Korean Studies Colloquium
Thursday, April 1, 2021 - 1:00pm

Hyun-Binn Cho (Assistant Professor, The College of New Jersey) & Ariel Petrovics (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

 
Via Zoom 
*Registration required: please register via the following link: https://upenn.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUtceGorjIqEtEHrmgNGr-JKVT7p83N_lTO

As North Korea’s nuclear arsenal continues to threaten the tenuous truce on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang has yet to clarify when and how it envisions using its newfound capabilities. Beyond the mere possession of nuclear weapons, North Korea’s nuclear posture is likely to have significant implications for deterrence, crisis escalation, and regional stability. Existing estimates of Pyongyang’s nuclear posture, however, are inconsistent and outdated, and as a result, they provide incoherent expectations about the impact of North Korea’s nuclear weapons on the region. We help to address these concerns by outlining which nuclear postures Pyongyang could choose to adopt and proposing a new framework for understanding the Hermit Kingdom’s evolving capabilities. We argue that unlike most regional powers in the nuclear club that adhere to traditional typologies of nuclear posture, North Korea has incentives to forge a distinctive path that mixes elements of opposing postures. The resulting uncertainty poses unique challenges for the Biden administration, particularly in terms of the risks of crisis escalation and nuclear proliferation in the region.