Perspectives on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs

The Juche- or self reliance philosophy is an obstacle for importation of sufficient quantities of food and energy raw material. In addition to that, North Korea cannot afford to aquire weapons to such an extent that a conventional weapons balance with the South can be maintained. Pyongyang is instead fearing an attack from USA and/or South Korea. In order to defend the country, North Korea has a nuclear weapon program, which caused a crisis in 1994. That crisis was only solved in a cosmetic way and North Korea is again threatening with aquiring nuclear weapons and has left the NPT. The new U.S. policy for non-proliferation in combination with North Korea´s fears for an attack create a stalemate, which cannot be broken at present by the six-nations negotiations, which are carried on in Beijing. USA has a number of other non-proliferation issues to consider and is presently not likely to plan for an attack intended to force North Korea to an unconditional scrapping of its nuclear weapons program. Such vital interests are in the balance for China and such a considerable mutual understanding of the respective problems concerning North Korea and Taiwan is emerging between China and USA that certain hopes can be pinned to a negotiated settlement of the problem, but that is undermined by a North Korean wish to gain time and to put obstacles in the way for any deal that could diminish China´s support for North Korea. In addition to that a number of other problems between neighbouring states probably will have to be solved in connection with these negotiations, if any deal shall become sustainable.