Why Sanctions Don't Work Against North Korea - YouTube

This is Vladivostok, the largest  Russian city on the Pacific Ocean.

Vladivostok is home to a number  of unique attractions, including:

- One of the country’s only two funiculars,  

commissioned as part of a 1959 plan  to build “Soviet San Francisco”,

- Impressive bridges built  for the 2012 APEC summit,

- And one of the world’s largest aquariums.

But perhaps its most unusual attraction is  

something you won’t find listed on  any travel guide: “Repair Korea”,  

an exclusively-North Korean contractor  specializing in home repair and renovation.

Its website, translated here to  English, acknowledges your skepticism,  

“Some people think you shouldn't invite  Koreans to repair your apartment”,  

but reassures you that, quote, “Unlike  spoiled Russian specialists… Koreans work  

extremely professionally, accurately and in  full compliance with world quality standards”.

But don’t assume North Korean builders are  confined to any one construction niche.  

Others helped build the World Cup stadium in St.  Petersburg and apartment buildings in Moscow.

Neither do they work only in Russia. After the  U.S. State Department commended the country  

of Kuwait for cutting ties with North  Korea, Kuwait responded with confusion,  

saying “There are no plans to expel North  Korean laborers and Kuwait has never done so”.

The regime collects the vast  majority of these wages,  

while recipient nations get access  to cheap, hard-working labor.

This trade is often cited as  proof that sanctions don’t  

work — it seems there’s always a way around them.

After the UN demanded that countries expel  North Korean workers in 2017, for instance,  

Russia simply re-issued them  “tourist” and “student” visas.

The country is also responsible  for countless hacking campaigns,  

ransomware attacks, the production of  counterfeits, and a dozen other illicit odd jobs.

But, in fact, the opposite.

The extreme lengths it goes to evade sanctions,  

even when the payoff is relatively small,  suggests they do have a powerful effect.

And yet there hasn’t been any meaningful  diplomatic progress in decades.

So, why do sanctions bring Iran to the  negotiating table, but not North Korea?

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North Korea has sought nuclear weapons,  with varying degrees of urgency,  

for its entire existence.

In 1959, just six years after  the end of the Korean War,  

the Soviet Union agreed to build it a  reactor — though not without conditions.

The Soviets pressured them to  sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty,  

which they finally did in 1985.

But inconsistencies emerged almost immediately.

After signing the treaty, countries are  required to submit an “initial report”,  

in which they declare how much nuclear  material is already in their possession.

North Korea waited seven years to do  so, and international inspectors soon  

noticed a discrepancy in the  amount of declared plutonium.

It then refused to allow further  inspections, withdrew from the treaty,  

and even neglected its binding commitments.

But this was only the first of  many broken promises to come.

In 1994, after 4-months of negotiations, the  U.S. agreed to give it two light water reactors  

and 500,000 tons of fuel oil, annually, in  exchange for the freezing of its weapons program.

Then North Korea was caught  secretly enriching uranium,  

and, according to the U.S., even admitted to it.

A new round of negotiations began in 2003,  

which appeared to reach a breakthrough.  Nuclear facilities were dismantled and  

the country was removed from America’s  list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism”.

Predictably, North Korea announced it would  restart its nuclear program several years later.

At this point, no doubt remained about  its true intentions — dishonesty had  

been demonstrated time and time and time again.

Perhaps even more worrisome was its long  history of sporadic and dangerous behavior.  

This includes multiple attempted assassinations  of the South Korean president, airplane bombs,  

the 1968 capture of an American ship, and  firing at both military and civilian planes.

And when the carrot fails, conventional  wisdom would suggest it’s time for the  

stick. Sanctions were the only option left, it  seemed, for a country that couldn’t be trusted.

Over time, they expanded from covering  military equipment to travel, luxury goods,  

raw materials, and even food — severely  restricting even basic humanitarian aid.

But just as negotiation appeared  less and less effective over time,  

sanctions have now been around long enough  to identify a pattern: They don’t work.

