They say silence is golden, but that is not always the case with North Korea. After a relatively quiet two months following the Kim-Putin June summit in Pyongyang, the North has pivoted back to militant themes in recent weeks. Kim’s series of military appearances, which covered a wide range of North Korean military capabilities, culminated in his first publicized visit to a uranium enrichment (UE) facility.
This visit was met with much news and commentary in South Korea and the West. Many North Korea watchers have linked it to the upcoming US presidential election or offered a more straight-forward explanation for why North Korea’s state-run media showed images of Kim surrounded by centrifuges—to flaunt the country’s nuclear capabilities and reaffirm its unfaltering commitment to nuclear advancement.
Whom Kim’s UE facility visit targeted, as well as the timing of it, are key questions as we mull over North Korea’s intentions, but they are trickier to answer than they first appear. It is hard to conceive that North Korea would have taken the unprecedented step of disclosing a closely guarded UE facility without Washington in mind: Pyongyang has consistently claimed over the years that it was compelled to develop and advance its nuclear program to defend against a US “nuclear threat.”
Yet, the United States is not the only factor at play. If it were, the visit would have likely been featured on the front page of the authoritative party daily Rodong Sinmun’s print version instead of on page three, after reports on Kim’s other military appearances.
However much Washington figured into Kim’s calculus, there are surely domestic factors also at play. This move fits into a larger pattern of prioritizing the development of North Korea’s national defense over the civilian economy in recent years, despite the emphasis on large-scale economic projects. These measures, taken in context, appear to be setting the stage for major pronouncements to be made at the upcoming October 7 session of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA). The session is expected to codify new national borders into the country’s constitution—a move likely to fuel tensions on and around the Korean Peninsula.
National Defense Against All Odds
Showing Kim at a uranium enrichment site was, short of conducting a seventh nuclear test, perhaps the most powerful way of signaling to both domestic and external audiences that North Korea’s nuclear capacity is already strong and will only grow stronger.
The focus on nuclear per se is not notable. Nuclear advancement is a core element of North Korea’s five-year defense development plan presented in 2021. Moreover, since the party plenary meeting in December 2022, Kim has repeatedly called for increasing nuclear production. What draws attention is a carefully choreographed campaign in the lead-up to the UE facility visit, to reinforce a message that state media, and even Kim himself, have often sent in recent years: Why national defense should be prioritized over the civilian economy despite difficult circumstances and limited resources. This is a long-running debate that has appeared on and off throughout North Korea’s history.
Setting the Stage: Kim’s Speech
The campaign appears to have started with a tactical ballistic missile handover ceremony on August 4. At the event, Kim justified holding the ceremony despite the recent heavy flooding in some provinces by saying it was “a manifestation of the firm will of the party to push ahead with the bolstering of defense capability, the fundamental guarantee for safeguarding the people and national sovereignty, without letup in any circumstances ….” Additionally, Kim emphasized increased nuclear threats in the region, not only from the United States but also its allies. He then said stepping up nuclear development ultimately benefits the civilian economy—a logic that North Korea uses when it wishes to divert more resources to national defense:
Building up the nuclear war deterrent and developing it to the highest level possible is the best option for effectively confronting the nuclear blackmail and multi-faceted isolation schemes by the United States and for earmarking a larger investment for economic development and improvement of the people’s living standards—this is the principled standpoint we have consistently maintained over the last ten or so years since we proclaimed the new line of promoting the country’s economic construction and building up its nuclear forces simultaneously [the new byungjin line promulgated in 2013], and its validity and viability have been clearly proved through practice.[1]
Remarkably, by saying North Korea has consistently maintained the byungjin policy for more than 10 years, Kim, in effect, snubbed the shift in 2018 from byungjin to a “new strategic line on channeling all efforts on the economic construction.” Although North Korean media have indicated that byungjin had never ceased to be in effect, it is unusual for Kim himself to say this.
The Reinforcement: A “Special Article”
Just eight days later, an authoritative Rodong Sinmun “Editorial Bureau special article [편집국 론설]” picked up on the same theme that short-term sacrifices (i.e., investment in national defense) will have to be made for longer-term prosperity. It said:
National revival is an issue of dignity and rights more than it is an issue of capital and potential. The wealth and resources of a country that has lost its rights and dignity cannot avoid plunder by outside powers, and prosperity that does not guarantee sovereign rights is but a mirage. In our country, which is in constant confrontation with the most dangerous forces of aggression, and to our people, who cherish independence more than they do their lives, safeguarding sovereign rights and defending dignity are the most important affair that does not even leave room for further discussion and are an unshakeable cornerstone of and foremost requirement for national revival…Our people walked along a thorny path for independent lives and rights and for the prosperity of all generations to come and in doing so seized absolute armaments for safeguarding the fatherland.[2]
The authority of the article reflected that a high-level discussion has occurred on the question of defense spending at the expense of the civilian economy and that there has been a top-level decision. The timing—in the wake of heavy floods and the run-up to Kim’s resumption of military appearances and his UE facility visit—supports the idea that the article signaled an important decision.
Final Touch: An Unexpected Kim Speech
The special article seems to have added significance in that Kim’s first National Day speech in early September echoed the bottom line of the article. Despite his emphasis on economic development, Kim implied that the civilian economy would have to give way to national defense for stable economic development by saying that “powerful strength” was “genuine peace and an absolute guarantee for the development of our state.” The military segment of Kim’s speech was heavily focused on continued expansion of the country’s nuclear capabilities and seemed to set the stage for his visit to the UE facility. In the days that followed Kim’s UE facility visit, the party daily published a front-page article dedicated to the importance of bolstering national defense for economic prosperity.
Also worth noting is that Kim took the unusual step of delivering a major speech on National Day instead of making his usual policy speech at the upcoming SPA session, which seemed to suggest a sense of urgency, possibly to prime his people for increased tensions with South Korea following a planned constitutional revision. Moreover, Kim’s address was given to a limited audience, and he delivered it standing alone on the dais, emphasizing its significance.
Conclusion
For the North Korean public, Kim’s UE facility visit almost certainly meant more than just the country’s nuclear capacity. For those who have followed state propaganda—and the North Korean system ensures its people are up to date on party policies—it more likely than not spelled continued belt-tightening, a euphemism for diverting resources away from the civilian economy to the defense sector. Kim has underscored the importance of economic development and just in the past few years alone, launched a number of major civilian economic initiatives, such as the rural development project and the much-touted “20×10” project of building local industrial factories in 20 cities and counties per year for the next 10 years. Yet, Kim has also said that continued nuclear development was the best way to develop the economy, which implies that the country’s available resources would first be channeled to nuclear development.
The basis of Kim’s decision to plug away at nuclear development is clearly his nuclear-focused five-year defense development plan. However, it also stems from the major shifts in North Korea’s foreign policy in recent years and the opportunities that Pyongyang probably sees in great-power competition.
“Emboldened” is a word that is now frequently associated with Kim Jong Un, mainly owing to the opportunities presented by the shifting geopolitical situation. In that vein, the upcoming SPA session will be critical as North Korea is expected to define its new national borders and codify them into its constitution. This revision, and North Korea’s actions following it, may shed light on just how “emboldened” Kim has really become.
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