On July 4, 2006, North Korea test-fired six missiles in what amounted to a highly provocative taunting of the United States on the American Independence Day holiday. A day later, North Korea fired another missile. North Koreas provocation is not surprising and it is likely to recur in the future, as it allows North Korea to periodically assert the fundamental basis on which the Kim Jong-il regime is founded. Such a precept will also make it highly unlikely that any kind of meaningful diplomatic breakthrough will be realized through at least the medium-term.

Kim Jong-ils central organizing principle is Songun. Songun describes a powerful army-centered state. Kim views the Songun perspective as his immortal contribution to North Koreas history. A nuclear arsenal forms the centerpiece of Kims Songun state. One of North Koreas state-run media publications, Rodong Sinmum, described the Songun era as follows:

Ours is the era of Songun and the Songun idea serves as a militant banner for implementing the idea and cause of Kim Il Sung. The Songun revolutionary cause is a continuation of the process of modeling the whole society on the Juche [self-reliance] idea started by our Party and represents its new higher stage. The Songun idea serves as a guiding principle for the Korean revolution based on the revolutionary idea of the President and a political philosophy of Kim Jong Il for the final accomplishment of the revolutionary cause of Juche.

Songun is an outlook that is compatible with pure Realpolitik. North Korea correctly recognizes that in international relations, great power statuseven for a rogue stateconfers an enormous degree of leverage. With North Korea in economic shambles and among the worlds most backward in terms of development, the North Korean regime sees its nuclear arsenal as the primary means by which it can maintain legitimacy and power. After all, if North Korea retreated on its nuclear arsenal, the Songun philosophy that defines the Kim Jong-il regime would lose some of its luster and that could, in the future, set off a chain of events in which the regimes legitimacy and hold on power erodes.

Songun also fits closely with North Koreas second major objective: reunification of the Korean Peninsula. The July 4, 2006 issue of Rodong Sinmum observed that Songun serves as a treasured sword of justice protecting sovereignty of the nation and peace and security of the country and a powerful engine advancing the era of independence and reunification.

North Korea sees Korean reunification as the call of history, explained a January 11, 1999 account from North Koreas Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which went on to proclaim For the Korean nation, nothing is more important than national reunification and no task is more urgent than it. At the same time, North Koreas current leadership has maintained its belief that it will bring about such reunification. On August 5, 2002, KCNA, reported, National reunification is sure to come under the leadership of Kim Jong-il, the sun of the 21st century and the lodestar of national reunification.

When discussing its pursuit of reunification, North Korea employs often soothing language. To achieve the great unity of the whole nation is a decisive guarantee for the independent and peaceful reunification of the fatherland, KCNA explained. In reality, there is nothing reassuring about North Koreas calls for reunification. Rather, North Korea is borrowing from the Soviet Unions propaganda efforts that were aimed at seeking to divide Western popular opinion during the Cold War.

At closer inspection, the aims of North Koreas totalitarian dictatorship are readily evident in that nations public pronouncements. South Korea should not depend on the outside forces but take the way for reunification through alliance with communism and the north, KCNA advised. Alliance with communism would mean that South Korea would have to embrace North Koreas totalitarian system. If thats not sufficiently clear, KCNA added, The five-point policy as well as the 10-Point Program of the Great Unity of the Whole Nation put forward by President Kim Il Sung are the banner the entire nation should uphold and the political program of great unity they must invariably defend and realize without fail. Finally, KCNA predicted, All the Koreans in the north, the south and abroad will work hard to accomplish the cause of national reunification under Kim Jong-ils steermanship and thus glorify dignity and honor of Kim Il Sungs nation. Notice again that North Korea not South Korea would be glorified by reunification.

What all this means is that North Korea is likely to remain firmly entrenched in its present course of expanding its nuclear arsenal. Diplomatic pressure and even possible incentives that could be offered under the Six Power framework are not likely to yield concrete results in materially changing North Koreas course. Neither would the bilateral U.S.-North Korea approach that was previously undertaken and then violated by North Korea only a year after it had signed the 1994 Agreed Framework. Furthermore, given the central role Songun plays both in defining Kim Jong-ils legacy and in allowing North Korea to pursue reunification of the Korean Peninsula on its terms, North Korea is all but certain to engage in future provocative actions, even as it maintains its pursuit of an expanded nuclear arsenal and continues to seek fresh advances in its delivery systems.