Inflection Points: The Future of the North Korea Sanctions Regime

The sanctions regime on North Korea is at an inflection point. The UN sanctions monitoring framework has been dismantled in parallel to North Korea beginning to supply munitions, missiles and troops to Russia for use in the conflict in Ukraine. This comes in addition to the re-establishment of North Korean international trade after the COVID 19 pandemic. It precedes the inauguration of President Trump for his second term. Collectively, these factors mark a new epoch for sanctions on North Korea. This epoch will be marked by the question of how to deal with North Korea as a technologically mature nuclear armed State working in close partnership with Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council.

The Landscape Before COVID

Before examining the future of the North Korea sanctions regime, it is useful to examine aspects of the current sanctions regime and its purpose. UN sanctions on North Korea started as targeted measures conforming to the broader ‘targeted sanctions’ principles adopted by the UN security council following the 1990s Iraq sanctions episode.[1] The resolutions of the 2000s and early 2010s included prohibitions on the provision of nuclear technology, missile technology and arms.[2] These targeted measures were principally designed to slow the programme and fitted with a larger paradigm of strategic patience. These targeted measures expanded until the mid 2010s when the Security Council shifted focus to broader sectoral measures.[3] These measures are collectively more akin to wholescale economic sanctions and more akin to the type of measures adopted by the UN against Iraq in the 1990s than targeted measures. This reflected the fact that targeted sanctions were having little effect in slowing or stopping North Korea’s nuclear programme. The broadening of the measures fit with the paradigm of maximum pressure adopted by the US and reflected a significant push in the mid 2010s to make progress on the North Korea nuclear issue.

Sanctions can never work in isolation from broader initiatives including diplomacy. President Trump, during his first administration, broke with tradition to negotiate with North Korea. These negotiations and the maximum pressure campaign built towards the Hanoi summit in 2019 where it was expected that a deal could be cut with North Korea. The elements of such a deal were clear: lift the sectoral sanctions in exchange for concessions relating to North Korea’s nuclear programme.[4] The difficulty was in differing expectations. North Korea expected sanctions easing without giving up its nuclear programme, whereas the US was offering sanctions easing in exchange for giving up the nuclear programme in what was referred to as the Libya model.[5] These expectations were not reconcilable and may never be reconcilable. There is substantial political and diplomatic impetus against accepting North Korea as a nuclear weapons state despite the reality on the ground.

COVID 19 as a Watershed

No agreement was reached, resulting in a stalemate in which the sanctions continued, but so too did North Korean nuclear development. Through his annual new year’s addresses, Kim Jong Un announced ever more expansive nuclear ambitions. Subsequently, North Korea channeled its energy and resources to realising these goals.

This stalemate was exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic which resulted in North Korea closing its border for nearly four years[6]. During this time, much of North Korea’s sanctions evasion infrastructure changed, with cross-border networks diminishing, embassies abroad closing and maritime networks being disrupted. North Korea focused more attention on sanctions evasion that could be done virtually, including revenue generation through IT workers and cryptocurrency theft. The disruption caused by COVID 19 was so systemic that it is not clear that North Korea could reestablish its previous evasion practices even if it wanted to. For example, North Korea has apparently decided to permanently close embassies in numerous countries around the world.[7]  The COVID 19 pandemic doubtless had a devastating impact on North Koreans, including as a result of the self-embargo resulting from closing the border, which would have been more impactful and devastating than any sanctions that could be imposed on the country.

Fortuitously for North Korea, as it emerged from the COVID 19 pandemic, a key opportunity presented itself. Its northern neighbor, Russia, was enmeshed in its conflict in Ukraine and urgently needed munitions including significant quantities of unusual artillery shells, which North Korea happened to have in vast quantities.[8] While the Hanoi summit in 2019 had failed to reach an agreement on sanctions easing, North Korea was able to sidestep this by reaching what appears to be a significant barter agreement with Russia, exchanging munitions, missiles and troops for commodities.[9]

North Korea’s provision of military materiel to Russia is a violation of UN sanctions. Those sanctions are binding on all countries, including Russia. Making its violation more egregious, Russia had agreed to these sanctions in its capacity as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.  However, there is little accountability for Russia, not least because of its influence within the UN system. The main mechanism that would hold Russia to account would have been the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea whose mandate was to investigate potential sanctions violations. The mandate of the panel was subject to annual renewal.  The mandate of the panel was due for renewal in March 2024, which transpired to be shortly after the first North Korean missile was fired in January 2024. Russia opposed an inspection by the panel and ultimately vetoed the panel’s renewal on 28 March 2024.[10],[11] The panel still had several weeks left on its mandate at this point, and members of the panel conducted an investigation of the debris in April 2024, concluding that it was indeed a North Korean missile that had been fired in Ukraine, much to Russia’s chagrin.

