Trading with Pariahs: North Korean Sanctions and the Challenge of Weaponized Interdependence

Abstract

Why has North Korea avoided capitulating to economic sanctions pressures? We argue that economic sanctions have been ineffective and unsuccessful for three reasons: North Korea’s adeptness at evasion, other states’ unwillingness to enforce economic sanctions, and North Korea’s efforts to avoid panopticon effects via its diplomatic statecraft and policies that allow states to monitor and collect information on others. We contend that the implementation and enforcement of economic sanctions led North Korea to alter its trading network, reallocating trade to countries (or nodes) within its network willing to ignore international sanctions. As a result, these network shifts limited the ability of senders to weaponize the interdependence between them and North Korea effectively. We further highlight how North Korea conducts diplomatic statecraft in such a way that limits the impact of sanctions enforcing states from effectively monitoring it and limiting the impact of panopticon effects senders generate. To test our theory, we employ an ordinary least squares regression followed by social network analysis to understand how North Korea’s network of trade has adapted over time in the face of punishing economic sanctions. We find that states with greater diplomatic engagement enjoy better centrality than sanctions enforcing states. Also, economic sanctions at critical junctures induce changes to North Korea’s network over time with commercial imperatives to trade replaced by a North Korean near reliance on China. We further demonstrate that economic sanctions likely induce changes to the structure of the network as North Korea seeks to insulate itself from the impact of economic sanctions.

¿Por qué motivos ha evitado Corea del Norte capitular ante las presiones de las sanciones económicas? Argumentamos que las sanciones económicas han resultado ineficaces e infructuosas por tres razones: la habilidad de Corea del Norte para evadirse, la falta de voluntad de otros Estados para hacer cumplir las sanciones económicas y los esfuerzos que realiza Corea del Norte para evitar los efectos panópticos a través de su arte de gobernar diplomático, que son políticas que permiten a los Estados monitorizar y recopilar información sobre otros. Sostenemos que la implementación y el cumplimiento de las sanciones económicas llevaron a Corea del Norte a alterar su red comercial, reasignando sus flujos comerciales a países (o nodos) dentro de su red dispuestos a ignorar las sanciones internacionales. Estos cambios en la red provocaron limitaciones de la capacidad que tenían los emisores para usar, de manera efectiva, la interdependencia existente entre ellos y Corea del Norte como arma. Además, destacamos cómo Corea del Norte lleva a cabo el arte de gobernar diplomático de tal manera que limita el impacto de las sanciones, dificultando a los Estados que lo monitoricen de manera efectiva y limitando el impacto de los efectos panópticos que generan los emisores. Utilizamos, con el fin de poner a prueba nuestra teoría, una regresión OLS seguida de un análisis de redes sociales (SNA, por sus siglas en inglés) para poder comprender cómo se ha adaptado la red comercial de Corea del Norte a lo largo del tiempo frente a las sanciones económicas punitivas. Concluimos que los Estados con un mayor compromiso diplomático gozan de una mayor centralidad que los Estados que aplican sanciones. Además, las sanciones económicas durante coyunturas críticas provocan cambios en la red de Corea del Norte a lo largo del tiempo, con unos imperativos comerciales para el comercio reemplazados por una casi dependencia por parte de Corea del Norte hacia China. También, demostramos que es probable que las sanciones económicas provoquen cambios en la estructura de la red, ya que Corea del Norte busca aislarse del impacto de las sanciones económicas.

Pourquoi la Corée du Nord a-t-elle évité de capituler devant les pressions de sanctions économiques ? Nous affirmons que le manque d'efficacité et l’échec des sanctions économiques s'expliquent de trois façons : l'habileté de la Corée du Nord quand il s'agit de trouver une échappatoire, le manque de volonté des autres États d'appliquer les sanctions économiques, et les efforts de la Corée du Nord afin d’éviter les effets de panoptique grâce à sa compétence diplomatique, des politiques qui permettent aux États de contrôler et de collecter des informations sur les autres. Nous affirmons que la mise en œuvre et l'application des sanctions économiques ont poussé la Corée du Nord à modifier son réseau commercial, en réallouant des échanges à des pays (ou des nœuds commerciaux) au sein de son réseau enclins à ignorer les sanctions internationales. Par conséquent, ces modifications de réseau ont limité la capacité des émetteurs de sanctions à transformer efficacement l'interdépendance entre ces pays et la Corée du Nord en arme. Nous montrons en outre que la Corée du Nord adopte une diplomatie qui limite l'incidence des États qui respectent les sanctions, en la contrôlant efficacement et en limitant les effets de panoptique générés par les émetteurs. Pour évaluer notre théorie, nous utilisons une régression OLS ainsi qu'une analyse de réseau social (ARS) pour comprendre l'adaptation du réseau commercial de la Corée du Nord au fil du temps face aux sanctions économiques punitives. Nous observons que les États à l'engagement diplomatique plus fort jouissent d'une centralité supérieure aux États qui respectent les sanctions. De plus, quand elles interviennent à un tournant, les sanctions économiques provoquent des changements progressifs du réseau de la Corée du Nord : les impératifs commerciaux aux échanges se voient remplacés par la quasi-dépendance de la Corée du Nord à la Chine. Nous démontrons en outre que les sanctions économiques entraînent certainement des modifications de la structure du réseau, car la Corée du Nord cherche à s'isoler des conséquences des sanctions économiques.

Introduction

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (also known as the DPRK, North Korea, or the Hermit Kingdom) is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world and is considered by many to be a pariah state, states that are often estranged from the international community or great power support (Harkavy 1981, 136). Like Venezuela, Myanmar, and Iran, North Korea has endured decades of economic sanctions by a multitude of senders, including the United States and the European Union.

North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006 led the UN Security Council (UNSC) to pass a series of subsequent resolutions sanctioning North Korea for its provocative behavior. The passage of the first resolution, UNSCR 1695, was particularly notable because it was the first time that China, a permanent member and a long-time ally of North Korea, voted in favor of a resolution sanctioning North Korea. Since UNSCR 1695, the UNSC has imposed increasingly stringent sanctions on North Korea, corresponding with North Korea’s subsequent nuclear and ballistic missile tests, to rein in North Korea’s nuclear development program and provocative behavior.

These sanctions, which range from trade and financial sanctions to arms embargoes, have culminated in a total ban on nearly all trade that has limited not only North Korean exports but also imports into the Hermit Kingdom. Despite the multitude of unilateral and multilateral sanctions, North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic weapons development program has continued largely unabated, as have its human rights violations. The Kim regime persists with regime collapse appearing unlikely. North Korea’s resilience in the face of this barrage of economic and diplomatic isolation is remarkable given that the country has endured famines and natural disasters.

