North Korea in 2019: economic development or the nuclear program?

It involves the suspension of ballistic and nuclear tests in exchange for the freezing of joint US-South Korea military exercises. The double freeze puts an end to the escalation which, in the second half of 2017, seemed to irremediably lead towards an American "bloody-nose" punitive strike, despite risks of flare-ups in the peninsula.

The alternative is for North Korea to provide a credible list of its proliferation activities, and a guarantee that it will accept an intrusive verification mechanism in line with international standards during the phase of dismantlement of its nuclear program. While North Korea’s plutonium production at Yongbyon is common knowledge, its uranium enrichment is underground, and no one knows how many centrifuges it has. And the production of fissile material only represents one aspect of the program, which includes many other scientific, industrial and military facilities spread throughout the country. All disarmament technicians keep emphasizing that there will be no complete and irreversible denuclearization without a prior inventory.
 
Six months after the first Kim-Trump summit in Singapore, North Korea is trying to persuade the Americans to accept "action for action". After the summit, it dismantled some facilities dedicated to the assembly of ballistic missile engines in Sohae, without obtaining any reward in return. It is now proposing to dismantle the Yongbyon site, at the risk of awakening the painful memories of the 2007-2008 sequence for negotiators of the six-party talks. After an agreement reached in February 2007, North Korea had closed the site and destroyed its cooling tower, before negotiations derailed due to disagreement regarding verification procedures and the American request of a full declaration. Will the United States want to reenact Yongbyon? In an official statement issued last November, North Korea warned that it would "not move a single millimeter, at any cost" in the absence of reciprocal measures from the United States.

Meanwhile, violations of the sanctions regime are regularly reported. Media reports suggest that China is turning a blind eye on North Korean exports via Dandong, as well as to offshore oil transfers to North Korean ships, photographed by the Japanese. Yet overall, even if humanitarian exemptions provided by the UN sanctions regime are added, tourism and sanctions evasion are not sufficient for a real development policy and only provide some breathing space to an otherwise suffocating international environment.
 
As a new year begins, China and South Korea are both defending simultaneous and reciprocal measures, each in their own way. In Beijing last week for his fourth meeting with Xi Jinping in 10 months - a greater frequency than Trump-Xi summits - Kim Jong Un obtained Xi Jinping's support for the "new strategic line", and a Chinese wish that the United States and North Korea "meet halfway". Similarly, at his New Year press conference, South Korean President Moon Jae-in claimed that, in order "to resolve the issue of sanctions on North Korea swiftly, Pyongyang needs to take substantive and drastic measures towards denuclearization. (...) If Pyongyang undertakes such actions, corresponding measures should be devised as well, in order to accelerate and encourage the North’s denuclearization." By adopting these stances, the two countries that would play a key role in the North Korean economy if sanctions were relaxed are undermining the prospect of a full declaration of its proliferation activities by North Korea.

This strengthens Kim Jong Un's hand as a second summit with Donald Trump is being prepared. Compared to his predecessors, Donald Trump innovated by agreeing to organize a summit with North Korea without any preconditions, which, from Pyongyang's point of view, is equivalent to a status recognition as a nuclear power. It is not unthinkable that the Trump administration would take a further step in the direction of "action for action", and reward incomplete disarmament measures. The question of a watered-down agreement would then have to be considered by the Europeans at the UN Security Council.