North Korea's negotiation strategy has drawn the attention of global society by its various behaviors starting from the armistice agreement of the Korean War to current North Korean nuclear negotiations. The method of North Korean negotiations is anal...
North Korea's negotiation strategy has drawn the attention of global society by its various behaviors starting from the armistice agreement of the Korean War to current North Korean nuclear negotiations. The method of North Korean negotiations is analyzed to derive the typical communist negotiation tactics and strategies. Moreover, this study tries the draw its own characteristics considering the nation's ideological and cultural particularity, and its political and economic situation in order to carve out a unique negotiation formula. Although the country's strategy varies by the purpose and character of negotiation, North Korea is achieving a relatively fair results in dealing with the United States about the current nuclear issues with thorough planned tactics, and scheme.
Nuclear power of this communist nation is becoming a serious threat to promotion of global peace not only in the Korean peninsula but also in the East Asia. Moreover, possession of nuclear armament of North Korea has eventually made the nuclear proliferation. Especially, the Republic of Korea faces not with standing the serious threat than any other nation does, there is the limit to solve the matter between the two nations due to North with talk only. It is a great relief for South Korea since the United States is reacting decisively to North Korean nuclear development. The United States perceives that nuclear development of the so-called "axis of evil", is a grim threat not only to the world peace but to their own national security as well. In order to terminate North Korean nuclear crisis, the United States drew out North korean consent in Geneva Conventions of 1994, and has attempted diverse methods including making its return to six-party talks while all of them showing no significant progress. Although the reason of this congestion could be analyzed in a number of ways, three general causes are as follows:
First, the nuclear problem of North Korea is deeply connected with the nation's regime. The communist regime is in a desperate situation of preserving dictatorship against the wave of globalism. The nation believes the grown of nuclear power amid the faltering regime can be a panacea for centralization and reinforcement of the bureaucracy. Secondly, North Korea utilized nuclear negotiation as a means of incorporating the U.S. as the conversing party in the negotiation and leaving the South out of the picture in South-North Korean contest. North Korea intends to gain superiority in the South-North relationship. Lastly, following the economic crisis caused by the fall of communism from the late 1980s, the North fronts the nuclear problem in order to profit through trade with the Western world including the United States.
Therefore, this study is approaching the problem in two ways. One is to restrain the North's nuclear research, which endangers the harmony within the peninsula, and the other is to analyze its negotiational behavior and strategy to gain scholarly depth and make use of the knowledge as accumulated data for future agreements. In order to accomplish this research purpose, the author based on the previous theories related to negotiation strategy, and attained practical data by collecting analects and interviews from negotiation participants. Particularly, the researcher utilized his own participating experience during South-North Korean high-level talks(Fifth) and other disclosed/non-disclosed data collected from agreements with the United States in order to improve the paper's confidential level. Also, due to the study's peculiarity, I selected qualitative method over quantitative method.
The brief summary of the paper is as follows. Above all, 'strengthening the autocracy', the basis of North Korea's nuclear negotiation, is both a dependent variable and the biggest goal of the negotiation. Four main independent variables which influence the nation to achieve this negotiation's goal are listed below.
First is the maintaining the stability of the regime. North Korean regime has been under serious tremble following various events such as globalization, a worldwide phenomenon, the fall of communism, China's adaptation of market economy, South Korea's 'northward diplomacy', the death of former leader Kim Il-sung, and etc.. The current North Korean leader Kim Jung-il, who rose to power following Kim Il-sung's death in July 8th, 1994, followed the policy of his father to stabilize the regime, and concentrated in 'military-first' policy to seize control in the physical power. However, the regime still faltered due to Kim's recurring illness, and the country needed a breakthrough. Becoming a nuclear state by developing nuclear technology was an attractive and unavoidable choice for the regime and its citizens. North Korean civilians are making a hero of their autocrat Kim Jung-il, a leading figure developing nuclear powers.
Second is the issue of revitalizing the economy. Since the foundation of the regime, economic problem has become North Korea's biggest concern. Especially, the economic woes of early 1990s' were the worst when thousands of people died of hunger due to the fall of communism, decline of Chinese food aid, and decrease of self-produced food. In order to revitalize the economy, North Korea declared the 'Najin-Sunbong Free Trade Zone' development plan to make such place a hub of raw material processing station, intermediary transport and international attraction, showing a drastic change in terms of external openness. However, the process was very meager to stagnant foreign investment. Also, innovative policy named '7.1 improvements in economic management' was introduced, which took actions on every category of North Korean economy such as steep rise in wages and costs including the abolishment of rationing system, reform in price setting system, partial delegation of national planning authority, self-management authority delegated in a number of producing industry, and the opening of