Self-Reliance

The deployment, North Korea’s largest to date, will align the country with Russia both militarily and economically. It thus marks a departure from the state’s longtime strategy of playing neighboring powers off one another to maximize its gains. By 1956, in the wake of the Korean War of 1950–53, North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il-sung had adopted this stance to solidify his rule over a new but war-torn state.

The former anti-Japanese guerilla leader believed North Korea should remain independent from all foreign influences, including those of the USSR and China. The two leading communist powers had fostered their own factions to rival his own supporters within the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, but Kim’s successful purge of these two factions made him irreplaceable to Moscow and Beijing. The growing Sino-Soviet rivalry already made it impossible for them to install an alternative leader who would be acceptable to both powers.

In the 1930s, Kim had joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) to support his guerilla campaign against Japanese imperialism in Manchuria. Later, under pressure from an intensive Japanese manhunt, Kim fled to the USSR, where he sought asylum until his return in 1945 to the northern half of the peninsula, then under Soviet occupation. Three years later, under significant Soviet tutelage, Kim found the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), while US-sponsored right-wing leader Syngman Rhee established the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the US-occupied southern half.

Having been disarmed and detained at least once in both the USSR and CPC-controlled areas of China as an armed nationalist leader, Kim harbored deep feelings of skepticism toward the two powers. He always attempted to maneuver so he could pit Moscow and Beijing against each other to offset their competing influences on the DPRK, an important Cold War outpost.

Overall, North Korea’s political economy was shaped by two interlocking but distinct imperatives that stemmed from Kim’s virtual coup of 1956. He wanted to stifle the emergence of any political opposition that might enable interference from his former sponsors or provoke military intervention from the ROK and the United States; and he wanted to build a self-sufficient economy with its own robust industrial base that would allow the DPRK to stand alone.

Socialism in One Family

Kim carefully put together a North Korean elite from the ranks of his guerilla comrades and their extended families as well as young nationalist technocrats. The members of this elite view the transition from Kim’s one-man rule to a model of hereditary succession, now stretching over seventy years to his grandson Kim Jong-un, as having been vital for safeguarding their collective political and economic interests (which they identify with the DPRK’s national sovereignty).

However, Kim’s pursuit of self-sufficiency in a country that Cold War scholar Kenneth Jowitt described as “socialism in one family” had proven to be disastrous by the early 1990s, as North Korea descended into one of the worst famines in the history of modern industrialized economies. This represented a dramatic collapse from the time when it seemed that the DPRK was outperforming its southern neighbor. During the first two postwar decades, North Korea’s recovery was rapid and impressive, prompting Cambridge economist Joan Robinson to coin the term “the Korean miracle,” which later became more widely associated with South Korea’s rise.

Robinson visited the country in 1965, in a rare trip for a Westerner, and identified “something after all in national character” that drove the DPRK’s efforts to achieve self-reliance in economic development:

In Cuba, for instance, the problems are of equal dimensions and the revolutionary enthusiasm no less, but the pace is not the same. The intense concentration of the Koreans on national pride and national wrongs is most unlike the sunny, expansive Cuban style; but it is markedly more effective.

However, she seemed not to realize that this came at a progressively unsustainable cost of human and environmental sacrifice in a country that was overly dependent on domestic coal and hydroelectric power and where only 16 percent of the land surface was arable. National character, even if combined with all the technical advances available to the North, could not overcome these limitations.

North Korea’s industrialization was made possible through excessive exploitation of the land combined with mass mobilization of labor. By the 1980s, soil degradation and deforestation were leading to decreases in agricultural output and productivity. In response, the DPRK authorities mobilized yet more labor and resources to reverse these declines, leading to further deforestation and greater dependence on soil-degrading chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

This left water systems vulnerable to seasonal heavy rains and droughts, undermining the reliability of hydroelectric power and coal mining, which depended heavily on electric water pumping. As North Korea became a net importer of food and energy, it had little option but to turn to the USSR and China for “fraternally priced” grains, oil, and even coal.

From the 1950s, labor shortages were chronic in the war-ravaged economy that was in urgent need of industrialization. This led to the mass employment of women from an early stage in the DPRK’s history across a wide range of roles, from manual labor to professional positions. According to Robinson, by the 1960s, women comprised 49 percent of the workforce (they accounted for 51 percent of the population at the time).

North Korea repealed feudalist legal constraints such as concubinage and criminal sanctions against adultery, mandating legal equality for women decades ahead of South Korea and Taiwan. However, women’s rights did not advance in line with their growing role in society and the workforce. Abortion and birth control still remain unavailable, although they are not formally outlawed. Even today, wives often address their husbands as juin (주인), a term etymologically derived from the Japanese word shuzen (主人), which means both “master” and “husband,” or as sedaeju (세대주) — “household head.”

In the mid 1990s, an unusually prolonged El Niño weather pattern devastated North Korea with an alternating sequence of torrential rains and droughts. The state found itself woefully unequipped to cope with the crisis, unlike the neighboring economic powerhouses, Japan and South Korea, which were also affected.

