North Korean Power Play Vis-à-Vis the United States: Focusing on Nationalism as ‘Independence’ and ‘Resistance’

Abstract

The fundamental hypothesis of this paper is that the North Korean regime employs nationalism for regime security and stability when it confronts threats from the outside. A sub-hypothesis is that North Korean nationalism has had a tendency to react actively and aggressively to coercive demands by, or threat of, the United States. This hypothesis was tested by analyzing the behavior and rhetoric during the process of the negotiations during the Pueblo incident in 1968 and the nuclear crisis of 1993–94. At these times, war had to be averted at all costs and, at the same time, North Korea had to induce United States' concessions because the supreme national value of North Korea was regime security and stability. Therefore, North Korea showed an aggressive reaction based on strategic rationality with its nationalism instead of dealing passively with the United States' coercive threats. Consequently, the effects of North Korean nationalism showed strongly due to the imperatives of regime security and stability under threat from military action or economic blockade.