Donald Trump is poised to shake up many policies, foreign, domestic—and, well, literally domestic—but on one issue he looks set to stick with President Obama's approach: North Korea. Joseph Yun, a State Department envoy on North Korea policy, confirmed to reporters in Seoul the other day that he expects continuity on the subject. This contrasts with sentiments that Trump expressed during the presidential campaign, when he said he might be willing to talk to the North Korean regime.
On its face, the Obama approach (and the Bush approach before that, and the Clinton approach before that, and the H.W. Bush approach before that…) have failed. The North Korean regime, a cancer on this Earth, endures. The Kim dynasty continues to maintain its slave state, and its nuclear weapons program has progressed. (Experts believe it now has more than 20 bombs.) The regime has made great strides with its missile program as well, meaning it might soon have the power to deliver a nuclear attack on the mainland of the United States. Neither the Clinton administration's conciliatory approach nor the stony silence of Obama or Bush have halted the onward march of this grotesque regime.
Yet North Korea may be one of those situations in which the status quo—as intolerable as it is—is still preferable to the mooted alternatives. Already, a coterie of leftist scholars are preaching that now is the time to "engage" Kim Jong-un's regime. John Delury, a professor at Seoul's Yonsei University is one of them. He says, "The only solution to the North Korean dilemma is a long-term strategy to draw the regime and North Korean people out of their isolation. It will take decades, and starts with sitting down at the table with Kim Jong Un, and helping him open up and develop his economy." (Of course, Delury always says that.) This is fantasy, of course: Kim has zero incentive to "open up" his country and allow his people to become less isolated, as if he does so, he will sow the seeds of his own destruction. (The North Korean analyst Andrei Lankov has elegantly elucidated the dilemma the North Korean elite face: If they allow sunlight into the country, their people will revolt. So they have to keep the wheels of repression turning for their own survival.)
And even if Kim were to agree to liberalize his economy—a highly dubious supposition—that would do nothing to improve the baleful state of human rights in North Korea or forestall the regime's nuclear program. As Xi Jinping's China shows, economic liberalization can in fact work hand-in-glove with a repressive political system and aggressive military. This is not an optimal outcome, to say the least.
South Korea could soon change its approach to the North as well, and for worse. Park Geun-hye, the just impeached president of the country, was unsuccessful on many fronts, but she did make some welcome changes in her country's approach to the North. For one, she shut down the Kaesong Industrial complex, where South Korean companies were permitted to employ North Korean workers. This ridiculous arrangement saw 53,000 North Koreans toiling away—and their regime grabbing the lion's share of the $80 million or so "they" were paid each year. Now, with Park likely to be ousted permanently, the South Korean left is in pole position to regain the presidency. If that happens, look for a restart of the failed "Sunshine Policy" (of course, they'll give it another name this time), which saw Seoul shovel huge amounts of cash on Pyongyang in return for . . . nothing.
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01.12.2025