Introduction

Former President Barack Obama advised then President-elect Donald Trump that North Korea would be his top national security challenge. The outgoing president’s warning was prescient. During President Trump’s first year in office, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and a thermonuclear weapon. It was also a year of saber-rattling rhetoric between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Trump. This escalation follows a dangerous pattern that has prevailed for 25 years.

On June 30, 2017, at a Republic of Korea (ROK)-U.S. summit, Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, agreed to pursue complete denuclearization of North Korea and a maximum pressure campaign to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table. They also agreed that South Korea would take the lead in establishing conditions for peaceful intra-Korean unification. In the year that followed, the allies implemented a targeted pressure campaign – to which this monograph will refer as “maximum pressure 1.0” – that included strong UN and U.S. sanctions on key North Korean entities and certain Chinese banks and facilitators. This campaign also included aggressive measures against the North’s global illicit activities, an international diplomatic effort, and increased emphasis on the military deterrence capabilities of the ROK-U.S. alliance. This pressure campaign cannot truly be described as “maximum,” however, since it lacked a holistic approach incorporating diplomatic and military pressure, cyber actions, and information and influence activities.

Conditions appeared to change in 2018, beginning with a seemingly conciliatory New Year’s Day speech by Kim and an invitation from Moon for the North to participate in the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea. South Korean, North Korean, and American officials soon initiated discussions that culminated in three summits between Moon and Kim and a summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim. These engagements led to the so-called Panmunjom and Pyongyang Declarations, which included tension-reduction and confidence-building measures aimed at reducing the potential for military confrontation along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and in the East and West Seas. Seoul and Pyongyang codified these measures in a Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) in September 2018.

U.S.-North Korean relations seemed to remain on a positive path during the beginning of 2019. A North Korean delegation visited the White House and scheduled a second Trump-Kim summit, which was eventually held in Hanoi in late February. However, Kim would not allow his negotiating team to discuss denuclearization, limiting talks to ancillary issues and summit preparations. At the summit, Kim demanded the removal of all sanctions imposed since March 2016, in return for closing North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility – a demand unacceptable to Trump, who walked out of the negotiations.

Kim’s failure to achieve substantial sanctions relief knocked him off balance. He almost certainly feels pressure from regime elites and the military to elicit additional concessions from the Trump administration. This perhaps explains a subsequent series of actions by Kim designed to enhance his legitimacy at home and coerce the United States into negotiations that would yield sanctions relief.

After Hanoi, the North began rehabilitating its Sohae missile launch facility, which Kim had promised at Singapore to dismantle. The DPRK military conducted exercises to demonstrate readiness and test-fired a new anti-tank guided missile system. Throughout the summer of 2019, the North tested a number of short-range ballistic missiles and multiple rocket launchers. There has been unusual training activity at the Yongbyon nuclear facility as well as reports of internal purges of North Korean officials associated with the nuclear negotiations. Finally, in an apparent attempt to shift blame for the Hanoi failure and separate Trump from his advisers, Pyongyang has spewed hostile rhetoric at the Trump administration – particularly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-National Security Adviser John Bolton – while refraining from verbal attacks on the president himself.

North-South military and diplomatic activities, meanwhile, have reached a standstill. Despite the easing of security procedures in the Joint Security Area and the destruction of a dozen guard posts, North Korea regularly skips scheduled liaison meetings at Kaesong. While Seoul has high hopes for the CMA, Pyongyang has demonstrated a lack of sincerity in implementing even basic confidence-building measures.

While the United States focuses its attention mostly on North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities, Pyongyang possesses other significant capabilities that threaten U.S. and allied interests. The Kim regime retains a formidable arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and its conventional military threat to the South remains substantial. Pyongyang has also developed a sophisticated cyber capability to hack banks, steal funds, conduct espionage, and execute influence operations in South Korea. In addition, North Korea routinely conducts illicit fundraising activities.

Finally, the Kim regime is one of the worst human rights abusers in the world. The 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry detailed the regime’s crimes against humanity and recommended Kim Jong Un for referral to the International Criminal Court. This was reaffirmed in a 17-page UN General Assembly report in August 2019.

That same month, a UN Panel of Experts also published a report on DPRK sanctions evasion activities. The 142-page report outlined Pyongyang’s global illicit activities, its extensive use of cyber operations to raise funds, and the methods it employs to evade UN sanctions. The report also provides an extensive list of entities contributing to these efforts.

In an interview with 38 North, the American member of the UN Panel of Experts highlighted Pyongyang’s cyber operations and its sanctions evasion activities:

In one notable example of the growing sophistication of the attacks, DPRK cyber actors gained access to the infrastructure managing entire ATM networks of a country in order to force 10,000 cash distributions to individuals across more than 20 countries in five hours…

The UN Panel of Experts report makes clear that maximum pressure 1.0 has not achieved its goals. The campaign has not achieved the denuclearization of North Korea. It has also failed to prevent Kim from obtaining the resources necessary for continued development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, for support to his conventional military, and most importantly, for regime survival.