Why has North Korea been so adept at avoiding sanctions pressures? North Korea’s adeptness at avoiding the “pain” of economic sanctions has been explored most recently by Haggard and Noland (2017), who argued that a key reason is that the North Korean government has been able to insulate itself by shielding “key bases of political support” within North Korea (29). We agree that North Korea’s domestic politics provides a critical lens for understanding its resilience, but we find that this is only part of the picture. Our paper also seeks to move beyond “bilateral interdependencies” (Farrell and Newman 2019, 43), which fail to account for the complexity of economic networks and how target states may or may not be susceptible to weaponized interdependence.

Weaponized interdependence refers to how states with political authority over key nodes in the international network of money, goods, and information create policies that in turn generate panopticon and chokepoint effects (Farrell and Newman 2019, 54–8). We argue that the failure of North Korean sanctions is largely the result of three conditions that impact its trading and diplomatic network: North Korea’s efforts to seek out new trading partners, other states’ willingness (or not) to enforce sanctions on North Korea, and North Korea’s efforts to avoid the panopticon effects generated by sanctions enforcing states. We find that North Korea forgoes trade with sanctioning sender states and relies on states that are inconsistent and/or unwilling to implement and enforce economic sanctions on North Korea. Thus, we also find that states with expansive diplomatic ties with North Korea are more central to its network and are also unlikely to enforce economic sanctions. For example, China and Russia, with significant political, economic, and commercial engagement with Pyongyang, flout their obligations to enforce economic sanctions. While Russia and China have publicly supported UN sanctions against North Korea with their votes or abstentions, they demonstrate inconsistency and unwillingness in their enforcement. North Korean workers are routinely sent abroad to generate revenue for the regime, yet UNSC resolutions, which China and Russia voted in favor of, routinely permit North Korean laborers to work in their territories by 2019 (Sang-Hun 2023). It is not only the five permanent members of the UNSC that flaunt UN sanctions. Angola, another country central at times to North Korea’s network of trade and illicit activities, has been cited for not only weapons deals with the Hermit Kingdom in violation of UN sanctions but also for allowing guest workers into the country (Young 2021).

Employing social network analysis (SNA) using UN trade data from 1990 to 2017 coupled with diplomatic engagement data we collected along with data capturing North Korean diplomatic engagement and recognition (East-West Center and National Committee on North Korea 2019a; Wertz, Oh, and Insung 2016), we find that economic sanctions have been effective at isolating North Korea but largely ineffective in meeting the goals and objectives of the economic sanctions, such as regime change, undermining North Korea’s military readiness, denuclearization, and inhibiting the country’s ballistic missile development. We contend that the structure of North Korea’s network of licit trade and diplomatic engagement reflects the ways that senders of economic sanctions reduce or restrict their economic engagement. As they isolate North Korea from international networks of trade, finance, and investment, their leverage and ability to collect information on targets decline.

While we find that North Korea has become more dependent on China over time, our analysis shows that this dependence was not a foregone conclusion. Over the course of our study, other trading partners such as Japan and South Korea made up a larger portion of North Korea’s trade share at certain points. In the late 1990s, for example, Japan was North Korea’s biggest trading partner. However, the imposition of progressively strict multilateral sanctions starting in the mid-2000s pushed North Korea to become more reliant on trading partners who were unwilling to enforce the sanctions, like China. Conversely, the ability of other states like Japan or South Korea to weaponize interdependence with North Korea wanes as China becomes central to the former’s network of trade. As we show, Japan’s, South Korea’s, and, at times, China’s decisions to enforce sanctions against North Korea (or not) are largely driven by domestic politics. We contend that the publics in these countries are more aware and knowledgeable about North Korea due to their proximity to the DPRK and have some influence on their respective countries’ policies toward North Korea.

As we illustrate, North Korea’s trade network shows remarkable pliability as it adapts to international pressures of economic sanctions that countries within and outside the region impose on North Korea. We also show that the structure of North Korea’s diplomatic engagement also matters as it seeks to minimize the impact of panopticon effects from rivals and potential rivals. SNA highlights how economic sanctions can induce changes in the very structure of the diplomatic and trade networks over time as target states adapt to sanctions costs. As economic sanctions are imposed, North Korea’s trading network becomes dominated by countries less willing to enforce sanctions on it (such as China) and less economically dependent on trade partners who enforce sanctions (e.g., Japan, South Korea, and Western countries).

Our research notably adds to the debate on sanctions success and effectiveness using the weaponized interdependence framework by looking not only at trade but also at North Korea’s unique patterns of diplomatic statecraft. Such a lens draws attention to the irregularity of sanctions enforcement in a significant number of UN member states by highlighting two factors. First, the lens shows North Korean efforts to limit the impact of monitoring and information collection in its borders via the embassies of sanctions enforcing diplomatic partners, privileging states with a lower likelihood of sanctions enforcement. Second, it demonstrates the types of commercial partners that typically trade with North Korea, namely jurisdictions that fail to enforce UN sanctions consistently or regularly.

By focusing on both panopticon and chokepoint effects, weaponized interdependence provides insights into how North Korea’s lack of interconnectivity with key states and the transience of its trade network structures along with its selective diplomatic engagements complicate senders’ efforts to influence North Korea’s behavior. By focusing on the effects of policy choices, we also shed light on how “actual or potential targets [like North Korea] have incentives to insulate themselves” (Mastanduno 2021, 78) from the potential of economic coercion and the collection of information. An over-reliance on policies that isolate and choke off targets may be self-defeating by not only weakening or severing trade network ties but also by depriving states of critical information gleaned from panopticon effects.

Our insights have implications for the use of economic sanctions against “hard targets.” First, economic sanctions should be used in concert with other tools of statecraft, especially diplomacy, to ensure the policies that choke off and isolate are complemented with policies that gather information and maintain open pathways for dialog. Failure to balance chokepoint and panopticon effects may doom policies like economic sanctions to fail. Sender states’ use of diplomacy should not involve only the target states but also third-party states that should also be enforcing economic sanctions, such as China and Russia. The inability of the United States to negotiate with North Korea may help to explain why US economic sanctions, adept at causing economic harm to large segments of the population, have done little to push North Korea to acquiesce to US demands. Second, economic sanctions are unlikely to move the needle of policy change when the sender has either little to no economic or diplomatic leverage over the target. While the United States, for example, can apply financial and economic sanctions against targets, states unwilling to enforce their sanctions obligations can help targets adapt to and evade sanctions.

In the next section, we discuss the logic of economic sanctions and some of the previous answers to the question: Why have sanctions against North Korea been largely unsuccessful? We then move to our argument, which draws on Farrell and Newman’s (2019) concept of weaponized interdependence in global trading networks. Next, we discuss our methodology, including our data sources and case selection for our case studies, followed by our analysis of North Korea’s trading networks. Finally, we conclude with a summary of our findings and suggest avenues for further research.

