The launch of the Nodong missile was only the fourth successful test of the missile since its development in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The launch followed a series of short-range missile and rocket launches along the North Korean coastline and coincided with large-scale U.S. and South Korean joint military exercises. Meanwhile, the United States, South Korea and Japan participated in a leadership summit in Europe — on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit — on the fourth anniversary of the sinking of a South Korean navy corvette, the ChonAn.

 

Just ahead of the Nodong tests, North Korea accused the South of fomenting tensions by scattering anti-North Korean leaflets near the Yellow Sea border. At the same time, Pyongyang criticized Seoul's continued claims that the North was behind the ChonAn sinking, and it warned of potential military action against the South. Earlier in the week, Ri Tong Il, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, cautioned that if the United States did not cease its "nuclear blackmail" of North Korea — a reference to nuclear-capable aircraft and submarines taking part in the ongoing military exercises, but also to the continuing U.S. nuclear umbrella over South Korea — that the North would have to demonstrate what the ambassador called North Korea's self-defensive nuclear deterrent, which is shorthand for conducting another nuclear test. 

 

This confrontational posture seems to contrast with North Korea's diplomatic moves to ease tensions with its neighbors and the United States. North Korean and Japanese delegates have been meeting, and Pyongyang recently arranged for the daughter of a kidnapped Japanese citizen to meet in Mongolia with her Japanese grandparents. North Korea is once again working with Japan to resolve the kidnapping issue — which has its roots in the 1970s and 1980s, when North Korean agents purportedly abducted Japanese citizens and brought them to the North in an effort to learn about Japan — several years after talks between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il began to bear progress. Tokyo and Pyongyang have suggested that a resolution of the kidnapping issue could pave the way for formal diplomatic relations between the countries. 

 

North Korea also recently hosted reunions between separated Korean families. Furthermore, Pyongyang has reopened the Kaesong special economic zone and has subtly changed some of its rhetoric concerning South Korean President Park Geun Hye, suggesting Pyongyang could engage in summit diplomacy with Park. North Korea has also resumed unofficial talks with the United States, and a North Korean nuclear envoy currently in Beijing is rumored to be preparing for quiet meetings in a third country with a U.S. delegation. Pyongyang is also holding talks with China and Russia — expanding trade and transportation ties with each — and recently released an American and an Australian who had been in custody in North Korea. Pyongyang's diplomatic offensive appears to show a willingness, if not an eagerness, to re-engage with the other members of the six-party talks, as well as to break free from its diplomatic and economic isolation.

If the diplomatic efforts appear to contradict North Korea's rhetoric and its perceived military provocations, it is in part a reflection of a long-standing pattern of North Korean behavior, where seemingly belligerent action goes hand in hand with diplomatic engagement. As early as the 1960s, less than a decade after the conclusion of the Korean War and three decades before the United Nations recognized North Korea, Pyongyang began to pair an aggressive rhetorical stance, sometimes bolstered by physical action, with a pursuit of quiet negotiations with the United States. Pyongyang sought through those negotiations to end the U.S. force presence in South Korea and to normalize relations with Washington. North Korea saw the United States as the biggest hindrance to a unified Korea, but Pyongyang also saw relations with Washington as a way to balance the much closer presence of Russia, China and Japan, each of which sought to exert its own influence over the peninsula. 

 

 

By the 1980s, North Korea was reaching a point where even if U.S. troops were to leave South Korea, Pyongyang would be less likely to win a new Korean War and force reunification. That is when North Korea's leadership began in earnest to pursue a nuclear deterrent. Attempts during the 1980s by North Korea to re-engage the United States bore small successes. But the North's attempted assassination of the South Korean president in Myanmar in 1983 and the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987 disrupted these efforts. Yet amid the heightened tensions, by the end of 1988, Washington and Pyongyang were holding low-level official talks in Beijing.

 

The perception of rising North Korean assertiveness ultimately spurred Washington to engage rather than attack. In 1991, North and South Korea were both admitted to the United Nations — a tacit acceptance by the United States that North Korea was a legitimate country — and Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to a joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. They signed the declaration the following year. By 1994, the United States and North Korea had negotiated the Agreed Framework to end Pyongyang's nuclear program in return for light-water reactors, food and fuel aid. The framework opened the possibility of further talks toward normalization. 

Twenty years later, the North Korean nuclear issue remains unresolved. Pyongyang has conducted three nuclear tests, and diplomatic relations still appear far off. To a great degree, this is because U.S. and North Korean goals do not mesh, and domestic political pressures prevent rapid progress. Pyongyang's list of demands includes U.S. troops' departure from South Korea, a declaration of non-aggression toward North Korea by the United States and the replacement of the armistice with a peace accord. Ultimately, Pyongyang wants to move toward unification on Korean terms. This is largely impossible, at least in terms favorable to the North, given the economic and political disparity between the North and South. To bridge that gap, Pyongyang seeks to break out of its economic isolation, but this requires a shift in its relations with the United States. Washington shapes and controls sanctions against North Korea, and the risks for foreign businesses, and for nations other than China or Russia, to more actively engage the North economically are just too high. 

 

The United States, on the other hand, wants North Korea denuclearized, is relatively agnostic on unification and wants to prevent the proliferation of nuclear material or missiles from North Korea to what Washington considers rogue states, or to non-state actors. U.S. forces in South Korea are a critical component of the U.S. force posture in Asia — though Washington would prefer to keep fewer and more mobile forces in Korea — and Washington does not want to allow China or Russia to dominate the Korean Peninsula because that would destabilize Japanese security. 

 

 

Before it is willing to engage in constructive talks with North Korea, Washington requires Pyongyang to give up its nuclear deterrent, halt its missile program and effectively rely on the good intentions of the United States. Pyongyang may want talks and a different relationship, but its long history with the United States, the precedent the United States has set of assisting or actively carrying out the overthrow of regimes it does not favor and the significant mismatch in conventional forces leave Pyongyang unable or unwilling to give up its defensive posture. Pyongyang does not trust that the United States will remain passive toward the North, and it does not trust that U.S. policy will remain consistent from one administration to the next.

 

This leaves North Korea in a difficult position. It wants to alter the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and reshape its relations with Washington, but it cannot be certain that moves that enable changes in its international position would not also leave North Korea vulnerable to external interference. Pyongyang sees several factors that lead it to fear the effect of open engagement on the stability of its own leadership: The sheer number of so-called color revolutions, the U.S. policy reversal on Libya that led to the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi and, more recently, Washington and Europe's apparent intervention in Ukraine to help overthrow a democratically elected government.  

 

As a result, North Korea continues to demonstrate its defensive capabilities and military determination even as it seeks at least small openings for economic and diplomatic relations abroad. Behaviors that appear to contradict each other are in actuality tightly interwoven. North Korea is a vulnerable country, surrounded by big powers with historically hostile intentions, and the United States has a poor track record of defending the interests of the Koreans, despite its intervention in 1950. Kim Jong Un is secure in his position as leader of North Korea and is balancing political consolidation, economic experimentation and strategic security. While Pyongyang knows what it would like, and what it needs to ease its economic hardships and raise the standard of living in the semi-isolated state, it remains in too weak a position to even slightly ease its defensive posture.