This monograph offers a “Plan B” to drive Kim to relinquish his nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. It is “maximum pressure 2.0.” We delineate five lines of effort: diplomacy, military, cyber, sanctions, and information and influence activities. It builds on and expands the work of the United Nations and the United States from 2017 to 2018.

Any effective approach toward North Korea should be based on two new assumptions. The first recognizes that Kim will give up his nuclear program only when he concludes that the cost to him and his regime is too great – that is, when he believes possession of nuclear weapons threatens his survival. But external pressure alone, although important, will almost certainly fail to create the right cost-benefit ratio. It is the threat from the North Korean people that is most likely to cause Kim to give up his nuclear weapons. As former CIA analyst Jung Pak of the Brookings Institution has argued, “Kim fears his people more than he fears the United States. The people are his most proximate threat to the regime.” The ROK-U.S. alliance has yet to adopt a strategy with this in mind.

Kim, the DPRK military, and the North Korean elite must be made to recognize that keeping nuclear weapons poses an internal threat to their survival. External threats and actions alone will not suffice, though they are important. In addition, if these actors choose not to relinquish their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, a maximum pressure 2.0 campaign should threaten to weaken the regime.

The second new assumption is that Kim will continue to employ a strategy based on subversion of South Korea; coercion and extortion of the international community to gain political and economic concessions; and ultimately the use of force to unify the peninsula under the domination of the North, thereby ensuring the survival of the Kim family regime. A key element of his strategy is to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States. Kim’s strategy can best be described as a “long con” whereby he extracts as much as possible for the regime while conceding little to nothing and preparing to achieve unification under his control. Kim is pursuing a strategy established long ago by his grandfather and improved by his father.

This assumption requires the United States and South Korea to prepare for the possibility that Kim might refuse to relinquish his weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This assumption is buttressed by a U.S. intelligence estimate maintaining that he is unlikely to denuclearize. This cannot be discounted and must be factored into a new strategy.

Plan B Overview

The proposed Plan B strategy consists of five elements: diplomatic, military, cyber, economic and financial sanctions, and information and influence activities.

The diplomatic component focuses on mobilizing the international community to adopt the maximum pressure 2.0 campaign and enforce domestic and international law to stop the regime’s illicit activities. Employing the U.S.-ROK strategy working group established in November 2018 will help the alliance prevent South Korean backsliding on the pressure campaign. While South Korea describes many of its projects in conjunction with the North as economic engagement activities, they are merely conduits for funds that flow directly to the Kim regime.

The military element rests on the military readiness of the ROK-U.S. alliance. Any reduction in the alliance’s combat readiness will reduce Kim’s incentive to negotiate and invite North Korean aggression. Accordingly, the United States and South Korea must engage in robust combined training and other military activities. These should include aggressive maritime intercept operations to combat ship-to-ship transfers that facilitate North Korean sanctions evasion and proliferation. Military training and exercises must be conducted without regard to Pyongyang’s propaganda. No matter how benign, ROK-U.S. military activities will always receive Northern criticism. Moreover, the suspension or cancellation of military activities has never elicited a good faith response from Pyongyang.

A more aggressive U.S. cyber campaign is necessary to combat the damage and illicit revenue generated by the North’s cyber activities. Cyber provides a critical asymmetric capability for the Kim regime. Pyongyang is pursuing new cyber techniques to support its efforts to steal hard and crypto currency and conduct espionage and influence operations. The United States and the international community must counter these threats.

The UN and U.S. sanctions regimes must be expanded and fully enforced, including by targeting non-North Korean entities, banks, and individuals that enable Pyongyang’s sanctions evasion activities. This must include enforcement of UN sanctions on North Korean overseas laborers. Likewise, the United States must intensify its scrutiny of North Korea’s shipping sector through monitoring and surveillance efforts in areas known for illicit ship-to-ship transfers. Sanctions must not be used as a bargaining chip. North Korea must comply with all UN and U.S. sanctions – by denuclearizing, terminating its missile programs, ceasing its illicit activities, and ending its human rights abuses – before they are lifted. Sanctions and enforcement must be incorporated into the diplomatic approach and coordinated with information and influence activities.

Robust information and influence activities must also be part of maximum pressure 2.0. The campaign must separate the Kim family regime from the second-tier leadership and general population. Achieving this goal could generate an internal threat that prompts Kim to give up his nuclear weapons. Providing the North Korean people with more outside information, including information related to the regime’s horrific human rights record, would undermine the legitimacy of the Kim regime.

The following five chapters provide a plan policymakers and strategists could implement to protect and advance U.S. interests on the Korean Peninsula. Following his failure at Hanoi, Kim gave an ultimatum to the United States, stating that by the end of 2019, Washington must “adopt a new posture” toward the North if denuclearization negotiations are to continue. It is therefore necessary to prepare for what may come next in 2020, while leaving open the possibility that Kim might adopt a less confrontational approach.

Maximum pressure 2.0 rests on a foundation of sustained pressure and military strength. This is necessary even as the United States continues to pursue working level negotiations that give Kim the opportunity to denuclearize. Should he not make the right strategic decision, the United States and its South Korean allies would then have in place the strategy and forces necessary to deter or defeat the North.