The extreme weather patterns decimated the DPRK’s vulnerable, dilapidated agriculture and industry. To compound the problem of its depleted exchange reserves, North Korea could no longer purchase foods and energy at fraternal discounts following the collapse of the Soviet-led eastern bloc. The result was one of the worst famines in modern industrial history, leading to about three million deaths and waves of defectors steadily flowing into China, South Korea, and other parts of Asia.

Nuclear Ambitions

The famine painfully confirmed the precarious global status of North Korea’s ruling elite and reinforced their long-held skepticism toward Russia and (especially) China as reliable allies. Post-Soviet Russia, entangled in political and economic troubles of its own, could not help, so North Korea looked to China for assistance. But the DPRK’s giant neighbor with its booming economy often limited supplies of aid to avoid breaching international sanctions in the run-up to China’s successful bid for accession to the World Trade Organization.

China, the United States, and (to a lesser extent) South Korea nonetheless provided enough support to keep North Korea afloat. The three countries appeared to believe they could not afford a rapid collapse or implosion of the DPRK that would burden them with prohibitive financial and political costs. US and South Korean officials hoped that measured encouragement of change would eventually lead to the peaceful removal of the Kim family and the introduction of a market-based economy. However, the North Korean regime emerged intact from the years of mass starvation.

The North Korean elite concluded that it had to forge its own path to shed its pariah status. This realization accelerated the drive for nuclear weapons, which the DPRK’s rulers had initiated in earnest following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s.

North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were shaped by the persistent threat of a US nuclear strike that has haunted the country since the Korean War. The threat was real. During the conflict, US general Douglas MacArthur openly floated the idea of nuking the China–North Korea borders to prevent further Chinese intervention.

In 1968, when the North Korean navy seized the US spy ship Pueblo, Lyndon Johnson had to abandon the idea of bombing a North Korean military target because all US bombers stationed in South Korea were armed exclusively with nuclear weapons, leaving no conventional options available. Although the United States withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1990, there were still plenty of warheads stationed nearby in Guam and on submarines that Washington could deploy against the DPRK at very short notice.

The aspiration to become a nuclear power also has deep domestic roots on both sides of the Korean border, tied up with nationalist pride and zeal for the possession of a strong state in these highly militarized systems. The memory of the US nuclear bombings that brought Korea’s colonial master, Japan, to its knees was etched deeply into the consciousness of the rulers in Pyongyang and Seoul alike.

During the Korean war, the South Korean military hired a Japanese scientist — who later turned out to be a con artist with knowledge of electrolysis — to test a nuclear bomb on a remote island. In the 1970s, strongman Park Chung-hee secretly pursued the development of a nuclear arsenal. The United States thwarted his ambitions, determined as it was to prevent further nuclear proliferation and maintain South Korea’s military and political dependency.

Meanwhile, the Kim family in the North sought to acquire its own nuclear weapons in order to build a state free from superpower interference, while also trumping its southern rival both militarily and politically. In 1964, Mao Zedong quietly turned down North Korea’s request for assistance, but Kim Il-sung continued to expand nuclear projects for both civilian and military purposes, with aid from the Soviet Union.

As North Korea pursued its nuclear objective over the space of several decades, international sanctions and sporadic diplomatic efforts were never likely to persuade it to change course. Nuclear weapons came to epitomize what the regime believed the DPRK must become: a strong, sovereign state, capable of standing on an equal footing with the United States and the wider world while sidelining South Korea as a US lackey. When Washington threatened to launch a surgical strike on North Korea’s nuclear installations in the 1990s, Kim Jong-il urged his father not to give way with the following words: “An Earth without the DPRK shouldn’t exist.” North Korea’s official media still often quotes his remark.

Status Anxiety

After six nuclear tests with a near-complete intercontinental ballistic missile system — all achieved through the sacrifices of a literally starving populace — Kim Jong-un, the current leader, should have found himself in the homestretch toward accomplishing the regime’s vision, unfolded over the course of three generations. However, the reality of his fourteen years in power paints a different picture.

With the brief exception of Donald Trump’s summit meetings with Kim in 2018–19, the United States has steadfastly refused to recognize North Korea as a nuclear state or as an equal. It also further strangled the North with intensified sanctions while revamping its economic and military alliances with Japan and South Korea.

Much of South Korean civil society once harbored a blend of sympathy and empathy toward the North, often tinged with nationalist feelings of respect for its defiance of the United States. Yet these political elements now began to view the North Korean regime as an embarrassment because of its dire human rights record and chronic economic despair.

During the same period, South Korea used its high-tech industrial base to equip all branches of its armed forces with top-tier weapons systems — everything, that is, except nukes. North Korea, on the other hand, has been unable to update its conventional military hardware for decades and is now heavily reliant on nuclear arms to boost its capabilities.

The DPRK has recently taken a more entrenched stance toward the South. Last year, Kim Jong-un announced that he would amend the constitution and declare the two Koreas to be separate states, rather than two parts of a divided nation in need of unification. In October of this year, a congress of the ruling party adopted a new constitution, whose contents remain undisclosed.

Kim reaffirmed his previous announcement in an address at a military academy: “In the past we often spoke of the liberation of the South and reunification by force. We are no longer interested in them as a separate state.” In a warning to the South, Kim said that “a wise politician would focus more on managing the situation instead of engaging in confrontation or antagonism with a nuclear power.”

