WASHINGTON (AP) — The founder of North Korea’s ruling dynasty, an isolationist totalitarian leader named Kim Il Sung, was still building some of the country’s first nuclear facilities when Syd Seiler arrived on the Korean Peninsula as a young U.S. military intelligence officer.
Over the four decades since, Seiler has watched closely as Kim, his son and now his grandson have clung to their nuclear program and developed the potential to lob nuclear warheads at the U.S. and its allies if they choose.
Now Seiler is freshly retired after decades of advising presidents, military commanders and diplomats, making reported secret trips to North Korea and serving as a lead negotiator on talks to contain its nuclear program. And he has a parting message to American leaders: Don’t be discouraged.
North Korea’s fiery rounds of missile test launches are no reason to give up on the international sanctions and pressure, or to simply accept that the ruling Kim family is now a nuclear-armed power, Seiler told The Associated Press this week.
“That’s a failure of deterrence?” he asked, rhetorically. “That’s nonsense. We’re deterring an attack.”
Seiler helped shape the U.S. policy of deterrence, diplomacy and international pressure to deal with the nuclear threat. Following are some of his conclusions, drawing on his decades of experience before retiring this summer as the U.S. national intelligence officer for North Korea.
NORTH KOREAN LOGIC
Seiler sees a strategy and a rhythm to the single-minded nuclear and missile expansion, the rounds of U.S. and South Korean military exercises and North Korean test launches, and the blustery threats, as when the government of Kim Jong Un — grandson of the founding ruler — threatens a “deluge of fire” on neighboring South Korea.
But the Kim family’s worry is not so much about an attack from outside, Seiler argues. He said in sticking to the nuclear program even at the expense of North Korea’s economy, Kim Jong Un has taken a lesson from deposed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. A firing squad abruptly ended the communist leader’s rule in 1989 when his people rose up against him.
Having cut North Koreans off from most contact with the outside world, Kim Jong Un, his father and his grandfather before him have seen their regime’s survival as lying in convincing their people the country is a worker’s paradise under threat from the outside world, and only the Kim family and its nuclear weapons can protect them, the former intelligence officer said.
Actions prioritizing the nuclear program over the feeding of your people seem irrational, Seiler said. “But in terms of the logic of North Korea, they make sense.”
RUSSIA TIES
U.S. officials have said Kim Jong Un may travel to Russia this month for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, who they say is looking to North Korea to supply ammunition for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Kim “probably sees in this meeting an opportunity to join hands with a like-minded fellow anti-U.S. leader,” Seiler said.
Worrisome possible outcomes include Russia helping North Korea beef up “its pretty antiquated … museum-ready” conventional forces or its weapons of mass destruction, Seiler said.
