For a time that has now long surpassed more than a decade, the international community has been able to witness the stark inability of the international community to deal effectively with the North Korean nuclear crisis, with growing alarm, which has ...
For a time that has now long surpassed more than a decade, the international community has been able to witness the stark inability of the international community to deal effectively with the North Korean nuclear crisis, with growing alarm, which has led to vigorous and ongoing debates on North Korea policy.
In these discussions, where arguments can be typically categorized into those that are supportive of engagement and those are more skeptical, a subject matter that has garnered much interest and speculation amongst its participants, and regardless of their respective views, has been the North Korea’s regime’s capacity to reciprocate.
Because the North Korean response is the most critical factor in determining the success or failure of any given policy, being able to predict whether or not North Korea will respond favorably when treated with a cooperative gesture is useful, to say the least, in constructing an effective strategy.
This study has converted the past decade-worth of media reports into statistical data upon which a quantitative experiment was conducted in order to examine the interactions that have occurred between North Korea, the United States, and South Korea for the period of 2001-2010.
With the aim of discerning whether North Korea has so far presented itself to be an engageable partner, a statistical model was specifically designed to detect patterns of strategic response–namely reciprocity, but also inverse response, policy inertia, and triangularity.
Through this experiment, it has been discovered that North Korea reciprocated sustainedly in its relationship with the United States; and also towards South Korea during the latter half of the period. In no instance was North Korea found to have exhibited a pattern of inverse response. In other words it never responded to cooperative gestures with aggression.
Also, and contrary to what has often been claimed, there was no evidence of a North Korean scheme to create divisions within the US-ROK alliance. Rather when North Korea received cooperative gestures from one partner it increased its level of cooperation towards the other in response.
Overall the results reveal that the past decade was a major missed opportunity. North Korea’s past behavior clearly indicates a willingness to enter into a more cooperative relationship with the two countries that are often regarded to be in a hostile relationship with the regime. Overall the results suggest that the entire crisis situation might have fared better if engagement had been pursued more aggressively.