Sung-Yoon Lee: Nukes are Pyongyang’s “nonnegotiable means of isolating & exercising dominance over Seoul.”

Professor Lee raises, if ever so briefly, the standards of a newspaper that is simultaneously America’s most prestigious, and in terms of its North Korea coverage, easily its worst.

But a nuclear North Korea is unlike a nuclear China or Russia. During the Cold War, neither Beijing nor Moscow faced an existential threat in the form of an alternate Chinese or Russian state. Pyongyang, on the other hand, has had to live with a far more prosperous and legitimate Korean state across its southern border.

This internal dynamic of the Korean Peninsula compels Pyongyang to continue to threaten war and perfect its weapons of mass destruction. The regime’s logic is that the more advanced its nuclear capability, the less likely the United States will be to defend South Korea at the risk of sacrificing millions of American lives at home.

Hence, for the North, menacing the United States is a nonnegotiable means of isolating and exercising dominance over Seoul. This is how the regime of Kim Jong-un seeks to ensure its long-term survival. [Sung-Yoon Lee, The New York Times]

I often wish that I could write as well in my first language as Professor Lee can write in his second language. I always look forward to his op-eds — not only because they’re a pleasure to read, but also because off-hand, I can’t think of anyone else who writes about North Korea in the English language, who also reads North Korean propaganda in the original Korean, who possesses the additional understanding and context of having been raised in the Korean culture, and who is possessed of the good judgment to interpret that evidence usefully for the reader. If you’re as devoted a NYT non-subscriber as I am — I say this as someone who has co-written two op-eds (both with Prof. Lee) that the Times has published — this is well worth spending one of your free clicks.