North Korea's Foreign Policy

The DPRK's Part on the International Scene and Its Audiences

Lenka Caisova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138493438
• eBook ISBN: 9781351028080
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses North Korean foreign policy since 1994, aiming to better understand the part the DPRK plays in international politics. Pyongyang is the country's capital and largest city. To the north and northwest, the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok and Tumen rivers; it is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone separating the two. Nevertheless, North Korea, like its southern counterpart, claims to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula and adjacent islands. Both North Korea and South Korea became members of the UN in 1991.

Applying the role theoretical approach to North Korea for the first time, this book charts the continuities and changes in North Korean foreign policy, drawing on content analysis of North Korean periodicals. It begins with an identification of roles, before analysing the relationship between these roles and foreign policy in practice. In particular, it examines the links between role shifts and changes in interaction with the U.S. and South Korea. This book also demonstrates that the existence of pressure, sanctions and confrontations have contributed to a confrontational, isolationist and inward-looking foreign policy.

Therefore, it argues, one should be aware that if the DPRK is constantly treated as if it is a nuclear state – and even a rogue state – it is much easier for it to enact a role on the international stage which reflects this. As a study of the foreign policy of the world's most controversial and secretive country, this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Korean politics and international relations, as well as Asian Studies more generally.

1 Introduction

North Korean foreign policy and the role theory

In the last 20 or 30 years, North Korean foreign policy has become an increasingly popular topic for researchers all over the world. Very often, papers published in that particular field outnumber those dealing with North Korean domestic politics. For example, there have been historical works mapping the developments of North Korean diplomacy (e.g. Armstrong 2013), publications dealing with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (hereinafter referred to as the DPRK) relations with particular countries (e.g. Suh 2014), an increasing number of studies whose authors try to detect crucial processes and determinants influencing North Korean foreign policy formation (e.g. Frank 2010) and many more.¹ Nevertheless, not much attention has been paid either to North Korean perceptions of its own role in international politics or to the evolution of those perceptions. As I want to fill the existing gap, I focus on the issue of North Korean foreign-political roles and their projection to the practical foreign policies of the DPRK. I aim to pay special attention to the patterns of changes that have appeared in the composition of the North Korean role sets. In order to grasp this phenomenon, I use the conceptual framework of the role theory that was introduced to the field of foreign policy analysis (hereinafter referred to as FPA) by Kalevi J. Holsti (1970). This role theory² enables us to approach the study of North Korean politics in a unique way which has not yet been used for DPRK’s FPA. The only exception was a tangential analysis made by Holsti (1970) at the beginning of the 1970s. Nevertheless, I will demonstrate later that his approach to the roles states play³ was different from the one I intend to work with.⁴

Role theory’s innovativeness lies mainly in the way it suggests we should approach foreign policy. It proposes using the perspective of the self-presentation of a nation in the international environment. Besides this innovation, role theory also helps us to grasp non-material aspects influencing the foreign political behaviour of states (Breuning 2011, p. 22) and enables us to grasp the stable patterns, continuities and changes of their foreign policies. Furthermore, it bridges various levels of analysis, i.e. the levels of individual, society and system: the way the elites (individuals) understand the foreign political role of their nation or state (unit) is closely connected with their interaction with the international environment (system) (cf. Le Prestre 1997, pp. 6–7). Chafetz et al. (1996) also mention that the role theoretic approach enables us to explain the foreign political actions of states, as the roles may function as relatively stable stepping stones providing certain guidelines for foreign policy formation.

