The Pyongyang Playbook

One persistent misperception about North Korea is that its provocative international behavior is unpredictable. In the last two years alone, North Korea has held four U.S. citizens hostage; fired a long-range missile over Japan; conducted further nuclear testing; and, most recently, torpedoed the South Korean warship Cheonan, killing 46 sailors on board.

In fact, Pyongyang's methods have been remarkably consistent since the early 1960s, when Kim Il Sung, the nation’s founding dictator and its current leader’s father, purged all potential rivals and consolidated power. Its strategy has been to lash out at its enemies when it perceives them to be weak or distracted, up the ante in the face of international condemnation (while blaming external scapegoats), and then negotiate for concessions in return for an illusory promise of peace. Incapable of competing with economically flourishing South Korea, the North can rely only on military and political brinkmanship to make up ground. This has been a stunningly successful game plan for the isolated, impoverished nation that sits amidst the world’s most powerful status quo states, including China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.

North Korea's policy toward the Obama administration has closely followed this time-tested strategy. The United States has a long and undistinguished history of playing into the North’s game plan. However, the Obama administration has deviated from this pattern and adopted a policy that U.S. officials have dubbed “strategic patience.” The White House has attempted to remain calm in the face of North Korean provocations and has resisted making deals with Pyongyang merely for the sake of defusing tension. In view of the North Korean regime’s strategic outlook, it is the right approach.

The North has long chosen to confront its adversaries when they are weak. In 1968, as the political tide was turning against the United States in Vietnam, North Korea dispatched a 31-man commando team to kill South Korean President Park Chung Hee. Although South Korea thwarted the raid, Pyongyang continued its offensive two days later, when its forces captured the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo in international waters off the coast of the Korean peninsula. One U.S. sailor was killed in the seizure; the remaining 82 crewmembers were held captive under torturous conditions for 11 months until they were released following an apology by the Lyndon Johnson administration.

After enduring international condemnation, North Korea often decides to stay the course and even increase political tensions. During the Pueblo standoff, North Korea carried out commando raids against South Korea, sending more than 120 soldiers that October and additional troops the following year. The South Korean military quelled the raids, but Pyongyang, emboldened by continued U.S. difficulties in Vietnam, soon greeted the new Nixon administration with further violence. On April 15, 1969, on the occasion of Kim Il Sung's birthday, a North Korean jet shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane, killing all 31 U.S. servicemen aboard.

The United States attempted to manage these crises in the 1960s by responding with conciliatory gestures aimed at alleviating tensions. North Korea learned that it could provoke, and even attack, the world’s greatest military power with impunity.

The North has redeployed this tactic in recent years. In 2006, for example, it attempted to capitalize on U.S. difficulties in Iraq. As Americans were celebrating July 4, North Korea carried out a barrage of missile tests, even firing a long-range missile in the direction of Japan.

This was the prelude to a far more confrontational act: North Korea’s first-ever nuclear test, which occurred on October 9, the eve of the Korean Workers’ Party Founding Day. By demonstrating its nuclear capabilities, North Korea painted the Bush administration into a corner. It also blatantly defied UN Security Council Resolution 1695 -- passed earlier that year in response to the North’s missile tests -- which called on Pyongyang to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.”

The October 2006 nuclear test yielded a more strongly worded Security Council resolution (1718), which demanded that North Korea “not conduct any further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile” and called upon UN member states to “ensure” that funds supporting North Korea’s nuclear program be cut off. More important, it triggered a change of heart in the George W. Bush administration, which chose to abandon its effective policy of financially squeezing North Korean elites' cash flow and instead negotiate a nuclear agreement with North Korea the following February. In return for Pyongyang’s promise to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, Washington sequentially unfroze North Korea’s illicit funds, resumed food and fuel aid, and delisted North Korea from the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.