N Korea does its bombs-for-food routine

North Korea has agreed to suspend its missile and nuclear programs in exchange for food aid from the United States. But North Korea has made progress in its military projects over the course of the past several years. Is Pyongyang serious about abandoning its achievements for food aid? Price to pay: Missiles North Korea is the center of global missile technology proliferation, operating outside of any external oversight. According to Forecast International, Pyongyang sold about 1,200 missiles abroad, mostly short-range missiles, from 1987 to 2009. Customers include Middle Eastern and South Asian countries, Pakistan and Iran. Missile exports are a good source of hard currency for the cash-strapped Communist nation. To be sure, the North Koreans run a tight ship, and tracking down the origin of some of these North Korean missile technologies is incredibly difficult. For example, Pyongyang demonstrated BM25 Musudan medium-range (3,000 – 4,000 km) missiles in 2010. Frankly, the missile looked strangely familiar, resembling in many ways the Soviet sea-based nuclear missile R-27. However, there’s no reliable evidence of tests or deployments of this system. No one knows anything about the origin of this hardware or how it ended up in Korea. The Americans love to talk about technology and document leaks from the Makeyev Design Bureau (the one that designed the R-27 missile) in Miass, Russia, or straight from the Russian Navy. There is, though, a less dramatic and more believable scenario: Iranian students who studied in Russian military-technical universities up until late 1990s could be the source of the leaks. Admittedly, North Korea either doesn’t have any truly long-range and reliable missiles or has just a handful. Pyongyang’s arsenals include mostly Hwasong missiles, a well-known design based on the Soviet R-17 tactical missile. It’s better known under its NATO moniker Scud, and its manufacture is a well-trodden path for the countries willing to establish their own military missile production. North Korea’s Hwasong-6 with a range of about 700 km was sold to Iran and became the prototype for its Shahab missiles. Syria also bought some. According to experts, Korea made anywhere from 500 to 1,000 such missiles, of which at least half were sold abroad. In late 1990s, North Koreans used the Hwasong missile as the foundation for its Nodong and Taepodong missiles, which boast a significantly longer range of 1,200 – 2,000 km. Taepodong-1 was used to design the Taepodong-2 booster, which was officially proclaimed an intercontinental missile. According to official information from Pyongyang, North Korea’s first artificial satellite was launched into space in the spring of 2009 using the Taepodong-2 space booster. In fact, the satellite went down before making it past Hawaii. Still, the Taepodong-2 range is estimated between 4,000 and 6,000 km. The upper range is obviously overstated, especially when adjusted for operational load and actual system reliability. As of today, this missile is to a certain extent a propaganda missile intended for the United States, but further work on it during the next decade or so could give Pyongyang a booster capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the West Coast of the United States. Price to pay: Nuclear program North Korea is a nuclear power, confirmed not only by official statement but by real deeds. There were two official nuclear tests on October 9, 2006 and on May 25, 2009. But there are several more instances in the nuclear history of North Korea that haven’t yet been properly interpreted. A powerful, unexplained explosion took place in the Yangando province on September 9, 2004. Characteristic isotope emissions were detected in the spring of 2010, which could be the result of subcritical experiments – possibly accidents involving spontaneous chain reactions – or an attempt to assemble a nuclear explosive device using power plutonium. Although the North Korean nuclear program is carried on using poor technology and low-grade materials, it is still advancing and has been doing so at a particularly fast clip over the past five to six years when North Korea’s relations with the United States cooled. However, there’s a great distance between the ability to put together a nuclear device – which Pyongyang managed to achieve, albeit, with great difficulties – and the serial production of nuclear weapons, in this particular case, in the form of ballistic missile warheads. So far, we know nothing about the actual size of North Korean products or whether the manufacturing processes available in North Korea allow them to make a weapon of a manageable size and with proper protections, including protection against takeoff vibration. It’s likewise difficult to assess the stock of fissionable weapon-grade materials available to North Koreans, but it’s not large as far as we can tell. If the assumption that the 2010 spring tests were conducted to check the usability of the power plutonium, which can be developed using light water reactors, is confirmed, then this will mean that Pyongyang is either experiencing a severe shortage of weapon materials, or is getting itself ready for tougher international control. Will the swap take place? The question about whether Pyongyang is truly prepared to abandon its arsenals is to a large extent rhetorical. North Korea is in very bad economic shape. As a matter of fact, it managed to survive over the past 10 to 15 years only because the authorities of all levels have been turning a blind eye to the country’s massive black market. This breeds corruption, including among party members, and forms a class of people who may be interested in liberalizing the regime. This social group may, in fact, welcome such a strategic exchange of nuclear missile capability for property guarantees and the monetization of bureaucratic privileges. On the other hand, no one is ever going to issue them such guarantees, and even if they do, building insurance arrangements doesn’t look practicable. The removal of the “iron curtain” and transition to a market economy will destroy the Juche system, which, given the unsettling gap between the standard of living of the South and that of the North, will instantly result in drastic political changes in North Korea. In the event of Korean unification, which is a nightmare scenario for all regional powers, except, perhaps, Russia, North Korean elites will be absorbed and dissolved by South Koreans with their strong financial and international clout – that is, if the South Koreans are prepared to implode their labor market and pay a “reunion tax” for the next 20 or more years in order to level infrastructure disparities between the two countries. North Korean elites have no other course of self-preservation other than to keep reinforcing the wall and making more nuclear missiles. Neither Japan, China nor the United States need a unified Korea. Therefore, the “black hole” on the Korean Peninsula will remain indefinitely.