The Anatomy of North Korea's Foreign Policy Formulation

Since 2003, a series of Six-Party Talks has attempted to halt North Korea's nuclear development; nonetheless, considering the development of North Korean nuclear capability, the talks are often regarded as an ineffective framework. In order to break through such a situation, first and foremost it is imperative to understand the nature of North Korean foreign policy. In this paper, I argue that North Korean foreign policy can be explained by neoclassical realism: the international distribution of power is interpreted by its domestic political system based on the self-reliance (Juche) ideology and the supreme leader (Suryong) political structure, whose basis is its Confucian culture, and I argue that this perception has predominantly determined its foreign policy decision-making.