The problem is not, contrary to popular  thinking, that sanctions are easily evaded.

In 2017 and 18, a decline in  trade led to a 3.5 and 4.1%  

decrease in its GDP. Exports  declined by 90% in 2018.

Of course, neither are they perfectly effective.  Far from it. There will always be black markets  

and someone else with a vested interest  in North Korea’s continued existence.

China, for instance, supplies its  neighbor with just enough coal, oil,  

and food to prevent its collapse, the vacuum of  which would soon be filled by an American ally.

This measly income is akin to an unemployed  person recycling bottles and cans — it’s not  

nothing, but pretty close  at the scale of a nation.

To put things in perspective, North  Korea’s GDP is half that of Vermont’s,  

the U.S. state with the smallest economy,  yet its population is forty times larger.

The problem is that sanctions  don’t work as intended.  

They clearly haven’t ended its nuclear  program or put an end to missile tests.

The first reason is that the  wrong people are affected.

The only group whose suffering  might induce change are elites,  

yet the burden of sanctions is mostly  felt by the middle class and below.

As inflation increases, average,  working-class households struggle  

to maintain the same standard of living.  High, sanctions-driven prices mean that 97%  

of Afghanistan will fall below the poverty  line this year, according to a UN estimate.

When the rich and powerful are affected, they can  simply cut back on social programs to compensate.

Now, you might argue this is how things are  supposed to work. The civilian population  

puts pressure on the government and the threat  of losing power encourages it to change course.

But this effect is strongest in democracies,  which sanctioned countries are less likely to be.

North Korea, on the other hand, goes well  beyond “less democratic” — it’s the textbook  

example of a country unlikely to  experience political revolution.

Insulated from the rest of the world  in virtually every respect, it can  

easily control the narrative — blaming higher  prices and lower quality of life on the enemy.

If anything, sanctions have the opposite effect.  Just as residents of Yugoslavia blamed the UN,  

not their own government, in the 90s, they  instill a unifying patriotism among North Koreans.

Again, the net effect of sanctions for its  leaders is unquestionably negative. They lead  

to malnutrition, death, disease, population  decline, and, ultimately, economic failure.

After the collapse of the Soviet  Union, the regime’s closest ally,  

between 600,000 and one  million Koreans died of hunger.  

While sanctions were not the direct  cause, they certainly didn’t help.

Even if you believe these deaths mean nothing to  Kim Jong-un, the “axis of evil” label diminishes  

the country’s legitimacy. It desperately  wants to be treated like a “normal” country.

This is evidenced, according to many experts,  by the continuous cycle of missile tests,  

which are followed by demands for  negotiation. Despite having long ago  

demonstrated its nuclear capabilities, it’s  nevertheless discontent with the status quo.

So, we’re seemingly back to square one.  

If it wants sanctions lifted,  why doesn’t it strike a deal?

To answer this question, try  putting yourself, no matter how  

unnatural it may feel, in the shoes of Kim  Jong-un, whose #1 fear is regime change.

This deeply-held fear is not Stalinist paranoia  or an archaic leftover of the Soviet era.  

Kim Jong-un has every legitimate reason to  worry. After all, none of this is theoretical.

Libya acceded to U.S. demands, halting the  development of its nuclear program, in 2003.  

Eight years later, the dead body of  Moammar Gadhafi was on public display.

Just in case the lesson that an autocrat should  never surrender his weapons of mass destruction  

wasn’t made clear enough, American  officials have since made repeated,  

unequivocal threats that the same  thing could happen to Kim Jong-un.

In the lead-up to the 2018 Singapore Summit,  for instance, President Trump warned that  

his North Korean counterpart would suffer the  same fate as Gadhafi if a deal wasn’t reached.

U.S., South Korean, and Japanese forces regularly  conduct mock decapitation drills on its doorstep.

And in 2006, former Secretary of  Defense William Perry published an  

op-ed titled “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy”.

None of this, obviously, absolves  North Korea of any responsibility.  

