How Does North Korea See the Future of War and Peace?

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

It’s an ancient Latin phrase, from the Roman poet Horace, that’s sweet in both sound and sentiment: “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.” Today, though, this notion might sound dissonant, especially when you consider the increasingly tenuous brinkmanship playing out between the United States and North Korea. Well, maybe it’s not entirely off-key. There’s still at least one place in the world where this thinking is a norm: north of the 38th parallel, on the Korean peninsula.

On Monday, New America’s annual Future of War conference brought together a panel of experts, including Sue Mi Terry, Suzanne DiMaggio, Suki Kim, and New America’s Sharon Burke, to discuss a key issue: How does North Korea see the future of war and peace? Specifically, with an unscheduled summer summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the horizon, the panel considered the prospects of denuclearization, the futility of military engagement, and what North Korea ultimately wants—and stands to gain—from a diplomatic agreement.

In substantial ways, the diplomatic aims and capabilities of the United States, and most countries in the world for that matter, are easy to decipher. The same, however, can’t really be said for North Korea. In it’s largely self-imposed exile, the nation has seemingly cultivated and perfected nearly every military threat imaginable. With soldiers, reportedly numbering in the millions, bolstering a conventional military—buoyed by a chemical and biological weapons supply, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and fledgling nuclear capability—war with North Korea would be nothing short of a disaster.

“Even to contemplate military conflict with North Korea is catastrophic,” Terry, a former George W. Bush-era senior CIA analyst on the Korea desk, said at the conference. The possibility of mutually assured destruction as a result of war with the hermit nation isn’t lost on most international actors—save, unsurprisingly, Trump. The U.S. president has tweeted incendiary comments about the mercurial Kim, as if a nuclear holocaust would be little more than an unusually hot Florida summer. These tweets have ranged from the immature—“North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?”—to the brutish (and still immature)—“Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Some of Trump’s comments have even been downright maniacal: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

But while Trump might have a penchant for political chest-thumping, the panelists noted how he and many people in the international community more broadly often fail to understand what war truly means to North Koreans, who’ve been socialized to be prepared, always, for violent conflict.

“War is the reason that they exist. There is nothing else,” said Kim, a New York Times best-selling author, who’s conducted interviews with North Korean defectors for years. It’s also important to mention that Trump’s childish back-and-forth with the North Korean leader comes at the detriment of many suffering North Korean citizens, who are locked in a humanitarian crisis of their supreme leader’s own making. “North Korea is a cult system built around war, which has a unique psychology [because of it],” Kim added.

So, with all that in mind, what has finally brought North Korea to the negotiating table? And what’s necessary to make these talks successful?

“It doesn’t surprise me that they’re willing to come to the table now,” said DiMaggio, who’s party to the U.S.-North Korea Track 1.5 & Track 2 diplomatic initiatives, or backchannel diplomacy, which involves non-governmental agencies and private citizens—a fall-back plan for when formal state negotiations fail. Considering the technological advancements North Koreans have achieved in terms of military power and attack capabilities, “this is their peak negotiating capability at this moment.” The nuclear deterrent, in addition to the ability to easily strike U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, has worked in their favor, providing a little leverage for getting what they want out of a deal with the United States.

“Sanctions relief is the main thing that they want and what they need economically,” explained DiMaggio, who’s familiar with the strategic thinking of North Korean senior officials. “At a recent meeting, they had a new request that I hadn’t heard before,” she said, “which is, they want President Trump to reduce his rhetoric and threatening tweets.”

Preparation for a summit between the two leaders comes on the heels of North Korea’s participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics, hosted by South Korea. The two Koreas marched together during the opening ceremony, and agreed to a meeting later this month, on April 27. While it’s not uncommon for the leaders of North and South Korea to correspond in person—former leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il met with two South Korean presidents while in office—a meeting between the North Korean dictator and a U.S. president would be historic. The New York Times reported on Monday that Trump is slated to meet with Kim “in May or early June.”

The success of these talks—and what they may augur for war and peace—will likely depend on whether the two nations can agree on what, exactly, “denuclearization” means. Trump tweeted on March 28 that, “For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility. Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!” However, if the Trump administration is counting on the regime to hand over its weapons without any U.S. concessions—such as, say, reducing U.S. military forces in South Korea—then these talks may never get off the ground.

It’s hard to predict what words—barbs, even—might be exchanged during the meeting. But for each of the panelists, one thing is certain: “Once you commit to entering negotiation,” DiMaggio said, “the stakes are as high as they’re ever going to get.”