The Rationale (and Failure) of Sanctions Against North Korea

Both individual countries, such as the United States, and multilateral institutions, such as the UNSC, have imposed sanctions on North Korea first to slow down the development and growth of its military and to bring about regime change and later—via UN sanctions—to halt the development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One might expect that such a concerted international effort (even if inconsistent) would lead to some behavioral changes in North Korea. The consensus among analysts and academics is that economic sanctions against North Korea have been largely unsuccessful (Hudson and Francis 2016; Peksen 2016; Salisbury 2017; Watterson 2020; Brewer and Terry 2021) and ineffective (Frank 2006; Habib 2016; Park and Walsh 2016 ). In North Korea, political elites remain isolated from sanctions pressures (Haggard and Noland 2017), and the country has found ways to adapt and circumvent sanctions pressures through licit and illicit means. DPRK’s illicit trade likely plays an important role in helping it weather the “sanctions storm,” although the contours of DPRK’s illicit networks are difficult to map.

There is no question that North Korea is heavily sanctioned by the UN, and fourteen UN member states through 2017 also had unilateral sanctions that worked in concert with UN sanctions. If the target sees that the sender state is willing to bear a burden in order to change the target’s behavior, concessions on the part of the target state are more likely (Martin 1992, 1994; Drezner 1999). As  figure 1 shows, there is a credible commitment in the implementation of sanctions, but such a commitment is quite absent on the enforcement side. The lack of enforcement calls into question the effectiveness and (lack of) success of economic sanctions against North Korea. To date, neither positive nor negative sanctions (Baldwin 1985) have significantly altered North Korean policy. Part of the issue is, as Hirschman argued (1945), a target state must be vulnerable to the economic pain sanctions impose. Yet, we know from the literature that target states should rationally seek to avoid economic sanctions to avoid disruption of their national interests (S. Allen 2005, 120).

Sanctions effectiveness, on the other hand, underscores the importance of employing the right policy tools that pair appropriately with the policy’s goals and objectives among policy options available (Baldwin 1999; Giumelli 2013). Just as one would not use a hammer to screw in a nail, employing travel bans to coerce is unlikely to be a successful form of coercion. In the case of North Korea, policies deployed to coerce North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions are not likely to be as useful as policies meant to constrain further development of WMDs.

The literature on economic sanctions has also shown that sanctions are also frequently embattled by sanctions busting (Early 2009, 2015; McLean and Whang 2010), market adaptation (Connolly 2018, 2019; Gholz and Hughes 2021), and illicit trade (Chestnut 2007; Habib 2016; Hastings 2018; Hastings and Wang 2018). Others have shown that targets are quite adept at finding ways to avoid or limit the impact of economic sanctions (Niblock 2002; Andreas 2005; Marinov 2005; Escribà-Folch and Wright 2010; Early 2015). Yet the implementation of economic sanctions is insufficient alone to achieve policy change in the target. While the United States is a leader in the implementation of economic sanctions, it also leads in its ability to enforce economic sanctions, too (Early and Preble 2020). Typically, the pain from economic sanctions occurs not only due to the loss of trade but also through civil and criminal enforcement and compliance efforts. The US undertakes actions against both financial and non-financial firms for sanctions violations (Early and Preble 2020), yet the lack of global enforcement efforts likely contributes to the ineffectiveness and lack of success in the use of sanctions against North Korea.

Arguably, North Korea’s most important relationship is with China. Recent analyses suggest sanctions have increased trade between the countries, effectively offsetting trade restrictions from other countries (Lee 2018, 34). The Sino-North Korea trade relationship can be characterized as a “black knight” pattern of trade whose efforts at undermining and busting sanctions are driven less by commercial opportunities and more by political purposes (Hufbauer et al. 2009; Early 2011). Black knight trade patterns emerge when a trading state facing economic sanctions seeks long-term relief and support from a major trading partner. Politically, Chinese support for North Korea is less about access to the North Korean market and trade and more about avoiding regime collapse and humanitarian burdens on the Chinese government, especially along the border with North Korea (S.H. Kim 2017, 88; S. Allen and Yuen 2022, 131).

We also cannot attribute the failure of sanctions only to Chinese “black knight” support for North Korea. While Chinese (and, at times, Russian) political and economic support are necessary conditions, they are largely insufficient as the problem also lies in the ways that sanctions policy is employed by senders. Harkening back to the “logic of choice” framework (Baldwin 1999), sanctions cannot be employed or analyzed in isolation of other tools of statecraft. Sender states in many cases are marrying the enforcement of economic sanctions with unilateral and multilateral diplomatic efforts. In the case of the DPRK, though, diplomacy, negotiations, and bargaining have been haphazard and inconsistent, often owing to the intransigence of North Korea and the domestic constraints in some senders. In Japan, for example, North Korea’s revelation that it had kidnapped Japanese citizens in the past largely soured the public’s opinions of Japan’s efforts to normalize relations between the two countries, even prior to North Korea’s first nuclear test (Samuels 2004, 322–8). The abductee issue has been a consistent feature of Japan–North Korean relations and has complicated negotiations over North Korea’s weapons development programs.

Beyond the lack of credible commitments, the target state’s domestic political costs play an important role in the success of economic sanctions; without them, the likelihood of compliance on the part of the target state is low. The regime has worked to insulate itself from the economic harm that sanctions generate (Haggard and Noland 2017), and North Korea, as the target state, thus has little reason to cave to the coercive power of the imposed economic sanctions (Blanchard and Ripsman 2013). The political costs sanctions impose can come from within the state or from the international system. Autocracies like North Korea are less likely to cave from the imposition of economic sanctions given that “authoritarian leaders have little incentive to concede to economic coercion [. . .] leaders of these rogue states are willing to stand firm in the face of sanctions pressure indefinitely” (Allen 2005, 133). While we are not arguing that the leader of North Korea faces no political pressures, the Kim regime is less beholden to sanctions pressures than democratic states and less authoritarian states (Peksen 2019; Pak 2020).

Our contribution is two-fold. First, we provide a methodological contribution in operationalizing weaponized interdependence. Second, through this operationalization, we strive to provide a more satisfactory answer to why North Korea has been able to resist the pain of economic sanctions so successfully. We demonstrate two processes at work via this weaponized interdependence framework. First, we show the imposition of economic sanctions leads to the restructuring of trade networks toward states that avoid sanctions enforcement. Second, we seek to operationalize panopticon effects by highlighting North Korea’s diplomatic avoidance of states that enforce sanctions in favor of those that do not, concluding that states that reciprocate diplomatic relations with North Korea are more central to its network of trade.

