The United States’ economic supremacy has allowed the nation to maintain alliances globally despite its antagonistic foreign policy. Northeast Asia, however, remains a diplomatic nightmare for the US. North Korea remains adamantly against the West. Given the DPRK’s militaristic might that is only set to increase in decades to come, this diplomatic nightmare will almost certainly worsen for Washington unless the United States actively strives to improve relations with Pyongyang. Despite the looming presidential election, high unemployment rates, and the Eurozone Crisis distracting Obama, the timing for Washington to begin normalizing relations with the key power of North Korea could not be better.

After all, North Korea’s nuclear armament, supported economically by allies Russia and China, could soon reach a level where it would threaten the US directly. Up to this point, it has only been able to threaten US allies in the region, such as South Korea and Japan, with its nuclear powers. Its sole attempt to attack the U.S. directly involved an embarrassment of a launch, a nuke that landed 300 miles off the North Korean coast in the Pacific Ocean. However, if his April 13 satellite launch is characteristic of his rule, North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-un appears to be an advocate of militarization, even more so than his predecessors Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il. Additionally, with China’s increased military spending and foreign aid, North Korea’s nuclear program seems destined to expand. Washington cannot prevent these developments, but can reform its relations with North Korea to prevent future attacks on its soil. After all, the seemingly hostile Kim Il-sung, the late Great Leader and first dictator of North Korea once commented, “If the United States renounced its unfriendly attitude and changed its hostile policies toward North Korea, good relations could be established [between the two countries].”^[i]

Additionally, the United States must improve relations with North Korea in order to ensure increased provisions of humanitarian aid to the desperate North Koreans. The foundation of the United States has been improving the lives of not just its own citizens, but all members of the international community. While European nations were pursuing exploitative imperialism, the United States was developing such political ideologies as Manifest Destiny to help save nations in the Americas being threatened by economic exploitation from foreign powers. North Korea has by far the worst humanitarian situation of any nation in the world currently. However, American attempts to mitigate the famine and other humanitarian disasters have largely proved ineffective due to a combination of North Korean military provocation and subsequent sanctions preventing food aid and the lack of transparency in the Kim family regime. Speaking on the first point, American food aid has often been halted by sanctions placed on North Korea in response to military provocation that prevented the U.S. from supplying much needed food and humanitarian aid to the nation. On the second point, North Korea’s isolationism has prevented foreign nations from directly providing humanitarian assistance. Instead, humanitarian aid passes through the Kim family dynasty, the middleman. The problem here lies in the lack of transparency in the North Korean regime. Likely, none of the money meant for humanitarian assistance is allocated to the right people. It is more likely that the Kim family aristocracy keeps excess money to maintain their exorbitant lifestyle or to funnel that money back into the nation’s nuclear program, the very deterrent for more food aid and humanitarian assistance. In order to maintain the foundation of the nation, the United States must support the North Korean people in their plight, a direct result of the Kim regime’s brutality. That, however, will not be possible without direct aid because of the lack of transparency in Kim Jong-un’s regime. Therefore, in order to gain access into the nation and subsequently be able to mitigate the North Korean famine and human rights disasters, the United States must heal bad relations with Pyongyang.

Overall, maintaining the status quo in foreign relations with North Korea will have heavy consequences for the United States. The United States’ appeasement of the hostility of Northeast Asian regional powers and adoption of a more friendly foreign policy in years to come will prove necessary to counter-acting the implications of North Korea’s nuclear developments.