State Strategy in the Kim Jong-un Era: The “Byongjin” Policy of Pursuing Economic and Nuclear Development

In March 2013, North Korea adopted its “Byongjin” policy of simultaneously pursuing economic and nuclear development. While the Byongjin policy in the Kim Jong-il era aimed at developing military forces at the expense of economic development, Kim Jung-un era’s Byongjin policy prioritizes economic development ahead of defense. The Kim, Jung-un regime’s most urgent challenge is to enhance its people’s livelihoods. This reasoning could be further substantiated by evidence of a rise in economic investment and overall stagnation in defense investment, even after the Byongjin policy was announced. In this sense, the character of the new policy is defensive rather than aggressively expansionist. Since 2013, North Korea has initiated a series of economic reform measures that seek to expand its policy to open up by collaborating with China and Russia. To sum up, the Byongjin policy is a new North Korean strategy, which is carefully chosen to face “the dilemma of security and development.”