International Humanitarian Assistance and Multilateral Cooperation in North Korea

We focused on multilateral cooperation and aid to North Korea. While it is true that North Korea and the international community both respectively have a certain desire for multilateral cooperation, we evaluate that due to the disagreements stemming from differing perspectives, correspondence, and issues, there were no notable results. For North Korea, there is a demand for multilateral cooperation in terms in terms of revitalizing trade and investment, economic development, and financing. Although multilateral cooperation for North Korea brings membership of International Financial Institutions a necessary step and preemptively requires North Korea’s regime change, if we look into North Korea’s demands, we can see that there is a distinctive gap in what North Korea desires and what the international community requires. While North Korea has requested development cooperation aid, the international community has remained responding with humanitarian aid. This unbalance has shifted further with North Korea’s successive nuclear tests and tougher sanctions against North Korea. While North Korea’s multilateral cooperation policy in the Kim Jong-un regime stems from the differences between domestic and foreign political situation, there are still significant barriers due to exogenous factors, such as COVID-19, which has, with or without North Korea’s intentions has become an inhibiting factor. The UN sanctions and COVID-19 has physically prevented any projects that North Korea has or could receive from being implemented, and the reality is that is difficult for any multilateral cooperation projects to be carried out regardless of the intentions of North Korea or the international community. In order to revitalize the international community's support for North Korea, North Korea needs to show a more assertive attitude toward multilateral cooperation, and we judge that this same attitude had led to its active participation on the UN SDGs in 2016. If a compromise can reached between the international community and North Korea's demands (requirements) while implementing the UN SDGs, we expect this to provide an opportunity for North Korea's multilateral cooperation to become more active in the future.