Quest for significance

AbstractChapter 3 applies the framework of ‘strategic delinquency’ to the so-called ‘first nuclear crisis’ from December 1985 to October 1994. It examines how North Korea’s nuclear ambitions gained prominence even before the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) joined the global nuclear order and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985. Prior to acceding to the NPT, the DPRK’s international status was in decline as it was already violating the norms of the post-war liberal international order. This chapter divides the ‘first nuclear crisis’ into three phases. In so doing, it examines how North Korea’s deployment of delinquent behaviour was cyclical, from outward compliance with nuclear norms after joining the NPT; to norm transgression in 1993 when it threatened to withdraw from the NPT; to an act of norm compliance in 1994, when it signed the Agreed Framework with the United States and agreed to freeze its then nascent nuclear development in exchange for considerable rewards. This chapter underscores how the ‘first nuclear crisis’ taught North Korea the fundamental lesson that it could gain social and material rewards despite breaching nuclear and wider international norms.