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Studies of human rights in North Korea are even more important now, in light of North Korea’s response to COVID-19, said Shin at the opening of the discussion. The DPRK has kept its borders closed for nearly two years, resulting in reduced trade and worsening the economic and social situation of its population.

Ambassador King, who was also a 2019-20 Koret Fellow and Visiting Scholar at APARC, identified the guiding questions of the volume, indicating that “This conundrum that we talk about in the title is an interaction between security and human rights. Is there a tradeoff? If we focus on human rights, does that make it more difficult for us to deal with security issues? If we focus on security issues do we have to ignore human rights?” 

An Error of Zero-Sum Thinking

While North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the security threat it poses have occupied the center stage and eclipsed other issues in recent years, the book’s contributors posit that human rights promotion remains an integral part of U.S. policy on the Korean peninsula. In his chapter, Victor Cha, Senior Vice President and Korea Chair at CSIS and former Koret Fellow and Visiting Scholar at APARC, analyzes the error in the zero-sum logic of North Korean human rights. "The United States sees a zero-sum relationship between pressing for human rights and denuclearization negotiations, while South Korea sees a zero-sum relationship between pressing for human rights and inter-Korean engagement," explains Cha. But the denuclearization and human rights agendas are inextricably intertwined.

The lost ground on addressing the North Korean human rights crisis is still recoverable, the contributors to The North Korean Conundrum believe. How could North Korea engage on human rights? The chapters in the volume lay out a number of ways. One opportunity to address human rights issues is through health and humanitarian assistance. Another way is to promote the economic and consumer rights of North Korean citizens to improve their quality of life and help foster a nascent civil society. And yet another way is to support information flow to the North. 

Interwoven Challenges

Nat Kretchun, Vice President for Programs at the Open Technology Fund, examines in his chapter the changing information environment in North Korea, observing how the information control system North Korean authorities are constructing is broadly characterized by an effort to move communications and media consumption onto state-controlled networks via state-sanctioned devices. The central aim is to create a “clean” information environment in which North Korean citizens use approved networked devices that technologically prevent the consumption and spread of unsanctioned content. At the same time, North Korean authorities have come to terms with a more marketized economic future. "Mobile phones have the ability to facilitate market-based economic transactions, the primary driver of much of what (limited) internal economic growth the country is seeing," notes Kretchun.

The contributors all agree that the challenge of human rights in North Korea is a complex one. It is intertwined with a host of issues, including life in the North Korean police state, inter-Korean relations, denuclearization, access to information, and international cooperation—all topics the volume addresses. We frequently separate these issues for analytical purposes or because they are dealt with in different ways or by different entities. But in fact, they are inseparable. Recognizing this interrelationship is the first step toward moving forward in a way that addresses the very serious North Korean security concerns while at the same time bringing human rights and humanitarian concerns into the equation.

Executive Summary

• The U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue, agreed by presidents Joseph Biden and Vladimir Putin at their June 2021 summit, has begun. It presumably is addressing the range of issues affecting strategic stability, including reductions in and limits on strategic offensive nuclear forces as well as questions related to missile defense. 
• Three phases have defined the history of missile defense: the era of unrestrained offense-defense competition prior to the negotiation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; the period of arms control between 1972 and 2002, during which both defenses and strategic offensive forces were limited; and the current era of unrestrained defenses and controlled strategic offensive forces, from 2002 to the present. 
• After more than six decades of missile defense investments, strategic offensive forces retain a significant and enduring edge over defensive systems. While progress has been made in defending against shorter-range ballistic missiles and their warheads (which travel at considerably lower velocities than strategic ballistic missile warheads), at no point during any of the three periods has the United States or the Soviet Union/Russia been able to produce a defensive system that has held any short- or medium-term prospect of negating the strategic offensive forces of the other, either on its own or in combination with a counterforce first strike.
• The concerted effort since 2002 by Washington and NATO to develop their missile defense capabilities against the long-range ballistic missile threats posed by North Korea and Iran has enjoyed only limited success, and the viability of the U.S. homeland defense against Pyongyang’s relatively small and unsophisticated nuclear arsenal is still doubtful. Russia’s incremental improvements to its defensive system around Moscow do not pose a significant threat to the U.S. strategic nuclear capability. 
• Nevertheless, the prospect of longer-term improvements to U.S. and Russian missile defenses continues to be a source of uncertainty that exercises considerable influence on the force sizing and development of new capabilities, particularly for Russia and the European nuclear powers, France and the United Kingdom. The limited available evidence suggests that China shares similar concerns regarding the viability of its deterrent against new defensive systems. Russian and Chinese planners appear to fear a future U.S. counterforce attack conducted primarily, or even solely, with advanced, high-precision conventional weapons that would disable a major portion of their strategic forces, leaving the remainder to have to penetrate U.S. missile defenses. 
• For Russia, the prospective long-term threat to its forces posed by the improvement in U.S. defenses and nuclear and conventional counterforce capabilities has prompted it to develop new “exotic” systems designed to ensure its retaliatory capacity, including the Avangard boostglide vehicle, the Poseidon long-range nuclear uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) and the Burevestnik nuclearpowered cruise missile. Russia has also expressed significant reservations about further cuts to its strategic offensive forces through arms control, if missile defenses remain unconstrained.
• France and the United Kingdom have been historically far more sensitive to developments in the Moscow ABM system given their smaller and less technologically advanced nuclear arsenals. Both powers have continued to ensure the long-term viability of their deterrents against prospective Russian improvements through the introduction of improved warheads (France) and planned increases in maximum stockpile size (UK).
• China’s smaller arsenal means that Beijing may be even more sensitive to developments in U.S. missile defense policy than Moscow. China’s recent apparent expansion of the number of its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos may in part stem from anxieties regarding the viability of its deterrent against prospective U.S. missile defenses, although the motivation for and extent of an expanded ICBM force are still unclear at the time of writing.
• Thus, the current era of unrestrained missile defenses since 2002 has seen the deployment of defensive systems of limited short- and medium-term technical potential, combined with considerable anxiety from four of the five recognized nuclear powers that longer-term technological developments may pose a risk to their forces, stimulating their qualitative and quantitative augmentation. This has resulted in a paradox: even as they remain broadly ineffective against all but the most limited threats, strategic missile defenses nevertheless exert a destabilizing influence on the global nuclear balance.¹ 
• A number of measures, primarily between the United States and Russia, could help to limit the uncertainty over future missile defense capabilities by placing more explicit restraints on today’s limited missile defenses so that they cannot expand into systems that could put the retaliatory capability of any of the five nuclear powers at risk.
• These steps could include confidencebuilding measures, such as transparency agreements and reciprocal observation of missile defense interceptor tests, a ban on space-based missile defense interceptors, clearer unilateral explications of the extent and limits of both Washington and Moscow’s missile defense plans, as well as negotiated limits on missile defenses on either a legally or politically binding basis.
• Given their long-standing interest in missile defenses designed to counter only limited threats and the risks that an offense-defense competition could pose both to stability in the North Atlantic area and the viability of European members’ nuclear arsenals, U.S. NATO allies should do all they can to support these efforts.

Read the rest at The Deep Cuts Commission