It's been a roller coaster ride for anyone following plans for a June 12 summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. The actors were contradictory, the stage sets numerous and the messages chaotic. Within days of Mr Trump's May 24 cancellation of the Singapore meeting -- and then the withdrawal of his withdrawal -- President Moon Jae-in of South Korea met with the US president in Washington with the North Korean leader on the northern side of the demilitarised zone (DMZ) to help keep the summit alive. Meanwhile, US officials flew to the DMZ and Singapore and a top North Korean official came to New York to plan (again) for the encounter.
As riveting as this turbulent drama may be, such external events are not the drivers of Pyongyang's decision-making. Since the beginning of 2018, when Mr Kim began his active campaign to portray his regime as a serious international player and hypothetically cooperative partner, analysts and commentators have been obsessed with whether Mr Kim is sincere or staging an elaborate hoax. No one can know what Pyongyang's "real" intentions are. But we can look inside North Korean society for clues.
Monday's reports that Pyongyang shuffled top military leaders before the Singapore summit gives us hints about possible power politics within North Korea and the complexity of managing domestic and foreign policy for the Kim regime. Without doubt, the military's blessings and support are essential to any plans for even minimal denuclearisation or significant efforts at warming relations with Seoul, Washington and Beijing (and possibly Tokyo soon).
The Kim-Moon summit of April 27 offered visual evidence of support from the highest ranks of the military for Mr Kim's new diplomatic overtures. There were no economic experts in the DPRK delegation, but three of the nine members not related to Mr Kim by blood were literally the top brass: Gen Pak Yong-sik, Minister of the People's Armed Forces; Gen Ri Myong-su, chief of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army and Gen Kim Yong-chol, the former spy chief who reportedly masterminded the torpedoing of a South Korean naval vessel in 2010. Additionally, Ri So-gwon, who heads the bureau akin to South Korea's Ministry of Unification, is an expert on the military's interests and priorities; he served as the head of the National Defence Commission's policy department before assuming his current position in 2016 and has been a negotiator on military matters with the South since 2006.
In contrast to the two earlier inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007, which did not include military officials in the formal list of DPRK delegates, the April meeting was starkly different. The generals wore their crisp uniforms, amply adorned with medals and ribbons. For me, the most surprising image was the military salute Generals Ri and Pak -- two of the generals now reported to have lost their jobs -- gave President Moon of South Korea. The message from the optics was clear: Mr Kim's DMZ-crossing and diplomatic engagement with arch-enemies have the full backing of the armed forces.
But buy-in at the top should not be equated with the military and nuclear establishment's support from the bottom up. A 2016 report titled "A Study on the Party-Military Relations of the Kim Jong-un Regime", commissioned by the South Korean Ministry of Unification, noted that the DPRK military might seek a "military-centric government" or intervene to reshape the country's struggling economy if the Kim leadership fails to provide economic relief.
Recently, Cho Han-bum, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a South Korean government think tank, reported that hawks in the DPRK military are upset that after years of sacrifices imposed on soldiers for the sake of the nuclear programme, including insufficient food, Mr Kim may be walking away from the DPRK's "treasured sword" -- the arsenal deemed a source of national pride and necessary defence against foreign aggression. With 6,445,000 military personnel, including about a million on active duty, maintaining organisational discipline and loyalty is key to sustaining Mr Kim's fledgling steps toward peace diplomacy and his own political survival.
If denuclearisation were to progress, how would scientists and technicians feel after having been lauded and feted as indispensable to the DPRK's existence? Recent lessons from the disintegration of the Soviet Union provide some answers. When Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons after signing the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, its massive missile factory, Yuzhmash, lost thousands of workers. Many reportedly went to North Korea, Iran and Pakistan to work in the nuclear industry; some stole and sold missile parts illegally. Individual survival replaced national interests, what Yuzhmash in-house historian Vladimir Platonov called "our pride" in keeping "the Americans up at night". Preventing nuclear proliferation via "loose scientists", not just "loose nukes", must be integrated into any North Korean denuclearisation strategy.
Although outside critics of the April Kim-Moon summit lamented that North Koreans were kept in the dark about the meeting and subsequent developments, the regime has been highly active "informing" its citizens to expect big changes. North Korean state media covered the Panmunjom meet quite elaborately the day after the summit. Of course, propaganda can always be changed in a dictatorship. But the masses are not unthinking automatons. For the DPRK, dismantling the political rhetoric, organisational investments and personal interests associated with the nuclear programne will be a necessary component of any denuclearisation. North Koreans will require basic explanations for why after decades of living one way -- with nuclear aspirations reigning supreme and readiness for war as a legitimate sacrifice -- they now need to put these ambitions aside and make friends with foes.
There is much speculation about why Mr Kim dumped Generals Pak and Ri for younger officers: suspicion of insufficient loyalty and related fear of a coup when he departs for the meeting with Mr Trump; continuing trust in the two elders to prevent a coup while he is away; and general reshuffling of the armed forces top leadership.
There is also the possibility that the two replacements, Gen No Kwang-chol as defence minister and Ri Yong-gil as the chief of the Korea People's Army, simply are politically more savvy and technically more competent to assist in the summit diplomacy and the upcoming high-level negotiations with the South Korean military on a range of issues from improving military-to-military communications to cooperation and peace in the West Sea and the Northern Limit Line (disputed and conflict-ridden maritime areas), to reducing armaments and guard stations along the DMZ.
We will likely see more personnel changes in various bureaucracies if diplomacy picks up speed. Political rhetoric that is contradictory and confusing to the outside world also will likely grow if the regime earnestly tries to chart a new path. Even a dictator like Mr Kim needs to get minimal buy-in from the 25 million people in his country, especially the military top brass, and his iron fist does have limits. If his regime fails to manage the DPRK's changing internal politics, Mr Kim's efforts at external outreach will be in danger. - Reuters
Katharine HS Moon is a political science professor at Wellesley College and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.