Abstract
By the mid-1990s there were five states which appeared to the Clinton administration to threaten the security of the US and which, in the view of a number of US policy makers and academics posed a threat to the stability of the entire international system.1 Three of these states — Libya, Iraq and Iran — were troublesome not simply because of their domestic ideologies which in one way or the other challenged the legitimacy of the view that only representative democracy offered a suitable model of domestic political development and not only because these states’ foreign policy demonstrated a tendency to independence (of US tutelage). They were of importance to the US and the West in general for strategic/economic reasons; specifically their control over vast oil resources.
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Notes
This chapter appeared in its initial form as a paper to the conference on North Korea in the New World Order, which took place at City of London Polytechnic (now London Guildhall University), October 1992. It developed as a chapter entitled ‘DPRK Foreign Policy in the 1990s: more Realist than Revolutionary’, in Stephen Chan and Andrew Williams (eds), Renegade States (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994) and has been further brought up to date for this volume.
This is the word used by Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, in Korea: The Unknown War (New York: Pantheon, 1988), p. 172.
For the classic exposition of Political Realism as a framework for the understanding of international politics see Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: the Struggle for Power and Peace, Sixth edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985). For a brief but useful discussion about Political Realism and other frameworks used to understand and interpret international politics see Michael Banks, ‘The Inter-paradigm Debate’, in Margot Light and A.J.R. Groom, (eds) International Relations: a Handbook of Current Theory (London: Pinter, 1985), pp. 7–26.
See for instance Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, Korea: the Unknown War (New York: Pantheon, 1988) and Max Hastings, The Korean War (London: Michael Joseph, 1987). On the causes of the war see also I.F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1952).
A useful overview of the period 1945–1954 can be found in European Ecumenical Network on Korea, The Reunification of Korea: the Background (London: KEEP/CIIR, 1989), pp. 13–19.
Jon Halliday, ‘The North Korean Enigma’, in C. Carciofi et al. (eds), Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), p. 117.
Gavan McCormack, ‘Mists clearing: Forecasts for the Past and Future History of the DPRK’, paper given to the First Pacific Basin International Conference on Korean Studies, Honolulu, Hawaii, July/August 1992, pp. 2–3.
Ibid., p. 3.
Although the official emissions are written in such a manner as to create disbelief to say the least. For the official version of the Pochonbo battle for instance see Party History Research Institute, History of Revolutionary Activities of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung (Pyongyang: Party History Research Unit, 1983), pp. 115–25.
Gordon White, ‘North Korean Chuch’e: The Political Economy of Independence’, in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 7, no. 2, 1975, p. 45.
Ibid.
The Juche idea underlies all state policies in the cultural, economic, technical, political, social and personal aspects of North Korean society. See Kim Jong Il, On the Juche Idea (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1982); and for a critique see White, ‘North Korean Chuch’e: The Political Economy of Independence’, in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, op.cit. For current north Korean thinking see the regularly published journal Study of the Juche Idea, (Tokyo: International Institute of the Juche Idea).
Kim Han Gil, Modern History of Korea (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1979), p. 245.
Kim Il Sung, quoted in ibid.
Ibid.
Tony Thorndike, ‘The Revolutionary Approach: the Marxist Perspective’, in Trevor Taylor (ed.), Approaches and Theory in International Relations (London: Longman, 1985), p. 56.
Ibid., pp. 54–99.
Kim Il Sung, On the Non-Aligned Movement (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1982), p. 15.
European Parliament, Committee on External Economic Relations Draft Report On the Community’s Trade Relations with North Korea, PE 99.748, Rapporteur: Michael Hindley, 17 July 1985, p. 12.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Background Brief, North Korea: Joining the World?, June 1992, p. 1. These figures are inevitably somewhat speculative. A 1982 South Korean estimate of the DPRK’s total foreign debt including that to the then USSR and the PRC was of some $3000 million. See European Parliament, On the Community’s Trade Relations with North Korea, 17 July 1985, p. 15.
European Parliament, On the Community’s Trade Relations with North Korea, 17 July 1985, p. 15.
For the DPRK’s view on the 1972–1975 north-south talks see Kim Han Gil, Modern History, pp. 510–21.
The proposal can be found in Korea Today, no. 4 (403), Pyongyang, 1990, pp. 2–3. My original discussion of this is in Hazel Smith, ‘An End to Isolation? North Korea in the 1990s’, in LSE Magazine, vol. 2, no. 3, Autumn 1990, p. 34.
For the DPRK’s assessment of ROK/US/Japanese military cooperation see Foreign Languages Publishing House (FLPH), ‘Team Spirit’: Nuclear War Game (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1986).
For a useful analysis of balance of power theory see Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 101–26.
The most well known exponent of theories of bureaucratic politics is Graham Allison. See Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little & Brown, 1971). The theories were developed within the framework of a study of foreign policy making within a democratic polity, but there appears to be no reason why the theories could not be applicable to an authoritarian state.
Kim Il Sung, ‘Answers to questions raised by a delegation of journalists of Washington Times from the United States — April 12, 1992’, in Study of the Juche Idea, no. 59, October 1992, pp. 1–2.
The efforts to improve standards of living are stressed in various pronouncements including Kim Il Sung, ‘New Year Address, January 1, 1991’, reproduced in Study of the Juche Idea, no. 53 (Tokyo: Shuhachi Inoue, April 1991).
Kim Il Sung, For a Free and Peaceful New World, (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1991), p. 6; see also New Year Address of Kim Il Sung, Bulletin, no. 01/0193, 1 January 1993, p. 3.
Order of Marshal Kim Jong Il, Bulletin, no. 09/0393, 8 March 1993.
The text of the agreement can be found in Bulletin, no. 12/1090, 5 October 1990, pp. 6–7.
Kim Il Sung, ‘Answers to questions …’, Study of the Juche Idea, no. 59, October 1992, p. 3.
See Banks, ‘The Inter-Paradigm Debate’, in Margot Light and A.J.R. Groom, (eds) International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory (London: Pinter, 1985), pp. 7–26.
For a development of these themes see Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977).
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Smith, H. (1996). North Korean Foreign Policy in the 1990s: the Realist Approach. In: Smith, H., Rhodes, C., Pritchard, D., Magill, K. (eds) North Korea in the New World Order. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24981-7_6
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