Shooting Blanks or Just Bad Aim? When Sanctions Fail to Hit Their Target

To understand why sanctions against North Korea have failed to achieve their objective, we employ Farrell and Newman’s (2019) weaponized interdependence framework, which relies on countries’ policies that, when implemented, generate two kinds of effects: panopticon and chokepoint. Panopticon effects come from policies that states controlling key nodes in the international trading network enact that enable information collection and monitoring, which states can use to craft economic sanctions capable of meeting their stated goals. States can leverage information advantages and monitor in a number of ways through policymaking, and these policies generate the effects. Two examples of policies that generate panopticon effects are the United States' Patriot Act and Bank Secrecy Act. States working within the United Nations (UN) can also generate panopticon effects through the information the UN collects and collates through its Panel of Experts reports, which provide information on UN economic and financial sanctions and critical information needed to evaluate the effectiveness of and compliance with UN sanctions. Diplomatic statecraft can also provide informational advantages and help states monitor their allies and rivals through the exchange of ambassadors and the opening of diplomatic missions in their respective states. The United States has complained about the dearth of information on North Korea and has in the past worked to push allies to recognize North Korea diplomatically with the goal of opening an embassy in North Korea that the United States could leverage. In fact, the United States made such requests of Australia in both 2013 and 2014 (Sheridan 2017).

Chokepoint effects are policies that sever nodes (states) from accessing other nodes and limit the ability of other states “to walk” through the network across various connections. This isolation limits the ability of sanctioned nodes to interact with key nodes in the network by raising costs and/or limiting access and opportunities to the sender state’s market. Economic and financial sanctions, such as those imposed by US regulatory bodies, the EU, and the UN, are examples of policies that generate chokepoint effects through the “imposition of costs on others” (Farrell and Newman 2019, 45). Economic sanctions can, for example, generate chokepoint effects that limit the movement of information, people, goods, weapons, and finance. Our application of weaponized interdependence considers mainly governmental policies, which we see as playing a greater role in North Korea’s actions than informal sanctions individual firms may impose via shifts or adjustments to supply chains or de-risking. Below, we offer five hypotheses that address reasons for the failure of the North Korea sanctions regime related to sender states’ policies that have generated myriad panopticon and chokepoint effects.

When wielding their political authority, states must be careful. When countries cut off economic ties by directing chokepoint effects at a particular target or targets, the probability of losing access to the information collected through the generation of panopticon effects increases. Thus, the effectiveness of economic sanctions relies not solely on state power or capacity but also on these steady critical flows of information about the nature of the target’s interactions with other actors in the network. Senders must therefore strike a balance in how they apply chokepoint effects at targets so as not to completely disrupt the potential of panopticon effects to gather information and monitor critical target states. A severed connection limits the flow and quantity of information from severed ties.

We contend that North Korea is highly sensitive to panopticon effects generated by a third-party state’s diplomatic policies. We highlight four states of diplomacy between North Korea and third parties: no official diplomatic relations, diplomatic recognition only, North Korea has an embassy in a third-party state only, or both North Korea and the third-party state have exchanged embassies. We expect that there is a connection between the strength of a third-party state’s strength centrality and its diplomatic engagement. Strength centrality captures the share of a third-party state’s trade divided by North Korea’s annual trade with each trading partner. In a network analysis context, strength centrality is also known as commercial dependence or the third-party state’s overall trade share. Thus, strength centrality captures the depth of the connection between two nodes in a network. Higher strength centrality values reflect a greater depth of (trade) ties between the third-party state and North Korea.

We postulate that the strength centrality between North Korea and key third-party states—that is, diplomatic partners—will be highest when North Korea and diplomatic partners have exchanged embassies. We expect that North Korea pursues full diplomatic relations and reciprocal exchanges when the prospect of sanctions enforcement is low, leading to our first hypothesis:

 

We posit that North Korea’s licit trading network will change when more stringent international sanctions are applied, weakening some trading linkages with countries that enforce the sanctions and strengthening others that fail to enforce them, especially in sanctions busting states where firms seek to take advantage of lucrative commercial opportunities. Alternatively, we might expect to see new temporary trading partners emerge but then disappear in subsequent years. Furthermore, we also expect that North Korea’s trading network will shift significantly after the UNSC began formally sanctioning the country in the wake of its first nuclear weapons test in 2006 and subsequent tests. At the same time, we expect North Korea’s network to shift, albeit less dramatically, when there is a reduction in international condemnation, as it would be politically feasible for a wider array of states to engage in or resume licit trade with the DPRK, especially prior to the UNSC’s call for UN members to sanction the Hermit Kingdom.

We test the alterations to North Korea’s trading network using three additional methods (H₂–H₄); these alterations are the result of policies in sanctions enforcing states (i.e., sender states) that generate chokepoint effects, which result in structural changes to North Korea’s trading network. The first method involves focusing solely on the number of trading partners in any given year. While these are captured visually in the geospatial network visualizations, we can generate a statistic that captures the total number of trading partners in each year as a share of possible trading partners. This statistic is degree centrality. While this statistic is typically more useful relative to other nodes, for the purposes of our analysis, we are concerned more with the existence or absence of these connections (or edges, that is, the lines connecting a trading partner to North Korea) in the years of our study. The more edges that emerge in the network reflect an increase in the density of trading partners as the target state seeks out replacement markets and substitutable goods. One would expect that a country targeted by sanctions would either increase its trading partners or at least strive to maintain the same number of trading partners (or as close as possible) prior to the imposition of sanctions to offset the economic losses generated by economic sanctions.² This results in our second hypothesis:

 

Our second method for evaluating network structure involves calculating the percent change in the average trade share or strength centrality of the DPRK’s top twenty major trading partners across five points in time: 1990, 1995, 2003, 2007, and 2017. This measure, as mentioned above, captures the share of trade relative to North Korea’s annual trade with its trading partners. In a network analysis context, commercial dependence or trade share is best described as strength centrality. Strength centrality captures the degree or extent of the connection of two nodes in a network. Higher strength centrality values reflect a greater depth of connection between the third-party state and North Korea. Thus, if the structure of the network is changing, then there should be significant variation in both the degree and strength centrality both across individual nodes and within the network, leading to our third hypothesis:

 

The last method is a visual method using a series of geospatial network visualizations for key points in time when sanctions are imposed on the DPRK that we construct. If networks are changing, then these changes should appear visually through the size of nodes, which represents the share of trade, and the distribution of edges (black lines linking North Korea to its trading partners), which represent the number of trading partners in a given year. Senders that begin imposing sanctions should become less prominent (have smaller red circles) in the DPRK’s trading network, which we would expect to observe with Japan and South Korea. We capture this structure by studying the variation across the DPRK’s twenty major trading partners, resulting in our fourth hypothesis:

 

Finally, we examine individual states’ decisions to enforce or not enforce sanctions against North Korea. We posit that geographic proximity to North Korea impacts the importance of domestic politics on states’ decisions to sanction the Hermit Kingdom or not. Previous research suggests that geographic proximity generally has an impact on individuals’ perception. “Individuals close to a location experience the innate reality and context of that place”(Cortina 2020, 742) but for those further away, the location is more abstract and further removed from oneself and one’s everyday existence. One example of the impact of spatial variation on individual perception is US attitudes toward security along the US–Mexico border. Gravelle (2018) and Cortina (2020) both find that US residents living near the border are more likely to support more stringent security measures compared to citizens living further away. Additionally, proximity is a value that drives news outlets’ decisions to cover a story (O'Neill and Harcup 2009, 166).