Its negotiating behavior has ranged from merely  skittish to downright deceitful. But, in truth,  

the U.S. has also given it plenty  of genuine reason for skepticism.

What the simplistic version of events — suggesting  North Korea never intended on following-through  

on its promises — from earlier misses is  the lack of American political continuity.

The 1994 “Agreed Framework”, when North  Korea was caught secretly enriching uranium,  

for example, is remembered as a failure.

While its actions certainly violated the  spirit of the agreement, it did suspend  

production of plutonium, as promised, which  was a significant step in the right direction.

Also missing is that the Clinton  administration completed a review  

of U.S. policy on September 15th, 1999,  

recommending, quote, “a new, comprehensive  and integrated approach to…negotiations”.

But that radical, new approach  never came to fruition,  

because George Bush won the  presidency 14 months later.

Bush began his own policy  review, which took another year  

and ended by effectively  suspending the Agreed Framework.

Now, the U.S. had every right to  withdraw from its side of the agreement.  

After all, North Korea had clearly  violated it first. But, in doing so,  

it let North Korea off the hook for everything,  allowing it to resume the production of plutonium.

Not only did America wilfully lose the  little bit of progress it had made,  

it also permanently diminished the  very currency of negotiations: trust.

Again, blame lies squarely in North Korea’s court,  

but one can easily see America’s actions would  inspire less than supreme confidence in Pyongyang.

In addition to the lack of political  continuity which leads countries around  

the world to doubt America’s long-term  commitments and think they can simply  

“wait it out” for a new administration,  there’s also the issue of funding.

Presidents can negotiate, but  only Congress controls the purse.  

When the two branches disagree, commitments  made by the president may be broken. The  

other country won’t care whose exact fault  it is — only that the promise was broken.

Another neglected aspect of the Agreed Framework  were the delays. Angry that the U.S. was quote  

“rewarding” the enemy with fuel oil and two Light  Water Reactors — which cannot be used to build  

nuclear weapons — Congress withheld funding,  which led North Korea to doubt its sincerity.

A lot has changed in the last thirty-some years.  Aside from a few brief pauses here and there,  

North Korea has continued improving its  capabilities — from possessing “one or two bombs”,  

to missile-delivery, hydrogen bombs,  ballistic missiles, and, most recently,  

long-range, road-mobile ballistic missiles  capable of reaching anywhere on the U.S. mainland.

And yet the U.S. still demands the exact same  thing it did in 1990: “complete, verifiable, and  

irreversible denuclearization”. Its bottom-line is  that North Korea abandon 30-years of development,  

economic sacrifices, and, likely, the  only thing keeping Kim Jong-un alive.

If this was ever a realistic demand,  it stopped being one decades ago.

Each successive American president  arrives fresh in the White House believing  

they can be “the one” to finally  resolve the crisis once and for all.

But they soon discover that there  are only two possible pathways:

Either be forever known as “the  one” to accept that it’s too late,  

that North Korea is and will remain a nuclear  power, that there’s nothing the U.S. can do  

about it, and risk being perceived as  “soft” on the enemy of all enemies,

Or accept nothing less than the only  thing Kim Jong-un won’t ever agree to:  

complete denuclearization, setting themselves  up to fail from the very beginning.

If the goal is merely to punish, the United  States has, unquestionably, succeeded. But,  

more likely, having an effect has  been confused with effectiveness.

The irony is that, by refusing  to accept even 1% risk,  

America must now accept much more than 1% risk.

The world’s most powerful country cannot  cope with the fact that the one country  

beyond its control has an economy  the size of Mozambique and a leader  

whose most discernible personality  trait is a passion for Swiss cheese.

So accustomed to having the final say, the  ability to kill any leader of any country  

at any time, the U.S. is almost perfectly  ill-suited to deal with a country where such  

threats are exactly the cause of angst, and  therefore, bad behavior, in the first place.

So, what’s the solution? And  is North Korea an exception,  

or are economic sanctions vastly overrated?  Both these questions are the subject of  

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