►  Within six weeks of each other, North Korea and the United States announced new policies governing their nuclear weapons.

►  By choosing to emulate certain aspects of U.S. nuclear policy and diverge from others, North Korea is attempting to simultaneously demonstrate a willingness to escalate a conflict early and asymmetrically with nuclear weapons to deter superior South Korean and U.S. forces while projecting an image of a responsible nuclear possessor that should be accommodated as such in the international system.

►  North Korea’s nuclear strategy clearly aims different messages at different audiences and hopes to reconcile the tensions between them.

►  North Korea clearly has changed the deterrence calculus on the Korean Peninsula, probably succeeding in its deterrence objectives. Whether it has shifted the needle on international acceptance is another question.

Within six weeks of each other, North Korea and the United States announced new policies governing their nuclear weapons. North Korea’s took the form of a new law passed by the Supreme People’s Assembly on September 9th, the most significant update to its nuclear policy in almost a decade. The United States’ arrived via a report on the outcome of the nuclear posture review (NPR), a Congressionally-mandated process required of each new presidential administration, released on October 27th. A comparative assessment of the nuclear policies contained in these documents is interesting for what it conveys about North Korea’s ideas, deterrence objectives, and international aspirations.

The United States enjoys a privileged position in the global nuclear order, which legitimizes and de jure accepts U.S. possession of nuclear weapons. Having withdrawn from the NPT after violating its IAEA safeguards obligations, defying several decades of UN resolutions calling for it to reverse its nuclear weapons program, and being repeatedly subjected to successive financial and trade sanctions, North Korea is an international nuclear pariah. Their situations are mostly beyond comparison, yet the notable similarities and differences between the U.S. and North Korean nuclear documents throw into sharp relief the difficult balancing act Pyongyang aims to achieve with its nuclear arsenal. By choosing to emulate certain aspects of U.S. nuclear policy and diverge from others, North Korea is attempting to simultaneously demonstrate a willingness to escalate a conflict early and asymmetrically with nuclear weapons to deter superior South Korean and U.S. forces while projecting an image of a responsible nuclear possessor that should be accommodated as such in the international system.

Some Notable Consistencies…

The forms and purposes of the North Korean nuclear law and the U.S. NPR are quite different. Little is known about the process by which the Supreme People’s Assembly produced the nuclear law, whether it was debated, or what concrete steps will be taken to implement it. In contrast, more is known about the NPR, as it is the product of a drawn-out, multi-agency consultative process, managed by the U.S. Department of Defense. It purports to channel the views of the U.S. president, which are subsequently translated into nuclear employment guidance to the U.S. Strategic Command, the military branch that maintains operational control of U.S. nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, key elements of the two documents are essentially comparable and, in some instances, strikingly similar.

In several respects, North Korea’s 2022 nuclear law approaches declaratory issues in very similar terms to U.S. nuclear policy. For example, both the U.S. and DPRK assert that the principal objective of their nuclear arsenals is deterrence, a stance consistent with the pronouncements of all other nuclear possessors. Both eschew any form of “no-first-use” or “sole purpose,” instead indicating the potential use of nuclear weapons “when deterrence fails.” The NPR and North Korean law also make a point to address the safety and security of their arsenals.

The NPR and North Korean Law also each include some form of negative security assurance, a guarantee by a nuclear possessor not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state. In the NPR, the U.S. maintains a stance it has held for years: “The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.” The North Korean law states it would not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state “unless they join aggression or attack against the DPRK in collusion with other nuclear weapons states.” For North Korea, inclusion of a negative security assurance is a way of signaling consistency with behavior expected of nuclear weapon states in the context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On the assumption that North Korea did not develop its nuclear law from whole cloth, the similarities in the two documents suggest a degree of emulation by Pyongyang. Essentially, by incorporating similar language and ideas in its declaratory policy, North Korea is asserting that it is following the same behavioral standards as the United States; that it, too, is a “responsible custodian” of its nuclear arsenal.

In some respect, the act of issuing a public nuclear doctrine may in itself been seen as legitimizing. Pyongyang could just as easily have foregone passing the new law; there was no demand from the international community for such transparency or commitments, largely because no state is willing to accept North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons. But, as Kim Jong Un emphasized in a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly marking the passage of law, “The utmost significance of legislating nuclear weapons policy is to draw an irretrievable line so that there can be no bargaining over our nuclear weapons.” In other words, North Korea’s status as a nuclear possessor has been made “irreversible.” In this respect, both the fact of the nuclear law as well as its content are useful evidence demonstrating how North Korea is seeking to shape perceptions of its behavior as part of its quest to have its nuclear status accepted by the international community.

… And Crucial Differences

Just as telling the similarities are the differences between the North Korean nuclear law and the U.S. NPR, reflecting Pyongyang’s paramount concerns about survivability and illustrating the challenges it perceives in deterring threats from South Korea and the United States.