Following this logic, East Asian residents, especially those in South Korea, China, and Japan, are arguably more familiar with North Korea than other sanctions targets, such as Iran. They not only share a contentious history, enshrined in memorials and history books, but may also have family ties to North Korea (Blomquist and Wertz 2015; Lee 2020). Furthermore, residents in North Korea’s proximity may be more likely to hear about North Korea through traditional news media. Perhaps most importantly, a nuclear North Korea may present more tangible security threats to the Japanese and South Korean public, countries with whom North Korea does not have normalized relations. Thus, the public is not only more likely to be informed about North Korea, but they are also more likely to have opinions about it. Democratic responsiveness theory holds that in democracies, policymakers are expected to take public opinion into account when crafting policy, particularly if they want to remain in office (Powlick 1995; Barabas 2016). Anecdotal evidence suggests that in South Korea and Japan, the two democracies in North Korea’s vicinity, policymakers take public opinion into account in their policies toward North Korea.

In Japan, policymakers began establishing the legal foundation for sanctions against North Korea prior to its first nuclear test (which resulted in the first round of UN sanctions) because North Korean leadership admitted to previously kidnapping Japanese citizens, causing public outrage in Japan (Samuels 2004, 322–8; Hagström and Söderberg 2006, 4; Okano-Heijmans 2010, 381). In South Korea, presidential candidates’ positions on North Korea are part of their campaign platforms and are largely divided along partisan lines, with liberal candidates favoring engagement and conservative candidates taking a harder line. When the public is dissatisfied with the previous administration’s approach due to lack of progress, as they were after the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun administrations’ conciliatory approaches did not prevent North Korea from developing and testing its nuclear weapons, South Koreans may prefer a candidate who promises a different tactic, like Lee Myung Bak did in 2009 (Snyder 2009, 92–3).

Even in autocracies, leaders somewhat take public opinion into account in their decision-making. In the case of China, Truex (2017) contends that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has devised a variety of mechanisms to make Chinese citizens at least feel that policymakers are considering their opinions and to identify potential unrest on the horizon. Furthermore, the CCP is beholden to the public in the sense of “performance legitimacy,” where the contract between state and society is underpinned by an expectation that the state will continue to deliver economic prosperity and growth (Zhu 2011). In this sense, policymakers are cognizant of developments that may impact the Chinese economy, such as the destabilization of the region or North Korean regime collapse (Allen and Yuen 2022, 130). We argue that in East Asia, domestic politics are more likely to drive the decision to enforce sanctions against North Korea (or not) more than in other regions because the public is more likely to be informed and policymakers, regardless of regime type, are accountable to the public to some extent. Thus, network shifts will partially reflect the domestic politics of sender states, which leads to our fifth and final hypothesis:

 

Methodology and Data

Our study utilizes UN Comtrade data³ from the Atlas of Economic Complexity (Growth Lab at Harvard University 2021  United Nations 2021) and inter-Korean trade data (East-West Center and National Committee on North Korea 2019b) from 1990 to 2017 in exploring trends in trade between North Korea and its major trading partners, which define as the top twenty trading partners in any given point in time under consideration in our study. We also utilize the East-West Center’s data on diplomatic relations and embassies (2019a) along with Wertz, Oh, and Insung’s (2016) analysis of DPRK diplomatic relations for our hypothesis related to panopticon effects.

We first employ ordinary least squares to test our hypothesis related to panopticon effects, H₁. Using data on North Korea’s diplomatic recognition and diplomatic exchanges, we create a dataset that contains a Diplomacy variable with North Korea’s top twenty trading partners in 1990, 1995, 2003, 2007, and 2017, our unit of analysis. This categorical variable consists of four levels: no official diplomatic relations, diplomatic recognition only, North Korean embassy in a diplomatic partner, and embassies and ambassadors exchanged between North Korea and diplomatic partner. We then undertake an analysis of our Diplomacy categorical variable to test which level of Diplomacy results in the greatest strength centrality. Our strength centrality measures are discussed below.

Second, we employ SNA using the trade data sources discussed above to test H_2–5 by calculating degree and strength centrality and several geospatial visualizations of North Korea’s trading network (Knapp 2017). To understand the effect of economic sanctions on North Korea, an analysis of the social network based on trade linkages in the same years of our diplomatic analysis is conducted, which shows how the structure of the network and the nature of North Korea’s commercial relationships have changed over time.

We selected these intervals because they capture the first and last years of our study (1990 and 2017) as well as the years in which we expect North Korea’s network to shift in response to important international events (the Agreed Framework in 1994, a series of high-level talks in the early 2000s, and North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006). We then use SNA to show descriptively and visually the share of the trade conducted with North Korea (indicated by the size of each node) but also the geographic distribution of that trade across the international system by mapping the network geospatially. The geospatial network visualizations reveal the diversification of North Korea’s trading network, the concentration of trade, and the changing and adaptive structure of the network over time. We also provide a narrative of the geospatial network figures that tests the proposition of H₅ that explores how shifts in North Korea’s trade network are driven by domestic politics of sender states in East Asia.

To test H₂ and H₃, we use two measures common to SNA. Our first measure, degree centrality, captures the number of trading partners and measures the change to the number of actors in the network with North Korea at the center. Degree centrality refers to the number of connections North Korea has to other states in the network and reflects the DPRK’s total trading partners in a given year. In an undirected network, North Korea is always central as all edges connect back to North Korea. As we demonstrate, North Korea’s trading partners increase and diversify over time (Figure 3). Previous studies have highlighted North Korea’s increased portfolio of trading partners over time, and this measure seems to indicate an increased centrality among North Korea’s trading partners (Haggard and Noland 2017). While this may be true, the strength of the relationship between North Korea’s trading partners and North Korea varies considerably, especially as North Korea’s share of trade has remained regionally focused. In other words, more connections do not necessarily mean more trade or greater shares of trade.

To test our third hypothesis, we develop a measure of strength centrality, which is weighted by the total trade conducted with North Korea. This measure of strength centrality is used to capture the commercial interest of third-party sanctions busting states. This measure of strength centrality is similar to trade share measures, which are a common measurement when working with trade data in a network setting (De Benedictus et al. 2013).