Relations with China have reached a nadir since Kim Jong-un cemented his position of power. He did so by executing his Beijing-connected regent and uncle Jang Song-thaek in 2013, before having his exiled half brother Kim Jong-nam assassinated in 2017. The young leader suspected that China was grooming his estranged sibling as his replacement.

North Korea’s distrust of China turned to anger in 2023 as its erstwhile ally supported the latest round of sanctions at the United Nations and began to comply with them. In the context of a new Cold War, China has to prioritize its own economic interests, which remain enmeshed in the US-dominated global economy, over those of Kim Jong-un. Chinese government officials now increasingly view the DPRK leader as a stubborn liability who still rules a strategic buffer zone separating its territory from that of a direct US ally.

The North Korean economy, still struggling to recover to pre-famine levels, suffers from routine shortages of energy and food. Official supplies are supplemented by informal markets stocked with commodities smuggled from China, as well as products from small workshops and vegetable gardens. The informal sector is now dominated by emerging financiers known as “money lords,” who control increasingly sophisticated financial ecosystems and supply chains beyond state oversight.

Their connections, forged and lubricated through bribes, kickbacks, and personal ties, feed (and feed off) some of the upper echelons of the party bureaucracy. As their influence expands and the DPRK’s informal economic reliance on China deepens, these emerging financial merchants are likely to pose a threat to Kim’s monolithic rule.

Long-Distance Escalation

These were the factors shaping Kim Jong-un’s decision to send troops to Russia, wagering on the war that he believes will reshape the geopolitical environment to his advantage. Russia and North Korea have said that any military assistance in Ukraine would comply with international law, implicitly referencing a new mutual-defense treaty. The agreement binds both countries to support each other by all possible means if either finds themselves at war.

The departure of the DPRK’s elite forces from North Korea could temporarily lower the likelihood of military clashes on the peninsula itself, where tensions have been escalating since the breakdown of the last bilateral peacemaking efforts in 2020. However, history suggests that Korean involvement in a long-distance conflict will soon have ramifications on the home front.

Bankrolled by the United States, a total of 320,000 South Korean troops — more than 50 percent of the state’s ground forces — went to fight in Vietnam. North Korea responded by clandestinely sending psychological warfare units and a squadron of fighter pilots to North Vietnam. With large South Korean contingents deployed in Vietnam between 1966 and 1969, North Korea initiated small-scale but intense military campaigns against South Korea and the United States.

This period, later dubbed the DMZ Conflict or the Second Korean War by US military historians, was marked by skirmishes and ambushes around the demilitarized zone (DMZ). For the first time since the truce of 1953, Kim Il-sung sent hundreds of fighters across the DMZ in a failed attempt to replicate Vietnamese guerrilla campaigns. This effort reached its peak in January 1968 when North Korean commandos (unsuccessfully) attempted to raid the presidential palace in Seoul and seized the Pueblo, all in the space of eleven days.

While North Korean official history celebrated these three years as a second front of the Vietnamese liberation war, Kim’s enterprise was in fact a self-serving adventure that was not coordinated with the leaders of North Vietnam. According to the Vietnamese historian Do Thanh Thao Mien, Ho Chi Minh expressed frustration that Kim’s futile maneuvers were diverting global attention from Vietnam at a critical time, especially on the eve of the Tet offensive. The National Liberation Front insurgency had deep political roots in South Vietnam, but the forays Kim ordered had no such roots, and often inflicted casualties on innocent civilians in South Korea’s impoverished and remote mountainous regions as North Korean commandos appeared out of nowhere to claim villages.

Kim and Park both used the DMZ conflict, and the public fears it unleashed, to solidify their grip on power. After the conflict, Kim began laying the groundwork for hereditary succession, while Park crafted plans for a new constitution, later known as Yushin, that would enable him to become president for life.

The Korean states now seem to have reversed the roles that they were playing in Vietnam more than half a century ago. The conservative government of Yoon Suk-yeol has offered to send groups of intelligence officers to Ukraine to help interrogate North Korean captives and carry out propaganda campaigns. It is also considering direct shipment of lethal weapons to Ukraine. Public opinion in South Korea remains skeptical of such moves: according to one recent survey, just 13 percent back military support for Ukraine, with 66 percent believing that assistance should be limited to humanitarian aid.

With hardliners in power on both sides of the DMZ, the ongoing military rivalry means the two states are likely to respond to each other’s moves with further escalation. This will in turn heighten tensions on the Korean peninsula and could eventually prompt South Korea to send its own combat troops to Ukraine. It will also help rekindle South Korea’s own nuclear ambitions, which have also been recently bolstered by the election of Donald Trump, whose stance on nuclear proliferation is ambiguous at best.

The United States and its NATO allies would surely welcome deeper South Korean involvement in a war that has no end in sight, since it would enable them to sustain the conflict without the perception of further escalation or mobilization by European states. The arrival of Asian boots on a European battleground, with all the accompanying dangers, should motivate an international antiwar movement calling for an end to all military action in Ukraine.