ABSTRACT

Dealing with Communist North Korea has become one of the most difficult challenges in global politics today. Totalitarian and reclusive, ideologically isolated and economically ruined, it is the inherent ‘other’ in a globalised and neo-liberal world order. And yet, North Korea keeps surviving, not least because its leaders periodically rely on threats, such as nuclear brinkmanship, as a last resort to gain concessions from the international community. The latest substantial round of such brinkmanship tactics started to emerge in the autumn of 2002, when Pyongyang admitted to a secret nuclear weapons program and subsequently withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. From then on the situation rapidly deteriorated. By early 2003 both the US and North Korea were threatening each other with outright war. Even Japan, in its most militaristic posture in decades, publicly contemplated the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against North Korea (Struck 2003, 28).