While it would have been beneficial to maintain the panel of experts, western states were right to reject a compromise that would see the panel continue, provided that it did not investigate allegations of Russian non-compliance. All states must be held to an equal standard for UN sanctions to maintain legitimacy, and Russia’s actions are clearly in contradiction to its role on the Security Council.

Trump Mk 2

It is this context that President Trump will find when he reenters office in January 2024.  What a second Trump administration will mean for North Korea and for the sanctions regime is presently unclear. As a result of North Korea’s defense pact with Russia and the pace of North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, the dynamics that the new administration will find will be very different from those that existed during the previous administration.It is fair to say that skepticism and fatigue of sanctions has grown. Additionally, as academic literature suggests, sanctions almost never result in a country changing policy.[12]  Even if North Korea operated on a simple cost-benefit calculus, its newly deepened relations with Russia mean that lifting sanctions would have a comparatively reduced benefit to the North Korean economy. In any case, North Korea does not operate on such a straightforward economic calculus. The nuclear and missile programmes are central to Kim Jong Un’s political character.

In the absence of a UN Panel of Experts, it is likely that global focus on sanctions implementation will diminish. The panel played a useful role in keeping attention on the issue through its semi-annual reports and through its investigations, which often demonstrated that large numbers of countries and many commercial entities were not fully complying with sanctions. While there will likely be an effort to create a panel-like mechanism outside the UN Security Council, the reality is that the Security Council mandate of the panel was central to its influence and effect.[13]

In this context, the Trump administration will have a decision to make about the future of the sanctions regime. Will the Trump administration double down on a maximum pressure approach or will the Trump administration trade off the sanctions for concessions from North Korea and Russia? The answers to these questions are unclear. It does seem likely that there will be an exchange of letters between Trump and Un given how vocal President Trump has been regarding the so-called ‘love letters’ with North Korea’s supreme leader.[14] Such an exchange may open the door to dialogue and diplomacy as happened during Trump’s first term. However, there will be substantial pushback against the idea of in any way accepting North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, which would be the de facto outcome of a process resulting in sanctions being eased.

It is interesting to consider also the role of Russia in relation to any possible negotiations with North Korea. For decades, US officials have hoped that China would have sufficient leverage with North Korea to curtail its nuclear programme – if only China would use it. This long-standing assumption probably overestimates China’s influence (whereas Chinese officials probably underestimate China’s influence at the same time). Given the North Korea-Russia military cooperation, Russia now likely yields more influence in Pyongyang than China. Thus, the status of US relations with Russia are now likely to be as significant in negotiations with North Korea as the status of relations between Trump and Kim Jong Un.  If President Trump can bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine, Russia may be receptive to addressing the North Korea nuclear issue. On the other hand, if the conflict in Ukraine continues and Russia military cooperation with North Korea continues, there seems to be little prospect of successful negotiations with North Korea, as North Korea can gain more benefits from trade with Russia than from a broader easing of sanctions. Even with Russian support, there are no prospects of North Korea abandoning its nuclear programme. If North Korea can withstand the economic effects of its border being controlled, it can easily withstand even the harshest sanctions. Perhaps the most likely scenario is one in which negotiations take place with some interim and limited scope agreement, such as moratoriums on nuclear tests or missile tests, but with no broader resolution to the nuclear issue. Regardless, it seems certain that sanctions will linger on as a poorly implemented legacy of a once united and useful UN Security Council. 

Should an interim or broader agreement be reached, the Security Council should take the opportunity to renew and reset the sanctions regime so that it encourages North Korean compliance while also ensuring that North Korea cannot access foreign technology to further its nuclear or missile programmes. Until then, there should be a steadfast effort to fully implement the existing sanctions, including calling out Russia for its violations of its sacred obligations as a permanent member of the Security Council. 

Dr Ian J. Stewart, as the executive director of the CNS office in Washington, DC, specialises in export controls, sanctions and emerging technology control. His previous roles include leading a non-proliferation programme at King’s College London and serving as a nuclear engineer with the British Ministry of Defence, focusing on counterproliferation and nuclear deterrent strategies. Holding Master’s degrees in both nuclear science and technology and electrical and electronic engineering, Dr Stewart received his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London (KCL). His research, primarily centering on export controls and the history of non-proliferation measures, is exemplified in his book, "International Nuclear Export Controls and Non-Proliferation: The Collective Action Problem."

Contact: istewart@middlebury.edu