Managing Negotiations for Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

Running head: MANAGING NEGOTIATIONS 1
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Managing Negotiations
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MANAGING NEGOTIATIONS 2
What the Parties Are Negotiating For and Their Interests
Since the DPRK’s became a ballistic missile threat, it has called for the United States and
the superpower nations to intervene. These parties are trying to forge a negotiated talk to ensure
that denuclearized peninsula is restored. In the past, the United Nations was forced to cut its
diplomatic ties with DPRK and commissioned sanctions to this state (Chang & Gordon, 2016. It
has been hard trying to convince this nation to stop its nuclear plans. These plans are a major
threat to the global stability and security forcing the United States one of the superpowers to
initiate a dialogue. Kim Jong-un’s regime had provoked the United States in particular through
their implication that their ballistic capabilities must be felt globally.
The first interest that the US has is to bring Pyongyang into a leverage and stop these
provocations and threats. Despite the sanctions slapped on its diplomatic ties, DPRK had not
agreed to come to a negotiating table (Chang, 2016). The other interest that the United States has
over this negotiation is to stop future endeavors of countries like Iran who have been ignoring the
non-proliferation treaty (NPT). However, this conundrum has forced Trump’s administration to
use DPRK allies to stop further escalation from these threats.
The major interest that DPRK has is trying to restore its image and its fragile internal
condition with South Korea. It is understood that DPRK is pursuing this mission having lost in
the Korean War back in 1950 and 1953. The nation had several missiles launched, nine in total
for a period less than five years. However, this feeling of weakness grew when Kim Jong-Un
took over the reign and changed the constitution claiming that it was his father’s bequest to
declare DPRK a nuclear state. Economic and nuclear development were his priorities while
changing the constitution (Snyder, 2016).

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The Obama’s administration had initiated a six-party talk but the implementations of the
agreements reached were stalled. DPRK took advantage of this stall and continued to implement
its missile and nuclear program with the view that no agreement had been reached (Rinehart,
Nikitin & Chanlett-Avery, 2016). One of the officials on Pyongyang’s regime had asserted that
their common interest was not to come to a negotiating table but to restore the vital rights and the
sovereignty over the hostile US nuclear threat policy that had lasted about 50 years (Mullen,
2015).
The Korean peninsula has been under military threat and DPRK has been calling for
negotiated talks to defuse this threat and restore their trust between itself and South Korea. On a
keen eye, Pyongyang’s regime has been coming to a negotiating table only to buy time and
continue testing and building their nuclear weapons (Kim Tae-woo, 2016). Despite agricultural
and economic reforms announced in 2014, the country is still impoverished as the country is
keen on restoring its survival on the tie. According to Noland (2016), food security has been an
advantage to the privileged elite but a chronic insecurity for non-elites.
Power Position and the Rights of These Two Parties
The new American government elected in 2009 had promised to eliminate national
security threats by entering into negotiated talks with regimes like DPRK. In that particular year,
North Korea had conducted its 2nd ballistic test. This had forced the United Nations council on
security to slap sanctions on North Korea. The United States had embraced these sets of
sanctions but later abandoned this approach and called for a ‘strategic patience’ policy that did
not bear any fruits (Green, 2016).
These actions forced DPRK to launch 2 long-range missiles and a 3rd nuclear test in
2013. DPRK’s defense commission uttered that it would continue testing these weapons to fight

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against the United States their common enemy (Griffiths, 2016). Unlike the Bush and Clinton’s
regime that had adopted a foreign policy against North Korea, Iran and Iraq, Obama’s
government had turned out to be an inconvenient proposition that enemies had turned into
friends.
The American government piled pressure on DPRK to return to the six-party talks. The
major aspects of this strategy were to convince Pyongyang’s regime to denuclearize in close
coordination with allies like South Korea and Japan and convincing China to pile pressure on
DPRK through sanctions and interdictions. However, the sanctions that were applied toward
DPRK were lesser compared to the ones applied to Iran.
According to Stanton (2015), the American policy was meant to bring DPRK to its senses
but not its knees. The American government had built this approach bearing in mind that the rate
of a nuclear test by Pyongyang’s regime was not rapid to be capable of striking the American
boundaries (Chang, 2016). The United States had accused DPRK of human rights abuses and
nuclear proliferation. This policy adopted measures to bar dollar transactions in close connection
to Pyongyang and no bank whether American and foreign would handle these deals.
According to Philipp (2016), the power that the American government had over DPRK
was to involve Pyongyang in the diplomatic ties, pressurize Pyongyang through sanctions and
determents. However, these attempts were frustrated by the Chinese economic ties with the
DPRK. It was very hard to convince DPRK to denuclearize without impinging Chinese
economic and commercial engagements (Konishi, 2011).