Let’s play a game by pretending we are North Koreans. Let’s pretend that we are really serious about complete denuclearization. I know no one believes the idea but let’s give it a run anyway. Who knows? We might learn something from the exercise.

Let’s say our ultimate goal as North Koreans is to be relieved of crippling sanctions that prevent us from developing our country economically. The bulk of these sanctions are, of course, imposed or led by the United States.

Former President Barack Obama’s 2016 North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act and President Trump’s Executive Order 13810 essentially allow the US government to embargo and freeze the assets of any business, organization or individual trading in goods, services or technology with us. As Treasury Secretary Mnuchin so eloquently put it (and I am paraphrasing): foreign entities essentially have to choose to do business with North Korea or the US.

Let’s pretend our strategy for getting the US to the bargaining table has been to make nuclear weapons and then offer their dismantlement in exchange for sanctions relief. Given the fact that we have little else to offer the US, let’s go ahead and say this plan was the only one with any realistic hope of success.

Assuming normal diplomatic circumstances, let’s also say we were hoping the Singapore summit with President Trump would yield a concrete plan about the steps we could take to begin denuclearization. As far as I can tell, and to the disappointment of many in the media, this concrete plan has not materialized.

Given the fact that not a single US official has yet uttered the possibility of relieving sanctions, it would seem the US expectation is for us to denuclearize before anything happens in our favor. From our perspective, that doesn’t seem very fair since we have no guarantee anything will happen even if we do. So herein lies our dilemma: What can we do to leverage the US into negotiating concrete terms?

The first thing we can do is have our leader travel around the region and continue talking about peace, denuclearization, and the prospects for future economic relations. He can try to use whatever charisma he has to assemble a coalition of world leaders who might be interested in nudging the US into a deal. Ultimately, however, the final decision resides in Washington and current moods are not one in which the White House will be nudged easily.

In light of this, it becomes apparent we need a really good public relations campaign. We need to find some way to convince the world and Washington that we are really serious about giving up our nuclear aspirations.

We already made one feeble attempt in May when we blew up the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. Let’s be honest, that was amateurish. The assembled journalists didn’t get to see what was inside the tunnels before they blew up nor did they really possess the expertise to decide what was being blown up. It was an abject public relations failure across the board, worthy of being lambasted by Western media as a farce.

What we need to do instead is invite real experts along with the journalists. Let some International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors visit one of our nuclear waste sites. Maybe we can even tell the world how many nuclear weapons we have and let the IAEA inspect one of them. Heck, maybe we could even hand one over as a sign of good faith. Imagine the explosive optics that would get (no pun intended).

Short of things like this, I am not sure how we can ever convince the world we are serious. Returning the remains of US soldiers is nice but it is only a pleasantry compared to the serious image campaign that is needed. Again, this is assuming we really want to denuclearize.


Justin Fendos
Justin Fendos is a professor at Dongseo University in South Korea and the associate director of the Tan School at Fudan University in Shanghai. -- Ed.