent and legitimate right to launch satellites for peaceful purposes,” 3) drew a final conclusion that “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is impossible unless the denuclearization of the world is realized,” and 4) declared it would “take steps for physical counteraction to bolster the military capabilities for self-defense including the nuclear deterrence both qualitatively and quantitatively.”

The DPRK National Defense Commission issued a more concrete statement on January 24 that stated: “We do not hide that a variety of satellites and long-range rockets which will be launched by the DPRK one after another and a nuclear test of higher level which will be carried out by it in the upcoming all-out action, a new phase of the anti-U.S. struggle that has lasted century after century, will target against the U.S., the sworn enemy of the Korean people.”

The U.S decision to deploy sea-based X-band radars and destroyers near North Korea anticipates a new missile launch, possibly including types that would require much less warning to test than has been the case with North Korea’s prior launches.  North Korea’s continued threats and brinkmanship always raise questions about the internal stability of its leadership, but this focus distracts from the clear evidence that South Korea and the United States are increasingly intolerant of North Korea’s threats, especially as the North broadens the spectrum of potential attacks from low-end, limited border skirmishes to high-end apocalyptic threats of nuclear attack. North Korean leadership’s miscalculation may come as a result of its failure to recognize this fact.

I have an op-ed on CNN.com that explains North Korea’s historic patterns of brinkmanship and analyzes whether the current, more extreme round of threats is par for the course or is something new.  My original title for the piece was “What is Behind North Korean Threats,” but CNN named it “Why the North Korea Regime is Scary?”

The new title seems to anticipate North Korea’s bellicose and anxiety-filled declarations that its missile sites are now on alert following a U.S. B-2 practice bombing run to a bombing range in South Korea.  The B-2 bombing run is the latest in a series of U.S. steps intended to deter North Korean aggression while assuring South Korea that the United States is committed to South Korea’s defense. The run appears to have fixed North Korea’s attention.  These actions have made credible the U.S. assertion to North Korea that Pyongyang’s nuclear activities are making it less secure, not more secure.  But now that this message has been delivered, there is a need for the United States and South Korea to offer some clear diplomatic gestures of reassurance toward the North that can help the North Koreans climb down, calm down, and “change course.”

North Korea’s third nuclear test last month unleashed an active South Korean debate on nuclear weapons acquisition along with calls for the reintroduction of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to deter and strengthen the U.S. and ROK position in nuclear negotiations. (The debate was nicely summarized here by Toby Dalton and Yoon Ho-jin). South Korea has also displayed its determination to counter any perceived North Korean advantage that might allow it to use nuclear blackmail against South Korea.  As the decibel level of North Korea’s threats has reached unprecedented levels, South Korea has also shown a grim determination to match North Korea’s threats with its own clear and specific signals of resolve.

A sustained high-level U.S. response to North Korea’s nuclear threats has also been in overdrive in recent weeks as it has attempted to send a complex set of messages to the region.  First, President Obama called President Lee following North Korea’s nuclear test to provide explicit assurance of its extended deterrence commitment to South Korea’s security under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Second, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon insisted that North Korea “change course” and engage in “authentic negotiations” while delivering a stark warning that North Korea would be held responsible for nuclear terrorism resulting from its proliferation.  Third, Defense Secretary Hagel announced a $1 billion commitment to further development of missile defense despite the fiscal constraints imposed by the sequester.  Fourth, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter visited Seoul during U.S.-ROK annual military exercises and noted B-52 strategic bomber participation in the exercises. News reports also highlighted  that the U.S. nuclear attack submarine USS Cheyenne carried out anti-submarine drills as part of the same exercises. Fifth, Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen arrived in Seoul on the heels of Ash Carter’s visit to discuss financial sanctions implementation before going on to Beijing. And this week, top U.S. envoy for East Asian and Pacific affairs Joseph Yun arrived in Seoul and is also expected to discuss North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Through all of these activities, the United States has sought to simultaneously signal deterrence of North Korea and provide positive assurances to South Korea.  At the same time, the Obama administration has attempted to show China that Beijing’s policy of enabling North Korea’s provocative behavior carries tangible costs to regional stability in an attempt to win enhanced cooperation from China to deter North Korea from undertaking additional provocations.   The task of signaling all these messages  to respective target countries is critical to sustaining the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence commitments and to sustaining deterrence of North Korea, but there are also clearly some potential contradictory elements to the messaging that require careful management.  The most sensitive potential contradiction involves China’s tendency to think of the peninsula as part of a Sino-U.S. competition for influence and its belief that deterrence of North Korea is a convenient proxy for efforts to gain strategic advantage against China, especially as regards to missile defense. 

As part of an excellent volume edited by Jeffrey W. Knopf examining the role of security assurances in nuclear nonproliferation, I wrote a case study on the history of U.S. efforts to provide positive assurances to South Korea through a strong U.S.-South Korea  alliance. The takeaway from my chapter is that the Obama administration will have to constantly continue its efforts to provide assurance to South Korea regarding the credibility of U.S. defense commitments.  But in light of North Korea’s nuclear progress, U.S. assurances will likely be insufficient to assuage South Korean doubts about whether the United States will be willing to risk an attack on itself to protect its ally or “trade Los Angeles for Seoul.”  Whether the U.S. threshold for action meets South Korean expectations will emerge as a constant and unresolvable source of tension in the relationship.  The only way to resolve this newly-emerging tension will be for the United States and South Korea, in cooperation with China, to somehow find the right combination of measures to bring North Korea back to a path of negotiations accompanied by concrete actions in the direction of denuclearization. 