Another strength of the role theoretic approach can be directly connected with North Korean FPA. When searching for suitable analytic tools for the FPA of Third World countries, Sofiane Sekhri (2009) mentions role theory as a useful analytic framework, and her conclusions can be linked to the North Korean case too. She deals with the existing obstacles such as the regime closeness in Third World countries, the unavailability of reliable data as far as the decision-making processes and bureaucratic networks are concerned and the usefulness of speeches of the official representatives who often are not genuine about the motivations of actions they undertake. In particular, Sekhri (2009, p. 431) argues that neither dishonesty nor irrationality is a reason to reject the usefulness of the role theoretic approach. This is especially relevant for my analysis too. Besides the fact that these features can easily be found even in Western democracies, sincerity or veracity of the speech acts is not really the issue I aim to investigate here. Rather, I focus on how the North Korean elites represent the role the DPRK should play in international politics and how this representation impacts the way they implement the actual policies. Therefore, the starting point for me is the analysis of North Korean roles perceived as the self-presentations of a nation on the international scene. Later, I will make clearer that I perceive roles mainly as products of the DPRK’s interactions with other actors on the international scene, which is closely connected with my metatheoretical background discussed below. Last but not least, the usefulness of role theory for FPA of authoritarian regimes is confirmed by the existence of studies dealing with China (Shih 1988; or Beylerian and Canivet 1997), Belarus (Chafetz et al. 1996), Russia (Grossman 2005) and many other cases. The pivotal article written by Holsti (1970) also analyses the foreign policy of authoritarian countries.

Of course, the role theoretic approach suffers from weaknesses as well. Thies (2009, p. 35) mentions the vagueness of the concept of ‘role’ itself when arguing that many interpretations of it have appeared. Although the role theory offers ‘rich conceptual language complete with numerous built in propositions for foreign policy analysts to explore’, as Cameron Thies (2009, p. 35) states, the approach suffers from the lack of its own methodological apparatus which could be used for coherent study of the roles (Wehner and Thies 2014, p. 413). Nevertheless, this problem can be surmounted relatively easily by supplementing role theory with methods of content or discourse analysis. Many authors using role theory do so (compare, e.g. Holsti 1970; Le Prestre 1997; McCourt 2012; or Wehner and Thies 2014) and this study will not be any exception.

Another problem that requires some attention is connected with the constructivist framework which many scholars using role theory have recently adopted. As Breuning (2011, p. 22) points out, the border between the constructivist writings on identity or self-image and constructivist works dealing with national roles (hereinafter referred to as NR or simply role) is rather vague. Moreover, the interactionist wave in role theory introduced a gap in understanding the definitions of key role theoretic concepts (such as role change) (ibid.). I address this problem in detail by grasping the issue of role change. Last but not least, Breuning (2011, p. 22) claims that the potential of role theory to grasp the non-material aspects of foreign policy behaviour has not been sufficiently exploited yet. I try to deal with this reproach by paying more attention to the process of the social construction of roles. First, I hope I will be able to contribute to the debates about the social sources of roles and their changes. Second, I also aim to bring an alternative interpretation of North Korean foreign policy based on the social constructivist positions in role theory. The second aim is especially relevant, as this approach has not yet been used for DPRK’s FPA.

Lastly, there is one more difficulty associated with the way I interpret North Korean foreign policy. Although I am able to know and further analyse the products of the foreign policy formation, i.e. roles North Korea declares, I am unable to fully grasp the processes of North Korean foreign policy making. Nevertheless, the aim of my investigation is not to reveal these processes. Rather, I want to understand how the particular foreign policies that are chosen by North Korean significant others influence the foreign political roles the DPRK declares. In my analysis, I approach North Korean foreign policy in the light of relevant statements of the regime elites.

This leads me to the goals I have delineated for this study. First of all, I aim to better understand how North Korea perceives the part it plays (or should play) in international politics and how its interaction with other actors impacts that. I aim to do so because I believe the revelation of these aspects can potentially help to facilitate communication with the DPRK. I will achieve the above-mentioned goal by using a specific tool for interpretation of the DPRK’s foreign policy, i.e. role theory. To be more specific, I adopt the role theory prism⁵ in order to find and grasp the patterns of continuities and changes in the roles North Korea declares. After I identify the roles North Korea claims, I aim to examine the relation⁶ between these roles and the actual foreign policy of the DPRK. In particular, I aim to identify the situations where significant changes in role saliency occur, where the DPRK either starts to emphasize some role over another or where the old roles are rejected and new roles appear. After I do so, my goal is to contextualize these role shifts with the shifts in actual North Korean foreign policy and with North Korean interaction with its significant others. I believe the identification of the formative moments or the situations in which they occur can help me to better understand the dynamics of North Korean foreign political processes and to reveal and interpret some sources of the changes.

