Abstract
Why does North Korea continue to insist on maintaining a nuclear program despite its potential to be detrimental to the regime in the long term? This article argues that North Korea’s nuclear development strategy is derived from policymakers’ cognitive systems and norms that have accumulated over the decades. This study especially attempts to examine the mechanism behind how the normative system shaped by North Korea’s historical environment generates and re-generates nuclear strategy through nuclear discourse by applying the lens of Strategic Culture. It begins with a critical assessment of previous research on the motives of a nation or regime’s nuclear development policy and proposes the suitability of Strategic Culture for North Korea’s case. This article then characterizes North Korea’s Strategic Culture as a “Wartime Preferring Strategic Culture” which emphasizes the norm of the “prioritization of military values,” “closed groupism,” and “deontic mass mobilization.” These norms are based on the policymakers’ cognitive systems related to the fear of regime cleavage. Consequently, North Korea’s Strategic Culture, which is based on fear perception, influenced policy makers and drove them to strengthen nuclear development.