Notably, North Korea emphasizes that its nuclear arsenal will be “regularly ready for action so that if an order to use nuclear weapons is issued, it can immediately execute it in any conditions and circumstances.” Furthermore, many of the use scenarios characterized by the nuclear law indicate willingness to use nuclear weapons if certain attacks are “launched or drew near,” essentially allowing for launch on warning. In contrast, the NPR states that United States “does not rely upon a launch-under-attack policy” to allow as much time as feasible for “full deliberation” on responses. U.S. nuclear forces are postured to withstand any potential first strike from North Korea (or others) while retaining a sizable, security second strike capability. With its small arsenal and constrained geography, however, North Korea will not enjoy similar confidence in the survivability of its forces for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, North Korea’s nuclear law reflects an effort to project a low threshold for nuclear use as a way to manipulate risk in its favor and, in turn, strengthen the credibility of its deterrence threats deterrence.

More significantly, the North Korean law is much more specific about potential situations for nuclear use than the NPR. The latter reaffirms the U.S. commitment to calculated ambiguity, or the intentional vagueness around the circumstances under which a U.S. president would decide to employ nuclear weapons as well as the magnitude of such a response. As the NPR states: “While the United States maintains a very high bar for the employment of nuclear weapons, our nuclear posture is intended to complicate an adversary’s entire decision calculus, including whether to instigate a crisis, initiate armed conflict, conduct strategic attacks using non-nuclear capabilities, or escalate to the use of nuclear weapons on any scale.” In contrast, North Korea’s new nuclear law delineates five scenarios in which it would employ nuclear weapons in response or to preempt: a nuclear (or other WMD) attack, an attack on the state leadership, an attack against important strategic targets, the expansion and protraction of a war, and other cases in which the existence of the state is at risk. The clarity in the nuclear law reflects North Korea’s attempt to convince its adversaries of a willingness to use nuclear weapons early and asymmetrically to deter conflict escalation and split the ROK-U.S. alliance.

Finally, the North Korean law also addresses a contingency that speaks to the evolving security dynamic on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea is understandably concerned about South Korea’s conventional strike plans for pre-emption and leadership decapitation (the Kill Chain and Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation programs). While stressing that Kim Jong Un maintains “all decisive powers concerning nuclear weapons,” the nuclear law stipulates that in the event that the DPRK assesses an attack by “hostile forces on the state leadership and command organization,” a nuclear strike “shall be launched automatically and immediately.” In other words, even if the U.S. and ROK were successful in targeting North Korean leadership, they would not be able to fully incapacitate Pyongyang’s nuclear response—a provision designed to close any perceived deterrence gaps.

Balancing Objectives

North Korea’s nuclear strategy clearly aims different messages at different audiences and hopes to reconcile the tensions between them.

To the United States and South Korea, it seeks to project a high degree of risk tolerance for and certainty about the use of nuclear weapons, even at early stages of conflict. Kim Jong Un reinforced this point in a July 27 2022 speech: “The Democratic People's Republic of Korea reaffirms that it is thoroughly prepared to deal with any military confrontation with the United States[…] and our state's nuclear war deterrence is also fully prepared to mobilize its absolute strength...” North Korea’s reported development of short range, “tactical” nuclear weapons further creates a capability to match this intent.

At the same time, Kim Jong Un aspires for acceptance of the nuclear status quo and the nuclear law represents something of a public relations message for the international community. While its 2013 nuclear law cited the “ever-escalating policy of the US” and “the distress-torn history in which [the DPRK] was subject to outside forces’ aggression and interference,” North Korea’s new law provides no external rationale for nuclear possession, simply noting that the DPRK has nuclear weapons and is willing to use them to safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity. This marks a significant change in the DPRK’s language on denuclearization. Whereas Pyongyang previously signaled a willingness to work toward denuclearization provided the United States removed its “hostile policy,” the new law indicates a permanence to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. “Let them sanction us for 100 days, 1,000 days, 10 years or 100 years,” Kim Jong Un proclaimed in a fiery speech when the nuclear law was passed. “We will never give up our rights to self-defense that preserves our country's existence and the safety of our people just to temporarily ease the difficulties we are experiencing now.” Through the new nuclear law and statements affirming the permanence of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, it is clear that the DPRK no longer feels the need to justify its nuclear arsenal. 

North Korea clearly has changed the deterrence calculus on the Korean Peninsula, probably succeeding in its deterrence objectives. Whether it has shifted the needle on international acceptance is another question. To Pyongyang, contra the Libya model, success probably looks something like the status India has achieved: acceptance of its nuclear possession, tolerance of its nuclear threats against South Korea and the United States, removal of international sanctions, and ultimately normalization of relations with key states. Only time will tell how well North Korea has truly managed to balance these objectives with its nuclear law.