North Korea: More Rational than You Think, A Historical Analysis of North Korea's Behavior

Abstract

North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) is a country that behaves counterintuitively. It performs aggressive actions, actions which escalate the risk of conflict with adversaries and allies. Specifically, the DPRK’s aggressive actions provoke a much larger and more capable adversary, the US-ROK alliance (ROK refers to the Republic of Korea or South Korea). North Korea’s aggressive behavior not only provokes its adversaries but also its ally China. The nation’s aggressiveness raises the risk of conflict with the more powerful US-ROK alliance and the risk of reduced Chinese allied support. This counterintuitive behavior has raised the question central to this thesis: “Under what conditions does North Korea behave aggressively?” I address this question by adopting and modifying a rational framework from a less widely discussed paper by Asia policy scholar Yasuhiro Izumikawa called Security Dependence and Asymmetric Bargaining: North Korea’s Policy Toward the Two Superpowers. His paper essentially argues that the DPRK is likely to engage in aggressive behavior when it is put in a threatening position by its adversaries (namely the US-ROK alliance) or allies (namely China). Though his rational framework is adept at considering international security factors – namely how threatened a country is – Izumikawa’s framework does not consider how factors internal to the regime may lead to aberrations from rationality. Thus, I additionally hypothesize that the DPRK is more likely to deviate from this rational framework when the nation’s leader has little leadership experience or has an insecure hold on power, since these internal factors confound the leader’s rational judgment of international security factors. Though Izumikawa tested and confirmed the plausibility of his rational framework by examining North Korea’s behavior under the Kim Il Sung regime (1948-1994), he did not test his framework for North Korea’s behavior under the Kim Jong Il (1994-2011) and Kim Jong Un (2011-Present) regimes. In this thesis, I examined North Korea’s behavior under these two latter regimes (cutting off my historical analysis on February 23, 2018) and found that Izumikawa’s rational framework was largely confirmed. North Korea did deviate from this framework in isolated cases, but did so in a predictable fashion in accordance with my additional hypothesis. My findings have significant implications for both the US-ROK alliance and China. According to Izumikawa’s framework and my additional hypothesis, it is unlikely that the DPRK will halt its aggressive actions in response to pressure (i.e. sanctions, inflammatory rhetoric, and militarization of the Korean Peninsula). The US-ROK alliance and China would be prudent to pursue a more conciliatory approach aimed at trust-building and negotiations rather than a pressure-based approach. To achieve regional stability and eventual denuclearization, the US-ROK alliance and China should adopt this softer approach.