At this point, I also feel obligated to make clearer both my metatheoretical commitments and my position as far as the existing approaches within role theory are concerned. I perceive myself as a moderate social constructivist. Thus, I believe I can generate useful knowledge about the world we live in, i.e. I can actually approach and know the roles North Korea declares for itself using the method of content analysis of North Korean discourses. Therefore, from an epistemological point of view, like Alexander Wendt (1999, pp. 39–40), I believe in science in the framework of a socially constructed world. As it has probably become obvious after reading the previous paragraph, my scientific goal is understanding: I want to better understand how North Korea perceives the part it plays in international politics and how its interaction with other actors impacts that, as it can potentially facilitate communication with the DPRK.

As a result of my metatheoretical stance, I am interested in the social roots of North Korean foreign policy. Thus, I incline to the interactionist tradition of role theory (which I later call the second wave of role theory). Of course, adopting the interactionist or constructivist stance brings certain implications for my investigation. First, I approach roles mainly as products of an actor’s interactions with its significant others, i.e. the primary socializing agents for a particular role beholder (Harnisch 2011, p. 8. Second, from my point of view, roles cannot be understood as objectively existing facts, but rather as North Korean expressions of the part it plays (or should play) in international politics. Again, these expressions are co-constituted in the process of interactions with significant others. Furthermore, I claim that these expressions can change and do change, which may result from the North Korean interactions with their significant others. I choose the role theoretic approach to the study of North Korean foreign policy as I want to offer a more social interpretation of this phenomenon. The majority of existing works⁷ do not approach the DPRK in that manner, although it might bring us to a useful and alternative understanding of the DPRK’s foreign policy.

Of course, by admitting that significant others are an important part of the roles North Korea claims, the need emerges to find out who the significant others are in the North Korean context. Some actors (such as the United States (hereinafter referred to as the U.S.) and South Korea) seem to be obvious representatives of this group, whereas the influence of other actors (such as various human rights groups and coalitions) on North Korean roles’ formation is much less apparent. So far, there has been a serious lack of literature dealing with this issue, and thus it is one of my objectives here to determine who the significant others were in the time period I examined.

The main goal I have described above will be accomplished in two steps. The first step is to identify the roles North Korea declared for itself between 1994⁸ and the present (at time of writing, 2015) using the method of content analysis of two kinds of texts. First, I concentrate on the discourses delivered by the regime elites. I located these texts in North Korean periodicals because the original full-text recordings or transcriptions were, with some exceptions, unavailable. Second, I analyse carefully selected general texts⁹ and foreign policy-focused articles or extracts from articles published in The Pyongyang Times newspaper and Korea Today magazine. The fact that news writers’ statements articulated in articles function as a regime bullhorn, makes it possible to accept them as relevant resources where we can also look for the roles. I thoroughly explain the process of selection of relevant materials later in this volume (p. 37 and following). Like Aggestam (1999), I assume that deep analysis of the roles a nation declares can help us to trace changes in the operational framework of its foreign policy. Furthermore, the analysis and identification of the roles North Korea declares also seems to be a feasible instrument for tracking down the long-term patterns of North Korean foreign political behaviour.¹⁰ The first step results in the formation of a codebook which follows the developments and changes in sets of North Korean NRs. The codebook extract is enclosed at the end of this book as Appendix 1.

Once the codebook is created, I am able both to identify certain preliminary patterns of continuities and changes that occurred in the role sets and to concretize the significant others in opposition to which the DPRK defines itself. After that, the second step follows. I work further with the codebook as I try to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Seriestitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: North Korean foreign policy and the role theory
• 2 Role theoretic approach and delineation of the crucial concepts
• 3 Semantic content analysis and the identification of national roles
• 4 Roles in North Korean discourses
• 5 The DPRK’s interactions, role changes and fluctuations
• 6 Conclusion: how do the roles matter?
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Index