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exploitative North to help the South to justify strengthening military ties
with the US.
This hard-line approach, which depends on a constructivist envisioning
of the North as an enemy and a realist balance-of power foreign policy
which relies on US military support, earned a similarly strong response
from Kim Jong Il in the North from the beginning. In 2009, around the
same time that Lee ended the Sunshine Policy, Kim Jong Il left the Six
Party Talks.^22 Following its withdrawal from the Talks, the North returned
to a policy of non-cooperation and intermittent aggression towards the
South as well as continued characterization of the US as an imperial
enemy.
The strengthened ties between South Korea and the US drew ire from
Kim Jong Il, and brought to a halt any progress which had been made
under the previous South Korean administrations. To understand the
North’s actions and positions, it is necessary to look at it from a
constructivist view. North Korea defies the logic of balance of power
theory because it is a unique example of “how a small and weak state was
able to obtain almost everything it wanted from the lone superpower
during the nuclear negotiations of 1993-1994; North Korea was able to
mobilize it’s tactical bargaining power against the massive aggregate
capabilities of the United States.”^23 A balance of threat take, as suggested
by Walt, makes more sense in the case of North Korea–and South Korea–
“because it focuses on the alliance behaviors of great powers and small
states.”^24 Still, this theory remains unable to explain why “North Korea as
a weak and isolated state”^25 attempts to balance against the more powerful
USA, instead of trying to bandwagon.
Still, this theoretical illustration helps one to understand why, as a
relatively small and weak state, threats are an important part of gaining
respect and importance in the region. By practicing nuclear diplomacy, the
North is able to sustain its existence. Thus, the argument goes, the North
must act in a realist manner or it will be destroyed. Only by forcing others
to view it as a threat can the North continue to justify its own existence,
and it derives its power and manipulative abilities primarily from using its
nuclear weapons and other military forces to intimidate the South and to
antagonize the US.
(^22) Nalwa, “Six Party Talks: Geneva Meeting Shrugs-Off ‘Strategic Patience’ but
Parsimoniously – Analysis.”
(^23) Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, 18.
(^24) Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, 19.
(^25) Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, 19.