Strength centrality captures the third-party state’s trade commercial dependence on North Korea, which is calculated by dividing the third-party’s total trade with North Korea each year by North Korea's annual trade. Of course, we utilize the word dependence loosely as it is unlikely that any single firm is commercially dependent on North Korea, but the measure is still valuable for understanding the level of economic engagement that a third-party state has with a target state. Theories of sanctions busting argue that the higher this value, the greater the propensity for sanctions busting trade, which North Korea relies on given the multitude of sanctions imposed on it. As strength centrality increases, we see North Korea as being commercially important to the third-party state’s firms and constituents. Countries that share borders with or are geographically nearer to North Korea, such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia, should ostensibly have higher values of strength centrality in relation to other trading partners given their geographic proximity.

Results

Network Adaptation: Impacts of Panopticon Effects Via Diplomatic Engagement

The role of panopticon effects can be challenging to understand. The information collected and monitored via policies meant to generate panopticon effects by many countries is often not publicly available. For example, the use of suspicious activity reports reported by banks to the US government is not in the public domain nor is intelligence gathering by spy agencies, which requires researchers to assume or rely on media reports.

Diplomatic engagement presents an opportunity to understand the impacts of panopticon effects on a third-party state’s strength centrality with North Korea. While there are myriad ways to operationalize diplomatic engagement, we focus on official engagement vis-à-vis embassies in North Korea or North Korean embassies in other countries. Embassies can provide key information about the situation in the country in which they are located (Berridge 2015, 1; Rana 2016, 151). Furthermore, they are a symbol of countries’ commitments to diplomatic and political ties.

We categorize diplomatic engagement along a spectrum of four conditions. First, many countries do not have official diplomatic relations with North Korea, and as a result, there is neither a North Korean embassy in the diplomatic partner nor a diplomatic embassy in North Korea. Some countries, such as Australia, have bestowed diplomatic recognition on North Korea but have no embassy in North Korea and vice versa. In some cases, North Korea will close an embassy when political difficulties emerge, such as its embassy in Canberra, Australia, which closed after the Pong Su incident and its noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Butcher 2023, 14–5). In cases where there are official diplomatic relations, North Korea may open an embassy in a diplomatic partner, but the diplomatic partner does not open an embassy in North Korea. This level of formal diplomatic engagement is the most common for North Korea. The highest level of diplomatic engagement is when both the diplomatic partner and North Korea exchange ambassadors and open embassies in each other’s countries.

Hypothesis₁ postulates that we should expect strength centrality between a diplomatic partner and North Korea to be highest when there is a reciprocal exchange of ambassadors and embassies. When this high level of official diplomatic engagement has been achieved, we expect the strength centrality to be, on average, just below 11 percent (Figure 2).⁴

Why is it that diplomatic partners who permit an embassy on its territory but do not reciprocate have a much lower strength centrality? This is likely due to the nature of the relationship between North Korea and the diplomatic partner. Thailand, for example, recognizes North Korea and hosts a North Korean embassy in Bangkok. However, Thailand is a country whose foreign policy on North Korea tends to move in lockstep with US policy (although Thailand does place importance on keeping diplomatic channels with North Korea open). In 2018, the Trump Administration urged Thailand to scale back its trade with North Korea, and the military government promised to do so by the first quarter of 2018 (Chongkittavorn 2019). Such acquiescence to US demands on the part of the Thai government may make North Korea reluctant to push for a more reciprocal diplomatic exchange. Thailand’s importance to North Korea, however, likely resides in its inconsistent sanctions enforcement, which has permitted North Korea’s network of front companies that support its weapons programs to operate relatively unhindered in Thailand (Hsu and Nakashima 2020).

Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, and Russia are countries with the highest level of diplomatic engagement where there is a mutual diplomatic exchange of ambassadors and embassies in each other’s territories (Wertz, Oh, and Insung 2016; East-West Center and National Committee on North Korea 2019a). One reason for this is that China and Russia are critical markets and key diplomatic partners for North Korea as both facilitate not only the exchange of illicit trade but also significant amounts of licit trade along with political and diplomatic support at the UN and in their respective foreign policies writ large. Second, Germany has served as a critical partner, especially in its provision of humanitarian assistance in North Korea, and North Korea has been documented abusing its diplomatic privileges in Germany to facilitate illicit activities and furtherance of its WMD programs (Salisbury 2023). Lastly, Indonesia, as Priyandita (2023) notes, may serve as a critical hub for information gathering, especially for Western diplomats operating in Indonesia (Keck 2013), indicating that North Korea’s motives for diplomatic engagement may reflect its own efforts to generate its own panopticon effects to monitor its rivals.

Except for Germany (given its close ties to the West), the remaining countries whose diplomatic engagement with North Korea is highest are also unlikely to or are resistant to impose and enforce economic sanctions against North Korea. They may also have more nuanced foreign policies that maintain engagement with North Korea, such as Indonesia (Manurung 2017; Yeremia and Arif 2022) and Brazil (Marcondes 2022).

Network Adaptation: Dynamic Shifts in North Korean Trade

Our penultimate section discusses the results of our SNA. Figures 3 and 4 and Table 1 confirm the second and third hypotheses from the previous sections, H₂ and H_3. shows the variation in North Korea’s strength centrality from 1990 to 2017. What is striking about this figure is that between 1990 and 2006, the number of edges or connections to trading partners in any given year increases across time. From 2005 to 2017, the number of sanctions imposed on North Korea by the United States, EU, UN, and other actors increased, yet the number of trading partners remained fairly constant. Despite the minimal variation and consistency in this statistic, North Korea established a significant number of new edges compared to 1990. Thus, we can say that North Korea’s network is more diffuse even after sanctions are imposed, which supports our hypotheses.

Degree centrality provides us with one measure of network structure: the number of edges or connections between North Korea and a trading partner. Table 1 and  reveal the strength of the edges between North Korea and a trading partner, which captures the third-party state’s share of North Korea’s annual trade. From   Table 1, China, Japan, and South Korea have at one time or another been one of North Korea’s major trading partners. Chinese trade with North Korea fluctuated between 21 and 31 percent until becoming North Korea’s most important trading partner in 2017. Table 1 provides confirmation for Hypothesis₃. Thus, across individual trading partners and across North Korea’s most important trading partners, there is considerable variation in the strength of each connection (or edge) with North Korea, especially between China, Japan, and South Korea.

