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MODULE CODE: POL 350

COURSEWORK NUMBER/TITLE: Analysing Public Policy

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POL 350

22 December 2017

United States Diplomatic Policy Towards North Korea

Introduction

In the discipline of public policy, through decades of arduous arguing and

critiquing, the policy cycle has endured as a framework to synthesize the policy

making process as a whole into a succinct model. While it has endured a hammering

of critiques for its failures to represent the realities of policy making, in using the

model to map out the policy of sanctions against North Korea (DPRK) by the United

States of America, I discover two key conclusions: first, the model does, in fact, have

analytical value for its ability to deconstruct a complicated and tangled process, but

also secondly, it fails in that it assumes high level of democratic involvement, which

is less true in a foreign policy than a domestic one, and that it cannot untangle the

policies of a singular nation and those of a multinational body in the UN. While

useful, it struggles in providing insight to foreign policy.

In making this case, I shall follow the stages of the policy cycle in a cyclical

manner, analyzing how these sanctions conform to and bend the constraints of the

policy cycle. This will be achieved by introducing each of the six stages of the policy

cycle –(1) problem definition, (2) agenda setting, (3) policy choice, (4) policy

implementation, (5) policy evaluation and (6) evidence usage – and exercising the

analytical frameworks in each against North Korean sanctions and making

conclusions about the stages and the cycle as a whole.

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North Korea has faced sanctions from the United States since the end of the

Korean War, though between 1994 and 2007, these sanctions were eased as the two

countries signed numerous agreements. These talks deteriorated in 2003 under the

Bush Administration, and North Korea subsequently began to resume nuclear

development. The first sanctions in response to this proliferation in an attempt to

derail it occurred in 2006, under UN Resolution 1718, after North Korea successfully

detonated a nuclear bomb against the Nonnuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which

the DPRK signed in 1994, and have continued to this day1. For the sake of this essay,

nuclear tests and missile tests by the DPRK will be treated the same, as they aim to

deliver a nuclear bomb by missile making them directly correlated.

1. Problem Definition

The first stage of the policy cycle is concerned with “how problems are

formed and framed”2, and why certain issues become problems. In this study, the

problem is framed in the context of international law and is largely accepted as a

problem by the American government and people, but worldwide the consensus is

less clear.

In the United States, North Korea is widely seen as being a potential danger:

65% of Americans in a Pew Research poll described themselves as “very concerned”

about North Korea in July 2017, while an additional 23% were “somewhat

1 Wertz, D. and Gannon, C. (2015). A History of U.S.-DPRK Relations. [online] NCNK.

Available at: https://www.ncnk.org/resources/briefing-papers/all-briefing-

papers/history-u.s.-dprk-relations [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017].
2 Wayne Parsons (1995), Public Policy, London: Edward Elgar, p. 85.
 5

concerned”, for a grand total of 88% concerned3. This concern has remained

prevalent in American society over the past decade; in 2003, before North Korea was

armed with nuclear weapons, 77% of Americans identified North Korea as a danger

to Asia4. In addition, within the American government, every President – Republican

and Democratic – since North Korea began seeking nuclear weapons in the early 90s

has addressed the DPRK as a national security threat, showing that the issue is

relatively depoliticized within American society5.

However, the international identifications of the severity of the problem

vary: in the same July 2017 poll, countries in the Pacific such as Indonesia and

Vietnam were significantly less concerned about the DPRK, while a majority of

respondents from Indonesia even held a positive view of the nation (awarding a net

approval of 20 points, by contrast, in the United States, North Korea is underwater

by 66). This difference in perception of the severity of the issue has been cited as a

hindrance for the international implementation of the sanctions6.

3 Silver, L. (2017). In Asia-Pacific countries, many are concerned about North Korea’s

nuclear program. [online] Pew Research Center. Available at:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/13/in-asia-pacific-countries-
many-are-concerned-about-north-koreas-nuclear-program/ [Accessed 13 Dec.
2017].
4 Pew Research Center. (2017). International Public Concern About North Korea.

[online] Available at: http://www.people-press.org/2003/08/22/international-

public-concern-about-north-korea/ [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017].
5 Wertz, D. and Gannon, C. (2015). A History of U.S.-DPRK Relations. [online] NCNK.

Available at: https://www.ncnk.org/resources/briefing-papers/all-briefing-

papers/history-u.s.-dprk-relations [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017].
6 Government Accountability Office. (2015). NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS United

States Has Increased Flexibility to Impose Sanctions, but United Nations Is Impeded
by a Lack of Member State Reports (GAO-15-485). Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office. p. 29.

