To Pyongyang, Peace Treaty is the Path to Victory
By Sung-Yoon Lee, Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
If the mere signing of a peace agreement or renunciation of war among hostile parties could ensure peace and prevent future wars, both parties could disarm or, at the very least, drastically reduce their defense budget and placidly pursue a life of happiness and prosperity. Tragically, however, history is replete with such paper agreements that were signed by quixotic parties featuring at least one that remained determinedly bellicose and, thus, invited a deadly war.
Such disastrous “peace” and “non-aggression” pacts gone awry abound: the punitive 1919 Versailles Treaty, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that renounced war, the infamous 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the 1973 Paris Peace Accords that paved the way for U.S. abandonment of Saigon and Hanoi’s unification of Vietnam by force, and the 1991 Inter-Korean Basic Agreement on Reconciliation and Non-Aggression with which Pyongyang tamed Seoul into appeasement in successive acts of aggression.
Calls for a peace treaty with the current Kim Jong Un regime blithely ignore the North Korean dynasty’s seven decades-old record of sedulously striving to achieve its “supreme national task” of reunifying the Korean peninsula on its own terms while intermittently calling for faux peace. A Korean peninsula peace treaty bill that calls for U.S.-North Korea negotiations on such a treaty portends the empowerment of the Kim regime with official U.S. recognition and open-ended provision of economic concessions. Most ominously, it prefigures Pyongyang’s full nuclearization and the collapse of the de facto peace that has been maintained in the Korean peninsula since the armistice agreement in July 1953 and the forging of the U.S.-South Korea alliance later in October.
A peace agreement between the United States and North Korea sounds tantalizing. In fact, it is—to the Kim regime. It would propel the macabre regime within grasp of realizing its decades-old dream of taking over the South that Kim Il Sung had sought, tellingly, upon calling for inter-Korean talks for peaceful reunification just days before his deadly invasion of the South on June 25, 1950. Supporters of the bill might ponder: “Why has North Korea, a state-sponsor of terrorism that has blatantly violated both the letter and spirit of every single international agreement it has signed with parties not named the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, persistently called on the United States to sign a peace treaty, which, in the end, is just another paper agreement?”
Because, this particular piece of paper, unlike the pre-invasion incantation of peace, in fact is a real playbook for Pyongyang. A peace treaty would change the balance of power in the Korean peninsula decidedly in North Korea’s favor. The peninsular balance of power has been maintained since 1953 by mutual deterrence. For several decades, tens of millions of South Koreans have enjoyed actual peace in no small measure thanks to the U.S. Forces in South Korea (USFK). That the U.S. soldiers in South Korea, together with fellow South Korean forces, would be among the first to be sacrificed in a future war started by the North, has sent the most credible message to Pyongyang and its patrons that the U.S. stands fully committed to defending the South and, if necessary, marching into Pyongyang.
However, a peace treaty would severely damage this balance of power. It would render the United Nations Command (UNC), forged by the United Nations Security Council in the crucible of the war that North Korea started, superfluous and arguably illegal. Politically, it will become impossible to maintain the UNC, a multinational military force established for the purpose of defending South Korea. A peace agreement signed among the U.S. South Korea, and North Korea, with or without China’s signature, would strip the UNC of its very raison d’être. Furthermore, the raison d’être of U.S. Forces in South Korea will also come under fire. North Koreans, South Koreans, and Americans alike, if only in varying tone and frequency, will call into question the necessity of maintaining U.S. troops in the South.
A power vacuum in Korea has repeatedly served as an invitation to aggression. A peace agreement with a nuclear-armed North Korea will not only destabilize the actual peace over the past seven decades but set the stage for Pyongyang to gamble big and opt for a limited nuclear war. The North Korean leadership, though backward and bizarre, is not to be underestimated. A most unlikely candidate for regional influence, North Korea has defied the odds and become a credible nuclear threat to the U.S. By artfully placating its adversaries with post-provocation peace ploys—a simple, transparent strategy that has hypnotized successive leaders and drawn billions of dollars into its coffers—Pyongyang has proven itself a most accomplished manipulator. To North Korea’s dictators, peace is the path to war and the final victory.
Sung-Yoon Lee is a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author of The Sister: The extraordinary story of the rise of Kim Yo Jong, the most powerful woman in North Korea (published in the U.K. last month and due to be released in the U.S. in September). Previously, Dr. Lee taught Korean history at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
