North Korea’s ‘Stable Instability’
North Korea’s recent rocket launch and nuclear test have set off waves of uncertainty and frustration throughout the international community. Officials in South Korea, the United States, Japan, and other nations have expressed their concern that such military developments by North Korea could pose a very real threat to their own security and disrupt regional cooperation in East Asia. Despite crushing sanctions and fervent disapproval from the international community and its nominal ally in Beijing, North Korea has conducted a nuclear test approximately once every three years since 2006. However, if Kim Jong-Un utilizes any of the nuclear weapons in his country’s arsenal, he risks disrupting the delicate equilibrium that has kept his family in power for the past 68 years. Any large-scale act of military aggression directed against troops from the United States could provoke Washington to engage in a full military effort. American Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in an online podcast that the U.S must show that “North Koreans… will be dealt with and that they stand no chance of defeating us.”
Some analysts have speculated as to what has motivated Kim Jong-Un and his late father to continue testing nuclear weapons and lauding their successes, especially given the international community’s active response. Go Myong-hyun, a researcher at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies, claims that this erratic behavior “is exactly what North Korea wanted.” The North Korean media outlets intend not just to assert their nation’s dominance on the world stage, but also to provoke a negative response from the international community. The North Korean government can use this as propaganda to demonize the international community and unify its people. When faced with reduced food aid, the shuttering of the Kaesong industrial complex, or even the blasting of South Korean pop music over the border, Kim Jong Un and other North Korean officials can remind its people of the ideological and military threats that lie just outside their country’s borders. By blaming their internal problems on external forces, the government simultaneously legitimizes its own iron-fisted rule over the country’s 27 million people, draws attention away from its own fallacies, and keeps the population too weak to rebel.
Leaders in Pyongyang have historically used fear of a common perceived threat, contrived or otherwise, to rally its population together. While some may say that the aggression of the country’s leaders is erratic, each move taken by the East Asian dictatorship strengthens itself internally. Therefore, brinksmanship and antagonism assure North Korea’s stability.