Calling North Korea’s nukes defensive is dangerous

Choi Min-woo

The author is the editor of political, international, foreign and security news at the JoongAng Ilbo. 

When President Lee Jae Myung said at an Monday press conference that North Korea's nuclear weapons were “weapons of last-resort defense,” I felt transported three decades into the past. His remarks recalled arguments from the early 1990s that Pyongyang needed nuclear weapons merely to survive.

Former President Kim Dae-jung, architect of the Sunshine Policy of engagement with Pyongyang, repeatedly maintained that North Korea would abandon its arsenal if offered compensation and guarantees of regime security. In Los Angeles in 2004, former President Roh Moo-hyun said there was some justification for Pyongyang's claim that its nuclear weapons and missiles were means of self-defense. Former President Moon Jae-in even assured us that Kim Jong-un was firmly committed to denuclearization.

Didn't such complacent assumptions contribute to the sophistication of North Korea's nuclear arsenal? After all these experiences, Lee, who calls himself a diplomatic pragmatist, appears convinced that Kim would neither launch a preemptive attack nor use nuclear weapons even if war erupted on the Korean Peninsula. What a dangerous reading of reality.

The moment North Korea's arsenal is defined as defensive, its possession becomes legitimized. Who would condemn weapons intended solely to repel foreign aggression? The rationale for sanctions inevitably weakens. Pyongyang itself might object to this characterization: It has repeatedly declared that its nuclear weapons can be used offensively.

Its 2022 nuclear forces law authorized immediate, even preemptive, nuclear strikes in response to signs of an impending attack. Pyongyang subsequently strengthened its nuclear doctrine and constitutional provisions governing nuclear forces. Kim, who vowed to exclude Korea permanently from the category of fellow countrymen, warned at February's Ninth Workers' Party Congress that Korea's complete collapse could not be ruled out. That amounted to an open threat of nuclear devastation in a Korean Peninsula conflict.

Nor has Pyongyang confined itself to words. In March 2023, it unveiled the Hwasan-31 miniature tactical nuclear warhead. Since then, it has deployed nuclear-capable multiple rocket launchers near the front line, plainly targeting the South. North Korean nuclear weapons are no longer experimental devices launched toward the distant East Sea. They are operational weapons positioned close to us. Can we simply reassure ourselves that our conventional forces are superior and Kim surely would never use nuclear weapons?

Adding fuel to the controversy was Moon Jeong-in, distinguished professor emeritus at Yonsei University. At a Wednesday seminar hosted by Seoul National University's Institute for Future Strategy, he declared that the Korea-U.S. alliance would become “a curse rather than a blessing.” He proposed instead a multilateral security framework including China, Russia and North Korea but excluding the United States.

What an extraordinary diagnosis. For more than seven decades since the Korean War, the alliance has helped preserve South Korea's peace and underpinned the Miracle on the Han River. Yet Moon calls it a curse while urging us to chase the elusive rainbow of a security arrangement involving hostile powers. His comments cannot simply be dismissed as an elderly scholar's eccentricity: He is an influential figure among the advocates of greater autonomy within the administration's foreign policy establishment.

Security anxieties have intensified since three Korean soldiers were seriously injured last month by mines planted by North Korea in the demilitarized zone. Our military has promised only “corresponding measures,” without taking concrete action. Pyongyang, meanwhile, has issued eight statements deriding the incident as a fabricated farce.

On Wednesday, Kim Yo-jong even appeared near the military demarcation line alongside senior military figure Pak Jong-chon, declaring that loudspeaker broadcasts toward the South would begin this month. How embarrassing for an administration that dismantled its own loudspeaker installations immediately after taking office. Are we to become hostages not only to nuclear weapons but also to noise broadcasts? The aggressor and victim seem to have traded places entirely.

North Korea is turning its border into a fortified barrier with nuclear and conventional weapons, while the government and ruling party, whose country faces the threat, appear remarkably unconcerned. They must wake from the illusion that a knife aimed at us is a defensive shield while the shield offered by an ally is a curse. The country President Lee should be condemning is not Ukraine.