North Korean Policy Toward the United States:
Pyongyang Copes with an Evolving U.S. Context
Edward A. Olsen
Assessing North Korea’s policies toward the United States is a complex task. In
part its complexity is due to the nature of the state embodied by the label Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). To many non-North Koreans, and certainly to the
great majority of Americans who focus on Korean affairs, the DPRK does not meet the
normal criteria for “Democratic” or “Republic.” Nor does the North Korea form of
authoritarian hierarchicalism centered on a relatively small elite seem to represent all of
the “people” who reside there. Aside from that peculiar state label, the secretive nature of
North Korean society which is reflected in its approach to decision-making on all policy
issues reinforces the complexity of assessing the DPRK’s past, present, and future
policies toward the United States.
Adding to this complexity is the necessity of any analysis of any country’s foreign
policy having to deal with how that country blends proactive and reactive approaches to
international affairs. In other words, in the DPRK’s case, how North Korean leaders
perceive what is desirable for the DPRK in terms of its goals and vision for both its half
of the Korean nation and an eventual reunited Korean nation constitutes a hypothetical
cluster of ambitions and objectives. Many of these can be, and are, openly expressed so
that the rest of the world can and will know what North Korea wants to achieve.
However, because of the anxieties verging on paranoia about other countries’ readiness to
1
For useful assessments of North Korean internal dynamics and their impact upon North
Korean policies toward the United States, see: Bruce Cumings, North Korea, Another
Country, New York: The New Press, 2004; and Paul French, North Korea: The Paranoid
Peninsula, London: Zed Books, 2005.
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