Frank Jannuzi joined the Mansfield Foundation as President and Chief Executive Officer in April 2014. From 1997-2012, Mr. Jannuzi was Policy Director, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he advised Committee Chairmen Joseph Biden and John Kerry on a range of security, political, economic, and human rights issues pertinent to U.S.

Summary

Is there a way to break the stalemate with North Korea? Mr. Frank Jannuzi, President and CEO of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, offers an assessment of the current U.S.-North Korea relations, focusing on the question of how to solve the challenges of the North Korean nuclear development. Despite the difficulties in persuading North Korea to denuclearize, Mr. Jannuzi emphasizes the need for the international community to shape the environment towards dialogue and negotiation. The frustration by the U.S. comes from the fact that past efforts, including the Six Party Talks and the Leap Day agreement, failed to achieve its goal and North Korea continues to develop its nuclear program alongside its ballistic missile technology. Given the stalemate, however, Mr. Jannuzi recognizes South Korea’s trustpolitik as a plausible way to foster a regional engagement strategy that is similar to Europe’s Helsinki Process. Finally, Mr. Jannuzi points out that the current relationship between South and North Korea remains at the early stage of trust-building, by which the two needs to stop doing harm to each other. He argues that the spirit of reconciliation must continue to grow, especially if the younger generations are to live in the Korean Peninsula marked by cooperation and common interest.

“You have an urgent requirement to deal with North Korea not because we trust them but because we do not trust them. We do not trust their intentions, and the only way to build trust is by taking small steps as President Park said: step by step, making promises that are achievable, making commitments that are doable, and then judging by performance.”

“Reconciliation begins when you stop doing harm to one another. The first step is to stop doing harm. The next step is to try to deepen mutual understanding. And the third step is when you try to atone for mistakes of the past and build a future together. And right now, we are unfortunately still at the first step: stop doing harm.”

U.S. North Korea Policy and North Korean Denuclearization

• North Korea’s nuclear ambition is central to the survival of their government, and it will take much more effort than the currently suspended Six Party Talks or sanctions to untangle this relationship.

• The U.S. should always pursue the goal that seeks complete eradication of North Korea’s nuclear weapons capacity. However, near term concerns are more likely to be focused on non-proliferation, especially after the discovery of North Korea’s proliferation activities in Syria.

• The Six Party Talks has been effective in a sense that it offered “external guarantors” to strengthen negotiated outcomes. Currently, however, the U.S. has very little expectation for North Korea to return to the negotiation table, which needs to take place under the right circumstances.

• Americans felt betrayed by North Korea following the breakdown of the Lead Day agreement in 2012. Nevertheless, frustrations in diplomacy should not be used to deter the U.S. from reengaging.

South Korea’s Trustpolitik

• Based on President Park’s trustpolitik, South Korea may be able to create some political space for the Obama administration to in terms of leading the efforts to achieve denuclearization vis-à-vis North Korea. Given that the U.S. government is currently occupied elsewhere and frustrated with North Korea’s obduracy, Seoul may be able to provide new ideas that can persuade other countries, including the U.S., to support and follow.

• The Helsinki Process in Europe was a process of engagement predicated on mutual respect across multiple dimensions from security to economy, and from human rights to people-to-people contact. South Korea’s Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI) shares a similar vision with this process and it may as well lead to greater engagement with North Korea.

• A Helsinki Process in Northeast Asia, as NAPCI may envision, will deal with smaller and easier issues that are least controversial to build a foundation for countries to engage in harder issues. In other words, none of it will be designed to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue by itself but to shape the environment that is more likely to bring about negotiations on such topics.

• As a multilateral engagement process, a Helsinki Process in Northeast Asia will broaden the scope of players in terms of dealing with North Korea. There are many other countries aside from the members of the Six Party Talks that take interest in the future of Northeast Asia, and this can also be advantageous for North Korea since it opens up the possibility of having more trusted, friendly or neutral countries to join.

• Currently, inter-Korean relations are at the stage where both sides need to stop doing harm against each other. Once this is established, both can deepen mutual understanding and finally engage in meaningful rapprochement. All parties should recognize that it is in their interest to have younger generations to live in an environment of cooperation and common interest, not hostility and division...(Continued) 

Through the Smart Q&A, East Asia Institute (EAI) seeks to offer timely and in-depth analysis on current issues by conducting video interviews with domestic and international experts. EAI takes no institutional position on what is said in the interviews and they are solely the position of the interviewees. This report was prepared by Young-jin Ho and Mael Alan van Beek and edited by Boram Shin and Jaesung Ryu. Please use the correct reference when citing the contents of this interview.