In the first month since Park Geun-hye’s inauguration as South Korea’s first woman president, she faced an external security environment that she characterized the day after her election as “grave.” In addition, her administration has gotten off to a slow start due to unexpected internal constraints associated with a government reorganization plan that has been hung up in South Korea’s National Assembly. CFR’s Program on U.S.-Korea Policy is featuring two parallel essays by prominent South Korean scholars that provide deeper analysis of the internal and external challenges Park faces as president.

Park In-hwi of Ewha Women’s University provides an important explanation of changes in South Korea’s National Assembly that were intended to promote bipartisanship but may instead result in administrative gridlock. Legislative wrangling over Park’s government reorganization plan tied the hands of the government for almost a month following Park’s inauguration. The delayed passage of this plan combined with her administration’s own failures to adequately vet candidate selections for top administration posts has weakened Park’s popularity and lowered public expectations for her political leadership. Another worrisome factor that might constrain Park’s leadership is the apparently deep political disaffection with Park among South Korea’s younger generation. If a political issue emerges to turn apathy into opposition, there is a real possibility that street demonstrations similar to those that occurred in the early days of the Lee Myung-Bak administration could further hamper Park’s ability to get things done.

The internal constraints on Park’s exercise of presidential power pale in comparison with Seoul National University professor Chung Jae Ho’s observation that South Korea remains “more of a dependent than an independent variable of international politics.” This fact makes Park’s management of relations with China and Japan, respectively, particularly challenging, not to mention the blistering rhetorical challenges posed by North Korea, which have clearly constrained Park’s ability to follow through on pledges of greater engagement with Pyongyang. All of these issues will be on the agenda for Park’s first official meeting with President Obama in May, and they make it all the more important that both sides build on the strong foundation for alliance cooperation going forward.

The unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2094 builds on prior UN Security Council resolutions 1695, 1718, 1874, and 2087 in opposing North Korea’s drive to expand its nuclear and missile delivery capabilities.  Each of the UN Security Council resolutions were passed following North Korean long-range rocket launches or nuclear tests.  These resolutions were designed to cut off flows of nuclear and missile technologies between North Korea and the outside world and to signal international disapproval of North Korea’s nuclear-related activities.

The latest resolution is notable for authorizing states to enforce a combination of financial measures against North Korea that attempt to cut off a wide range of financing vehicles related to North Korean nuclear and missile-related activities, including by blocking North Korean officials from carrying “bulk cash” payments related to those programs.  These measures complement the call in previous resolutions for member states to enforce strict inspections on suspected North Korean cargo related to the nuclear and missile programs.  The outstanding question, of course, is whether member states, including China, are prepared to implement these new measures, or whether they will be subjected to a combination of strict interpretations and “willful blindness” on the docks that would render the new measures ineffective.

Thus far, North Korean leaders haven’t taken the hint from previous UN Security Council resolutions, instead doubling-down on defiance and confrontation by pledging to conduct even more tests. In a statement released hours prior to the passage of the resolution, a spokesperson for North Korea’s foreign ministry stated that “as long as the United States is attempting to light the fuse of a nuclear war, our revolutionary armed forces will exercise the right to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes on the strongholds of the aggressors in order to defend the supreme interest of the country” and pledged to “hasten second and third countermeasures of higher intensity that we had already declared.”  Clearly, we are still on a cycle of escalation that could risk North Korea’s survival and would carry extraordinarily high costs for South Korea and the international community.

Before North Korean authorities get too carried away in righteous indignation that the UN Security Council or the United States is pursuing a “hostile policy” designed to stifle North Korea’s rights to exploration of space or science, it is worth noting that once again, the latest UNSC resolution includes an escape clause in that it “reaffirms its support to the Six Party Talks, calls for their resumption, urges all the participants to intensify their efforts on the full and expeditious implementation of the 19 September 2005 [Six Party Talks] Joint Statement.” Likewise, the Obama administration has taken great pains to keep the door open to North Korea’s return to the principles contained in the Leap Day understandings announced in parallel statements on February 29, 2012.

This means that all the measures authorized in UN Security Council resolutions against North Korea remain tactical, designed to deter and punish North Korea for moving in directions that endanger the international interest, not strategic, designed to stifle or end the North Korean regime.  However, as can be seen from this week’s House International Relations Committee hearing, each new North Korean provocation is providing momentum for those who do argue for a “hostile policy” toward North Korea’s leadership, designed to bring about regime change as the only way of finally solving the problem of North Korea’s nuclear defiance. North Korea’s actions seem also to have driven South Korea to adopt a more forceful counter-provocation plan, which now entails striking in addition to the origin and supporting forces of any provocation, North Korea’s command leadership as well.

North Korea’s leadership has long practiced the art of brinkmanship as a tactic that has enabled regime survival in the post-cold war era, but these tactics may well work to North Korea’s strategic disadvantage if the leadership turns a deaf ear to the international community’s frustrations and the UNSC resolutions are vigorously implemented by all member states.