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I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
- Robert Frost, 'The Road Not Taken'
When the darkness came down with a few drops of rain in Oxford, a few students, including myself, walked through a cobblestone lane. When we finally reached the top of a circular staircase that seemed as though it appeared in Harry Potter, we saw a group of students lined up in front of a room with warm lights. This event, filled with students, was nothing but a lecture on "How do you solve a problem like North Korea?" by Edward Howell, an expert on North Korea.
As most would assume from the title of the event, the talk started with big questions: "Why is North Korea a problem to the international community? Can we actually solve this problem? What does it mean to ‘solve’ the problem?" In response to these questions, Howell emphasized that we do not really know about North Korea. In fact, we are only looking at North Korea through the lens of poor journalism and, even worse, through a sarcastic, simple caricature. In essence, we do not know what is behind the issue. Indeed, the issue of North Korea is still veiled and remains, as Howell put it, "the blackest of black boxes".
However, according to Howell, North Korea’s behavior does not exist in a vacuum. It is something that comes from the intertwined domestic and international spheres rather than its own decisions and actions. That is why this North Korean issue is even more of a problem for the international community. North Korea’s unprecedented actions, joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985 and withdrawing from it in 2003, question the power or the role of the United States. In the same context, though there have been numerous endeavors—including six-party talks, UN sanctions, and, more recently, meetings in Singapore—North Korea is still keeping its nuclear program and missiles. This obviously shows that international measures are not working. One step further—the rhetoric of the "denuclearization of [the] Korean peninsula"—which the North has been putting forward, places a high value on international communities and relations. If one can think about the fact that the United States’ ultimate goal is the denuclearization of North Korea, not the Korean peninsula as a whole, we can once again think about leadership, power, and the problem of who decides on its foreign policy in the international sphere.
So how can we actually solve this problem? Various state initiatives, NGO work—including Liberty in North Korea, and international policies—are all worth a try. However, to change this stagnated situation and, more importantly, to meet the changing North Korean society, we need new ways to solve this problem. There is definitely no single right answer to this broad and vague question. However, from this event, Howell argued we should open up the black box to understand the behavior of North Korea and go beyond the nuclear issue, which is clearly just one part of this global issue. If we can understand the essence of the problematic behaviors of North Korea, starting from the nuclear problem, we can also connect and tackle human rights violation issues, freedom of knowledge and information, and the peace of the Korean peninsula, Asia, and the world. It sounds like an ideal plan, but I am sure that this event is a stepping stone for opening up the black box of North Korea. Indeed, the paths to the future diverge, but this one little, albeit special, movement down a less-traveled road could make all the difference.
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