Korea Project

A Belfer Center conference with the Seoul-based East Asia Institute (EAI) focused on U.S. priorities concerning the region’s security concerns amid other pressing global security challenges. Participants discussed impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war on the region and how to bolster U.S.-ROK cooperation on regional nuclear nonproliferation governance in light of the growing nuclear arsenals in China and North Korea.

For the United States, the dominant approach has been economic coercion. Despite applying stringent sanctions, the United States has been ineffective in convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal in return for a brighter economic and diplomatic future. The myriad U.S. sanctions have also failed to halt major progress in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. However, these setbacks have not caused the United States to change its strategy of economic coercion. On the contrary, the United States has considerably increased its use of this economic statecraft tool. In contrast, China has deepened its economic engagement with the North Korean regime since the late 2000s. Through the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and its counterpart the Workers’ Party of Korea, China has cultivated and monetized political ties. Doing so has provided a powerful mechanism through which the Kim family regime—leaders of North Korea’s ruling and prosperous 1 percent—has shored up stability and thrived.

Although North Korean cyber operations have been widely publicized, the purpose of this report is to focus on three ways North Korea obtains cryptocurrencies, specifically cryptomining, cryptojacking, and fraudulent initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Appearing at a hearing May 12 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation, Park discussed U.S policy towards North Korea and described the challenges of using sanctions as a deterrent for North Korea’s nuclear saber rattling. Specifically, Park pointed to China’s deepening economic engagement with North Korea as one reason why western sanctions have largely failed to change Pyongyang’s behavior. “By free-riding off of China’s financial and domestic marketplace systems, North Korea can conduct vital commercial transactions beyond the reach of American sanctions,” Park said.

The Korean Missile Crisis of 2017 presented General Brooks with a unique opportunity to rethink deterrence and develop a dynamic playbook to change Kim Jong Un’s calculus. The result he called “micro deterrence signaling.”

Over the last decade, financially motivated operations have come to play a central role in North Korea’s cyber strategy. The illicit revenue those operations generate helps blunt the impact of tough global sanctions and supports the regime’s ballistic-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. This report explores North Korean financially motivated actors’ convergence of interests and tradecraft with cybercriminals, focusing on their dealings with the Russian-language underground.

The Biden administration has emphasized the importance of alliances and core values of democracy in its foreign policy approach. Given this emphasis, public diplomacy—activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign audiences—should be considered an essential tool in achieving our long-term policy objectives in North Korea. Public diplomacy has the potential to spur domestic change in North Korea—change that could result in improved human rights conditions, leading to behavioral change in the Kim regime, and eventually denuclearization.

This report examines the role the intelligence community has played in U.S. efforts to deal with North Korea since the beginning of the Cold War.

Few know the intricacies of the North Korean problem better than General Vincent K. Brooks, who retired from active duty in January 2019 as a four-star general in command of over 600,000 Koreans and Americans comprising the U.S. Forces Korea, U.N. Command and ROK-U.S. Combined Forces. He also previously served as commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific.

Now a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, General Brooks spoke to TIME about opportunities for a breakthrough with North Korea during the Biden Administration.

It is time to innovate our approach to this seemingly intractable crisis by redefining the problem, the experts, and the solutions and prepare for a North Korea where North Koreans can finally author their own future.