| Summary/Abstract |
Why does North Korea continue to insist on maintaining a nuclear program despite
its potential to be detrimental to the regime in the long term? This article argues
that North Korea’s nuclear development strategy is derived from policymakers’
cognitive systems and norms that have accumulated over the decades. This study
especially attempts to examine the mechanism behind how the normative system
shaped by North Korea’s historical environment generates and re-generates nuclear
strategy through nuclear discourse by applying the lens of Strategic Culture. It
begins with a critical assessment of previous research on the motives of a nation
or regime’s nuclear development policy and proposes the suitability of Strategic
Culture for North Korea’s case. This article then characterizes North Korea’s
Strategic Culture as a “Wartime Preferring Strategic Culture” which emphasizes
the norm of the “prioritization of military values,” “closed groupism,” and “deontic
mass mobilization.” These norms are based on the policymakers’ cognitive systems
related to the fear of regime cleavage. Consequently, North Korea’s Strategic
Culture, which is based on fear perception, influenced policy makers and drove
them to strengthen nuclear development.
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