DPRK Foreign Policy in 2018: Challenges to IR Theory

The aim of IR theory is to lower the uncertainty of other actors' policy. Still the turn of the DPRK diplomacy that we witnessed in 2018 and early 2019 was mostly unexpected. The key to this may be a wrong choice of a dominating theory that determined the whole discourse. As the North Korean policy contains a sensitive issue of nuclear and missile program it is easy to start analyzing it from the realist point of view. Realist IR - taking its classical variation as an example - depicts North Korean case when it is static. Realist theory concepts such as IR anarchy, power balancing, state actorship match the situation precisely. Still classic realism fails to explain the dynamics - e.g. the reason why the change of the DPRK's resources (being still much less than those of Pyongyang's opponents) had such a significant impact on this case. The author tries to identify main obstacles that hinder more accurate analysis of Pyongyang's foreign policy using realist methodology. As a possible solution the author comes up with combining realist concepts with those of other IR theories which methodology may become a valuable addition to the North Korean foreign policy. A step towards inter-paradigmal approach not only complies with the research goal but also lies within a broader trend of IR theory development.