Applying the Lessons of South African Nuclear Disarmament to North Korea

Abstract

IntroductionSatellite imagery has revealed steam coming from the renovated North Korean nuclear reactor at Yongbyon,1 implying that Pyongyang has renewed efforts to accumulate plutonium, which can be processed from the reactor's waste products, in order to expand its stockpile of nuclear warheads. If this is true, it represents a fresh phase of nuclear escalation from North Korea, made all the more serious since this action nullifies previous disarmament progress made in 2008 when Pyongyang demolished a cooling tower at the Yongbyon reactor,2 partially disabling its nuclear weapons program.Worryingly, the reactor needs to run for at least a year before spent fuel rods can be removed for plutonium harvesting, and the predicted date when the DPRK can begin reaping fresh weapons grade plutonium is fast approaching. Additionally, North Korea has a uranium enrichment program, which was first detected in 2002, and could also produce uranium-based nuclear arms. Despite the lack of concrete intelligence regarding the efficacy of Pyongyang's uranium enrichment for weapons building, it would be fair to assume that if left to its own devices, the DPRK's pool of nuclear explosives is set to grow.However, Pyongyang's behavior does not preclude an improvement in disarmament prospects leading to nuclear rollback. Turning to the South African nuclear disarmament model, hope for North Korean nuclear disarmament can be salvaged by the fact that Pretoria decommissioned its entire nuclear munitions manufacturing capability along with all operational atomic bombs. Hence, if the latter can relinquish its nuclear deterrent, so can the former.Learning from South Africa's Nuclear DisarmamentRevisiting the decommissioning of the South African nuclear weapons program from 1990 to 1991,3 permits the parsing of ideas for North Korean denuclearization despite the disparate nature of both states. South Africa's status as the only country to indigenously build and dismantle its nuclear arsenal should provide pointers as to how North Korea can be encouraged to relinquish nuclear arms.Concerning factors driving President F.W. de Klerk to order the dismantlement of Pretoria's nuclear weapons program in 1989, it can be substantiated that: (1) weakening Soviet support for Angola and Mozambique lessened the security threat that these two adversarial states posed against South Africa's northern borders4; (2) years of sanctions due to the imposition of apartheid had battered the South African economy, leading to a desperate need for externally driven economic rehabilitation5 (which would be jeopardized by pariah status from nuclear arms possession) and; (3) De Klerk strongly believed in the morality of nuclear disarmament.6As such, South African nuclear disarmament was brought about by a pacification of serious national security threats, the realization that sanctions induced economic autarky was intolerable, and the positive effect of international nonproliferation norms. Correspondingly, if the North Korean security paradigm improves, benefits from economic interdependence become tangible and prestige or legitimacy from rogue status cessation can be gained, Pyongyang might agree to denuclearize.North Korean Economic, Norms-Based and National Security RealitiesNorth Korea has a moribund economy. Despite the autarky promoting state ideology of Juche, North Korea seems incapable of surviving without foreign assistance. For instance, its economy suffered a dip as soon as socialist support was withdrawn in 19917 and shrunk by almost half from 1990 to 1999.8 Additionally, the North Korean economy only grew once from 2009 to 2011 with gross domestic product only increasing by 0.8 percent in 2011.9 Moreover, the DPRK has been constantly unable to feed its population in contemporary times with crop failure in 2014 brought about by drought,10 and serious food shortages from 1995 onward due to natural disasters and economic mismanagement, thereby degrading labor productivity and societal sustainability. …