Talk is Cheap With North Korea, But Trade ...

Today, Obama leaves Asia having made no headway on the issue of North Korean denuclearization. In Japan, China, and South Korea, the president reaffirmed each country's commitment to bring North Korea back to the Six-Party Talks. But it's not clear how much good that would do: Pyongyang remains as unpredictable as ever. For the past decade, North Korea has participated in eight rounds of these negotiations -- a process aimed toward ending DPRK's nuclear program that also involves the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea -- and it's been rewarded with gradual loosening of economic sanctions. The outcome? A trail of broken pledges and two nuclear tests, the most recent one in May.

It may be time to shift toward using trade and academic exchanges to open up North Korea -- an approach that worked with Eastern Europe and China -- and leave more of the heavy lifting on denuclearization to its neighbors. As a recent Asia Society report suggests, integrating North Korea into the world economy could potentially empower its citizens and impose heretofore nonexistent domestic pressure on its leaders to abide by international norms. Having already removed North Korea from the U.S. Trading with Enemy Act last year (only Cuba remains!), we should follow the lead of many European countries to develop trade ties and encourage NGO aid networks to work within the country. The United States could also initiate technological and educational exchanges to expose North Koreans to new ideas and business practices that can be implemented back home.

These societal improvements will be critical to transitioning North Korea out of its currently unthinkable degree of isolation and poverty. In a recent New Yorker article, Barbara Demick describes a famine in North Korea that killed 2.5 million and profiles a woman who led a modern-day hunter-gatherer life in order to combat state-induced food shortage, all the while believing that she was living in the “greatest nation on earth”:

Enduring hunger became part of one's patriotic duty. Posters went up in the capital, Pyongyang, touting a new slogan, "Let's Eat Two Meals a Day"… Mrs. Song would hike north and west from the city center, carrying a kitchen knife and a basket to collect edible weeds and grass. If you got out to the mountains, you could find dandelions or other weeds that people ate even in good times. Occasionally, Mrs. Song also collected rotten cabbage leaves that had been discarded by a farmer.

This oppression is destabilizing for North Korea's economic system and the country as a whole -- clearly not a good thing when you're talking about a country with nukes.

Meanwhile, we can leave the task of putting pressure on DPRK to its neighbors -- they're within range of Pyongyang's missiles, and they're most vulnerable if it experiences internal instability. Japan, South Korea, and even China are pursuing a denuclearization policy with North Korea that is already roughly in line with U.S. interests. Two days ago, Pyongyang even declared eagerness for inter-Korean dialogue toward unification.

Going forward, the Six-Party Talks will remain an important platform for coordination among the nations invested in North Korea’s nuclear disarmament. However, for the United States, economic engagement with DPRK would be a more practical and sustainable policy focus. By drawing North Korea into the international community, as President Obama wishes, it would indirectly coerce Pyongyang to denuclearize and, more importantly, induce systemic change that bring benefits directly to the North Korean people.

-- Linda Li