Series: North Korean Missile Launches: Their Aims 3: Pathway to U.S.-North Korea Negotiations

North Korea has been conducting missile launch tests since the end of September, and also launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile on November 18. This is the third in a series of interviews with an expert on North Korean affairs about the situation and future trends in North Korea, which has conducted a series of missile launch tests. The experts pointed out that there was a visible appearance of North Korea’s strategy to exploit the internal situation in South Korea. We will explain this point.
First, we will describe what we heard about the third reason for the missile launch, as described by the Korean affairs expert.
North Korea is seeking to resume negotiations with the U.S. and North Korea, and is using the missile test as a tool to achieve this goal. North Korea believes that by conducting repeated missile and nuclear tests, it can resume U.S.-North Korea negotiations and also develop the negotiations to North Korea’s advantage. It is also hoping to intimidate the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, and once dialogue begins, it will be able to reap huge economic rewards for keeping a “hard-line North Korea” at bay. (This is how Korean affairs experts describe the situation.)

The experts’ view is that North Korea has repeatedly launched missiles in order to encourage U.S.-North Korea negotiations and to make them more favorable to its own interests.
Indeed, in the past, North Korea has repeatedly launched missiles when negotiations with the U.S. were not taking place. The Obama administration had instituted a policy of “strategic patience,” at which time North Korea was improving its weapons capabilities. In other words, North Korea has often turned to hard-line measures when negotiations with the U.S. and other countries are not taking place, and this is exactly the kind of situation that has been created in the current phase.
Once during the Biden administration, we heard that “Special Representative of North Korea Song Kim is negotiating with North Korea,” but since then, we have not heard such talk either. When we asked another expert about this, he replied, “I have heard that the U.S. has been negotiating with North Korea since the Biden administration, but only a few times. He pointed out that this may be fake news to hide what the administration is unable to do, and so on, and we have come to recognize it as such.
Currently, Japan also does not have a negotiating pipeline with North Korea, so the countries of Japan, the U.S., and South Korea are aligned in their respective inability to negotiate with North Korea.
In the U.S., midterm elections have been held, and the Republican Party has a majority in the House of Representatives, which means that the Biden Democratic administration is facing an uphill battle. The Biden administration must achieve some kind of political success as a Democratic administration in view of the next presidential election. Amid a series of diplomatic setbacks, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the possibility cannot be ruled out that the administration will move quickly to take credit for the North Korean issue. It is predicted that North Korea will continue to launch missiles until U.S.-North Korea negotiations resume, but some have pointed out that if U.S.-North Korea negotiations do not begin with North Korea still prevailing, North Korea may conduct a nuclear test, so the situation remains unpredictable.