By Ankit Panda
Is North Korea’s recent spate of provocation leading up to a pivot toward economic reform?
What does North Korea’s decision to stage a nuclear test and the launch of a space launch vehicle (SLV) a month apart in early 2016 tell us about where things stand domestically inside the country? To be sure, both events are intended to test technologies the regime attaches great importance to, but, in North Korea, nothing of this sort is scheduled without consideration of the broader political effects. “Politics” in the North Korean context, of course, means something very specific: it refers primarily to Kim Jong-un’s agenda of still-ongoing power consolidation and implementation of the byungjin policy of simultaneously pursuing economic development and a nuclear deterrent.
It’s notable that in this year’s New Year’s address, Kim placed a special emphasis on improving the economic lot of ordinary North Koreans. In fact, he managed to explicitly avoid any direct reference to the country’s nuclear program. I found that surprising at the time, given suggestions in 2015 that the United States and China had come to some sort of understanding on North Korea’s byungjin stance—surely Kim couldn’t have missed an opportunity to underline his signature policy on the occasion of the new year? It was, after all, his response to his father’s songun, or military-first, policy that caused untold economic damage to the country, persisting to this day.
Of course, not a week passed before Pyongyang claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb, emphasizing that rhetoric aside, North Korea remained committed to its nuclear program. The SLV launch this past weekend underlined continued progress on long-range rockets. Both actions elicited strong calls from the United States, South Korea, and Japan for additional sanctions—a result that should have been entirely unsurprising for the North Korean government. How then do these events in early 2016 dovetail with Kim’s broader byungjin approach?
Read the full story at The Diplomat