ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a framework for understanding North Korean foreign policy. Despite its large, well-equipped, modern army, North Korea has the foreign policy of a small, relatively weak country, a policy limited in scope and purpose. The idea of dealing with the United States and of tacitly accepting a US presence for a period was not medicine that went down easily with all of the North Korean leadership. The chapter examines various aspects that touch on the North's approach to the United States. If cross-recognition was a bar to Pyongyang's dealing with Japan, the collapse of North Korea's international position—the loss of Eastern Europe and the USSR—suddenly made the move to Tokyo eminently logical and necessary. For the North Koreans, moving to improve relations with Japan has some of the same consequences as moving toward the United States. The North has long understood the foreign policy costs of dealing with the United States and Japan.