Figure 4, on the other hand, shows the changes in average strength centrality across all of North Korea’s major trading partners from 1990, 1995, 2003, 2007, and 2017. The share of trade with North Korea among its trading partners increased nearly 10 percent from 1990. Between 1995 and 2003, the share of trade declined by almost 11 percent, yet during this period, the number of trading partners increased. This finding would indicate that prior to North Korea’s first nuclear test and the imposition of sanctions, North Korea was increasing its portfolio of trading partners to reduce its reliance on major trading partners. By 2007, after the first raft of sanctions had been imposed, the strength of the ties between North Korea and its trading partners grew slightly, which would indicate increasing trade with some key trading partners. By 2017, however, the mean strength centrality had increased 44 percent from the prior 2005 period, which was driven by a concentration of trade with North Korea’s major trading partner, China. Across degree and strength centrality, we observe both minor and dramatic fluctuations, respectively, in the structure of the network both in the number of connections (edges) with North Korea and the strength of those connections (share of total annual trade).

For H₄ and H₅, we use a series of geospatial network visualizations that map nodes (states) onto their geographic coordinates to demonstrate how North Korea’s trading network changes over time. The narrative that we develop below provides visual and supporting evidence of North Korea’s isolation as it seeks to insulate itself from the effects of potential weaponized interdependence, as the structure of North Korea’s network changes across time. Our geospatial figure shows the dramatic shift in North Korea’s aggregate trade as the network structure changes in the key periods investigated in our study (H₄).

In 1990, the lion’s share of trade with North Korea involved China, Japan, Germany, and other Western and Eastern European countries, Mexico, Australia, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia (Figure 5). The only economic sanctions targeting North Korea in 1990 were US economic sanctions imposed during the Korean War (Chang 2006; Wertz 2020). China and Japan were clearly North Korea’s two largest trading partners in the early 1990s. The former is perhaps unsurprising given its historical support for North Korea. Furthermore, the collapse of several Eastern European states and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s meant that North Korea lost major political allies and economic partners, thus making it even more dependent on China for support. Japan’s key position in North Korea’s trading network during this period was driven by rapprochement between the two countries at the beginning of the 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union and other former communist states drove North Korea to find new trading partners, while greater access to North Korea’s market was alluring for Japanese business interests, such as North Korea’s natural resources (Hagstrom and Soderberg 2006, 3; Okano-Heijmans 2010, 379). As Japan and North Korea embarked on normalization negotiations, the two countries attempted to strengthen their economic relations. For example, the DPRK tried to encourage Japanese business in North Korea through establishing the Rajin-Sonbong and Wonsan Special Economic Zone (Okano-Heijmans 2010, 379). Thus, the surge in Japan’s trade with North Korea was driven by the interests of the Japanese business community, many with personal ties to North Korea, consistent with H₅.

By 1995, North Korea’s relative diversification of trade interests changed (Figure 6). China, Japan, and now South Korea became North Korea’s dominant trading partners followed by Mexico and Germany. Western Europe, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil also took on a greater share of trade with North Korea. US trade with North Korea exceeded $1 million as it began exports to North Korea after it relaxed economic sanctions in the wake of the Agreed Framework in October 1994 during the Clinton Administration (Chang 2006). Furthermore, the Agreed Framework and the Great Famine in North Korea encouraged regional partners such as Japan, China, and South Korea to maintain or increase trade with the country. As mentioned previously, Chinese foreign policy toward North Korea is driven in part by a fear of regime collapse and the potential for North Korean refugees to flood into China’s impoverished northeastern region (S. Allen and Yuen 2022, 136). Thus, China’s decision to continue to support North Korea through trade (not yet sanctioned by the UNSC) and humanitarian aid is consistent with H₅.

While Japan remained an important trading partner with North Korea throughout the 1990s, its trade share declined to 8 percent in 2003, corresponding with key developments in their bilateral relationship (Figure 7). The early 2000s saw several rounds of normalization talks between Japan and North Korea, including the high-level meeting between Koizumi Junchiro and Kim Jong-Il in 2002 (Hagström and Söderberg 2006; Blomquist and Wertz 2015, 4). Initially, the summit between the two leaders appeared to herald in a new era of positive relations between the two countries. However, North Korea’s admission of abducting Japanese citizens proved to be a domestic bombshell in Japan and facilitated the deterioration of the countries’ relationship (Hagstrom and Soderberg 2006, 4). The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s largest and often ruling party, adopted a more conservative stance toward North Korea in 2003, favoring sanctions and economic “sticks” over engagement and “carrots.” For example, several LDP Diet members proposed to revise the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law to allow Japan to stop remittances to North Korea (Samuels 2004, 322). Furthermore, the LDP prioritized resolving the abductions issue and cracking down on North Korea through economic sanctions in its 2003 election manifesto (Samuels 2004, 322). In 2004, the Japanese government began laying the groundwork for unilateral sanctions against North Korea, 2 years before the UNSC would call for multilateral sanctions. This episode suggests that Japan’s decision to sanction North Korea was in part due to domestic politics (H₅).

Additionally, North Korea’s revelation that it had been enriching uranium, in defiance of the Agreed Framework, drew international condemnation (Congressional Research Service 2005, 12). As the international community condemned North Korea, China became North Korea’s top trading partner (31 percent) in 2003 followed closely by South Korea (22 percent), which was in the final years of Kim Dae Jung’s presidency, who sought to encourage inter-Korean relations through his “Sunshine Policy.” The logic of the Sunshine Policy, derived from one of Aesop’s fables, is that cooperation and trust-building in areas like economics and culture will spill over into security cooperation and lessen conflict between the two Koreas (I. Kim and Lee 2011, 57). One of the key developments in this area took place shortly after Kim took office: lifting the ceiling on South Korean investment in North Korea and making it easier for South Koreans to travel North (Chung 2003, 29; Son 2006, 83). Thus, South Korean domestic politics in part explain the high level of inter-Korean trade in the early 2000s.

By 2007 (Figure 8), North Korea’s trading network shifted again after it conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 2006 and the UNSC passed its first resolutions condemning North Korea. China (26 percent) and South Korea (24 percent) occupied the two top trading spots followed by Angola (13 percent) and India (10 percent). There was not only a concentration of trade in these countries but an increase in the number of total trading partners during this period (Haggard and Noland 2017). The breadth of North Korea’s network of trade increased, yet the country continued to rely heavily on its neighbors, China and South Korea. At first blush, China’s approval of UNSC resolutions condemning North Korea’s actions is surprising, particularly UNSC 1718, “which imposed an embargo on a range of arms, including artillery, tanks, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-related items, as well as on luxury goods” (Wuthnow 2013, 61). At the same time, China, concerned with the potential for regional instability and diplomacy, both bilateral and multilateral, had failed to stop the DPRK from continuing to develop its WMD program (Wuthnow 2013, 61–4). Additionally, UNSC 1718 did not ban trade in materials crucial to North Korea’s livelihood such as oil or coal, which could trigger the collapse of the North Korean regime against China’s interests (Allen and Yuen 2022, 142). South Korea’s economic engagement with North Korea in 2007 was partially driven by the policies of the Roh Moo Hyun administration (Bae and Moon 2014, 15). Like his predecessor, Kim Dae Jung, Roh believed that engagement with North Korea was the best approach to maintaining peace on the Korean Peninsula. Accordingly, his administration jointly launched the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) in 2004 with Kim Jong-Il’s government. The KIC brought together South Korean companies and North Korean workers in Kaesong, North Korea (Chung 2003, 30).

At the same time, Japan’s trade (and influence) with North Korea continued to decline: in 2003, Japan and North Korea exchanged $261,000,000 in trade, but by 2007, Japanese trade with North Korea declined by 97 percent to a low of |${\$}$|9,114,584. This shift in Japan’s trade with North Korea was a reflection of increased domestic support for economic sanctions and greater policy congruence with the United States. UNSC Resolution 1718, issued in the wake of the 2006 nuclear test, also induced member states to cut back trade with North Korea, and the United States and Japan imposed their respective unilateral sanctions.

By 2017 (Figure 9), China dominated North Korea’s trade network, accounting for 93 percent of North Korea’s total trade despite declining in absolute terms. Japan and South Korea, who, once, along with China, each accounted for about 20 percent of North Korea’s trade, were no longer significantly connected to North Korea’s trading network, at least partially due to shifts in domestic opinion and foreign policy toward the North. By 2017, the United States lost its own tie to North Korea and no longer had a “walk” to North Korea through its key allies, Japan and South Korea. Furthermore, South Korea’s connection to North Korea dropped to its lowest level since the resumption of inter-Korean trade of |${\$}$|1 million, just under 0.02 percent of North Korea’s total trade. After two liberal presidents, Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun, had unsuccessfully tried to foster stronger inter-Korean relations and dissuade North Korea from developing its WMD program, the South Korean public elected a series of conservative politicians, Lee Myung Bak and Park Geun Hye, who took hardline stances toward North Korea more in line with the United States’s North Korea policy. Thus, unsurprisingly, South Korea dropped significantly in this period, in line with H₅. India and Russia accounted for an additional 3.1 percent of North Korea’s trade, and the remaining 3.9 percent of North Korean trade came from a smattering of countries around the world.

Conclusion

Our analysis illustrates that economic sanctions have been successful at isolating North Korea, but not effective at creating behavioral changes like pressuring the DPRK to give up its nuclear weapons program. Instead, North Korea has been able to adapt to economic and financial sanctions for two reasons. First, there is significant inconsistency in the enforcement of UN economic sanctions against North Korea on the part of a number of UN member states, such as China and Russia. The utility of SNA for sanctions research is that one can visualize the target state’s entire trading network. In cases where there are UN sanctions (requiring all UN member states to impose sanctions), SNA can suggest which states are failing to enforce sanctions by examining the strengths of the ties between the target state and its trading partners. Thus, SNA is an important but underutilized tool for sanctions research. In the case of North Korea, we see that trade with China and Russia became more central to North Korean trade as other states increasingly enforced the UN sanctions.

Although both countries, as permanent members of the UNSC, did not impede UN sanctions against North Korea in the years following its first nuclear weapons test in 2006, they have been inconsistent in their enforcement of the sanctions. China has long served as a lifeline of sorts for North Korea for decades, and as our analysis shows, it has grown increasingly important to North Korean trade as other states impose and enforce sanctions against the DPRK. While Russia became much less important to North Korean trade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has also become increasingly important to North Korea in recent decades. This is largely due to the importance that Vladimir Putin has placed on the countries’ relationship since he was first elected to office in 2000. Putin believed that developing a stronger relationship with the DPRK might give Russia more leverage over it and international prestige if it could play an intermediary role between North Korea and other countries like the United States who sought to persuade North Korea to stop its nuclear program (Funabashi 2007, 178; Buszynski 2009, 814). The DPRK–Russia relationship has grown even stronger in more recent years, as Russia itself was labeled as an international “pariah” after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine and targeted with blistering economic sanctions. While many other states have turned away from Russia, North Korea and Russia have held several bilateral meetings, including some high-level summits, and North Korea has allegedly provided Russia with arms in its efforts to overcome resistance in Ukraine. Thus, strong political and economic ties between North Korea and China and North Korea and Russia are likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

Second, sender states often privilege chokepoint-generating policies over panopticon-generating ones. This turn to chokepoint effects is often the result of compelling domestic politics that render engagement with the target politically costly for policymakers. As noted in our research, Japan made efforts to establish diplomatic ties, but the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents made it impossible for the government to realize this policy priority. In South Korea, the inability of liberal administrations’ engagement strategies (such as Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine Policy) to deter North Korea from developing its nuclear weapons program created skepticism about the power of diplomacy among the South Korean public. In China, policymakers and the public are wary of the potential for sanctions to facilitate North Korean regime collapse, which could have significant economic consequences for China. Thus, domestic politics is an important factor in sender states' decisions to impose or enforce sanctions.

Our analysis shows that North Korea often works to limit the impact of panopticon effects by limiting those countries where it establishes embassies and those countries that establish embassies in its territory. In our research on North Korean diplomatic activity, we often found cases where diplomatic recognition was present and North Korea persistently sought to open an embassy in the diplomatic partner. In some cases, ambassadors and embassies were reciprocated. In fact, when ambassadors and embassies are reciprocated, the strength centrality of third-party states is higher than if there was diplomatic recognition alone or only North Korea had opened an embassy in the diplomatic partner’s territory. This means that North Korea does not treat all diplomatic engagements in the same way and likely applies different standards depending on the diplomatic partner.

From the perspective of policymakers looking for solutions to the North Korean dilemma, current approaches are unlikely to bring about a change in the status quo (Brewer and Terry 2021). While sanctions may have slowed the DPRK’s progress, slow progress is still progress. North Korea’s licit and illicit networks will further limit the international community’s ability to coerce North Korea into changing its behavior. Multilateral efforts to isolate North Korea have only pushed the various sides farther apart, and a solution to the diplomatic impasse that leads to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula remains elusive.

The theories and framework developed in this paper may also help to understand how regimes like Cuba, Iran, and Myanmar have been able to survive and absorb the economic pain that economic and financial sanctions have inflicted. Exploring the impacts of sanctions on the trade networks of other pariah states may generate insights for academics, policymakers, and practitioners looking to improve the effectiveness and success of a critical foreign policy tool.

Funding

The Faculty Research Committee's Publication, Reprint, Exhibition, and Performance Costs (PREP) Program and the Department of Political Science at Miami University provided funding support for publication costs.

Notes

Author’s note: The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and guidance on the paper. In addition, we would also like to thank Bryan R. Early, Charles Crabtree, Justin Hastings, Jon DiCicco, Jeehye Kim, Amira Jadoon, Elizabeth Menninga, Jay Song, and Jiakun Jack Zhang for reading earlier drafts of our work.

Footnotes

References