The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

22 OCTOBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL currency, proliferation of missile and nuclear technology, and a host of other offenses have led North Korea to be sanctioned under multiple overlapping authorities. There is no near-term prospect for relief of U.S. sanctions that could spur bilateral trade, and North Korea did not ask for this in Hanoi. Kim Jong Un’s sanctions relief demand was much more targeted and has a shorter history. After North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006, the U.N. Security Council began issuing a series of resolutions with sharper and sharper teeth. During the first decade after the inaugural nuclear test, these multilateral sanctions focused on denying North Korea the tools to build a nuclear weapons program and moved into restrictions on luxury goods for the regime’s elite. Previous North Korean claims that its nuclear infrastructure was intended for nuclear energy production had convinced few after the first nuclear crisis in the early 1990s, but North Korea’s public demonstration of its weap- ons ambitions with its first nuclear test allowed all veto-wielding Security Council members—including Russia and China—to condemn and sanction the program. Nonetheless, North Korean nuclear tests and long-range missile launches continued. More countries, most notably Japan and the Republic of Korea, restricted their own trade with North Korea further in the years after 2006. Even as the fiercely nationalistic Kim regime continued to articulate a desire for self-reliance and built an autarchic economy to support it, the regime became increasingly reliant for foreign goods and economic inputs like oil on a single neighbor: China. China grew to account for more than 90 percent of North Korean trade; yet even Beijing could not rein in Pyongyang on the nuclear issue, and Sino–North Korean relations deteriorated. In 2016, Beijing assented to put greater pressure on North Korea. Following the country’s fifth nuclear test, China voted in favor of new U.N. Security Council sanctions that did not simply seek to limit North Korea’s ability to import nuclear-related material or apply restrictions on North Korea’s elite like travel bans or luxury goods import prohibitions. China agreed to pre- clude what would otherwise be considered legitimate trade in an economically significant sector: minerals and coal. Offer Related to Yongbyon North Korea could not export coal and other minerals, which were critical components of its foreign currency– earning exports. Subsequent resolutions would expand restric- tions on North Korean trade and foreign currency–earning activities. The U.N. Security Council banner is important to urge other countries to cut off sanctioned trade with North Korea, but the most important element was Chinese enforcement. As North Korea’s dominant economic partner that shares a land border, Beijing could then and can now undercut the sanctions’ pres- sure entirely. However, the Chinese have largely held firm, which has proven pivotal to preserving American leverage in nuclear discussions with the North Koreans. Public comments by senior administration officials suggest that Kim Jong Un’s opening demand in Hanoi sought to roll back this series of sanctions in place since 2016. This is a targeted and transactional request that would not transform North Korea eco- nomically. Removing the last three years’ worth of heightened sanctions would return North Korea to its early 2016 status. It would not allow foreign investment to flow into North Korea; nor would it recast the country’s economy or external relations. In exchange, as Secretary Pompeo explained after the Hanoi summit, North Korea offered limitations on its Yongbyon nuclear complex. Yongbyon is North Korea’s most famous nuclear site. Foreign Service Journal readers are likely familiar with Yong- byon’s name because it has been the centerpiece of North Korea crisis diplomacy for more than a quarter-century. However, it is no longer North Korea’s most significant fissile material production facility. Yongbyon’s plutonium reactor is limited to producing about a bomb’s worth of plutonium each year, and its uranium enrichment facility is relatively small. We have known from public sources for almost a decade that at least one other, much larger uranium enrichment plant is located elsewhere in the country. North Korea’s enrichment program outside Yongbyon also has the capacity for substantial growth in its production capability, while Yongbyon is relatively static. As such, it is important but not the prize it once was. Reasonable people can disagree on whether it was in the U.S. interest to accept North Korea’s offer, but Kim did not seem to present a second offer to come off this initial demand. The Hanoi summit showed Kim’s near-term ambition to achieve partial sanctions relief in exchange for limited nuclear dismantlement, but he ultimately failed to achieve it. Kim’s empowering of his diplomats and technical experts to meet their American counterparts is the necessary next step.