In this Research Review, Gyubin Choi, Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, analyzes the implications of North Korea’s implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which was reported through its 2021 Voluntary National Review. Dr. Choi finds that, though Pyongyang has committed to all 17 SDGs, it did so selectively, adjusting the goals based on its own National Development Goals and limitations stemming from its political circumstances and ability to collect data. Looking forward, the author proposes that South Korea and the international community should continue to support North Korea in its efforts toward sustainable development. However, as Pyongyang is likely to prefer international, multilateral cooperation over bilateral cooperation with South Korea, Seoul should proceed cautiously, formulating its North Korea strategy based on a nuanced understanding of the North’s development agenda.

In this Commentary, Ryo Sahashi, Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, discusses North Korea’s continued military armament and nuclear proliferation and stresses the importance of ROK-U.S.-Japan cooperation in countering this threat. Specifically, Dr. Sahashi notes that the international community needs to maintain its goal of the complete denuclearization of North Korea and that Japan and South Korea, whose security are indissolubly intertwined, must first focus on building a strong partnership. He argues that the recent victory of the Liberal Democratic party and solid political base present Tokyo with an opportunity for a proactive North Korean policy, one that might include increased diplomacy with Seoul.

In this Research Review, Dr. Hyesuk Kang and Dr. Kyungmo Ahn examine how North Korean ideologies have changed under the Kim Jong-un regime and outline the policy implications of this evolution. They find that the “Our State First” and “People First” principles have come to replace Songun (military first) thought as the pillars of North Korean government ideology. Dr. Kang and Dr. Ahn argue that such a shift in ideology stirred the transition from the Byungjin line to the ‘New Strategic Line’ in 2018, indicating that the flurry of diplomatic outreach from Pyongyang was in fact, calculated and strategic, not simply done on a whim. As North Korea veers sharply back towards conservativism and strict socialism, we must evaluate what went wrong in the 1990s, when the international community’s de-radicalization attempts only pushed North Korea further toward the extreme, in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes.