North Korea through the Lens of Unification: Regime Legitimacy and Survival, 1980-1988

Abstract

This doctoral thesis investigates the nature and motivations behind North Korea’s efforts toward Korean unification from 1980 to 1988. Previous studies, limited by insufficient primary sources revealing the DPRK regime’s actions, relied primarily on official policy statements and concluded that Pyongyang had lost its interest in unification in the 1980s. However, with the increasing availability of declassified materials from various archives, it is now possible to reassess whether North Korea was committed to unification, and if so, why and how. I argue that North Korea, despite its material weakness and diminishing international prestige compared to the South, maintained a genuine interest in unification at least until October 1987. The regime pursued both peaceful and violent measures—ranging from dialogue overtures to terrorist attacks—driven by its belief in the legitimacy of the North as the rightful government of the peninsula, a misreading of US intentions, and an overestimation of the revolutionary potential of the South Korean public, who were anti-authoritarian but not necessarily pro-North Korean. These findings suggest that unification can be a lens through which to understand North Korea’s perceptions of legitimacy and survival. Additionally, this research reveals how North Korea, as a local actor in the Cold War, never viewed itself as subordinate to the Soviet Union or China, a perception that fundamentally guided its statecraft and strategy. Finally, this thesis’s historical analysis of the North Korean regime’s misperceptions offers critical insights for scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the extent to which the North Korean leadership’s worldview and intelligence capabilities have changed over time.