 6

This raises an important point: the issue is being identified as the North

Korean government’s militarization, not nuclear weapons in general. The issue is

argued in the framework of the NPT, which bars countries that did not have nuclear

weapons before 1970 from developing them. Other nations have developed nuclear

outside of the confines of the NPT, such as India and Pakistan, and have been

subsequently sanctioned by the US and the UN for their actions but have seen them

eased after signing other agreements. This framing directly influences the problem

solution: if the issue were nuclear weapons in general, then the solution would be

more aimed at a denuclearization of the world as a whole. Instead, nuclear

proliferation is the problem, and because North Korea participates in this, they bear

the brunt of punishment through sanctions.

Additionally, it is worth noting that as these sanctions have accumulated,

they have grown in scope and severity: while UN Resolution 1718 explicitly only

targets those with direct involvement in the nuclear program, further sanctions

such as Resolution 2375 in September 2017 have targeted the North Korean people

as a whole in an attempt to stress the Kim regime into submission7 indicating a shift

in the targeted population of the policy.

2. Agenda-Setting

The second stage of the policy cycle is agenda setting, which Birkland defines

as “the process by which problems and alternative solutions maintain or lose public

7 DeThomas, J., 2016. Sanctions’ Role in Dealing with the North Korean Problem. 1st

ed. Washington D.C.: US-KOREA INSTITUTE AT SAIS, p. 7.

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and elite attention”8. As no government or institution has the capacity to handle all

policy problems at a given time, different problems have to compete for a position

on the agenda itself.

In discussing agenda setting, evaluating North Korea’s nuclear practices

presents a problem, as it is a foreign policy; models that describe the agenda setting

process (mainly the issue attention cycle and the multiple streams framework) are

typically used for evaluating domestic policies. However, there is precedent for the

use of the issue attention cycle in evaluating foreign policy, as Karen Peterson notes

in her study of terrorism through the American issue attention cycle9.

I have chosen to focus on the Issue Attention Cycle (IAC) instead of the

Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) for the reasons above, as well as the fact that

the MSF assumes three more or less equally important streams to create a “window

of opportunity” for a policy to emerge. In the case of North Korea, the military tests

they conduct are so fundamental to the policy’s creation and increased priority on

the agenda that I find that more emphasis needs to be put on them, which the IAC

provides. The IAC assumes fundamentally that there is a focusing event, which the

MSF does not.

The first stage of the IAC is the Pre-Problem Stage, which “prevails when

some highly undesirable social condition exists but has not yet captured much

public attention, even though some experts or interest groups may already be

8 W. Jann & K. Wegrich, 'Theories of the Policy Cycle', in F. Fischer et. al., Policy

Analysis: Theory, Politics and Methods, p. 63.

9 Petersen, Karen K.. "Revisiting Downs' Issue-Attention Cycle: International

Terrorism and U.S. Public Opinion." Journal of Strategic Security 2, no. 4 (2010): : 1-
16.
 8

alarmed by it.” 10 The United States has recognized North Korea’s desire for nuclear

weapons since 1985, and experts in the Clinton administration worked to deter this

throughout the 1990s, but the issue was not as salient in the American public’s

minds as much as other foreign issues in Kosovo, Bosnia and Iran took center stage.

The second stage, the problem stage, where an event triggers public concern,

is perhaps the most visible stage in the case of North Korea. In 2003, when North

Korea became nuclearized, favorability of the country dropped from 23% to 8%

over the previous year and became the most unfavorably viewed country in the US

by 200411. As North Korea has continued to test nuclear weapons, they have served

as focusing moments as sanctions have been imposed in explicit response to them12.

The gravitation towards North Korea by the international community is directly

caused by these displays, and is a major contributor to the salience of North Korea

as an issue, and therefore its rise on the agenda.

Without these focusing moments in these military tests, North Korea would

go largely unnoticed by the American public and government as other foreign affairs

move into the spotlight, which could have significant consequences. In August 1998,

North Korea launched its first long-range missile after diplomatic negotiations

stalled. In an interview with PBS in 2003, former Assistant Secretary of Defense

Ashton Carter said of the launch, “The North Koreans fired this ballistic missile and

everybody in the region and the United States woke up and said, ‘boy, we haven’t

10 Downs, 'Up and Down With Ecology: The 'Issue Attention Cycle'', p. 39.
11 Gallup. 2014. Gallup news. [ONLINE] Available

at: http://news.gallup.com/poll/167489/north-korea-least-favorable-among-
nations.aspx. [Accessed 13 December 2017].
12 Office of Foreign Assets Control, (2016). North Korea Sanctions Program.

Washington D.C., p. 3.
 9

been paying attention to them, but they’ve sure been paying attention’”13. These

nuclear tests also serve as a benchmark for the efficacy of sanctions: if the tests

continue, the sanctions are missing their primary objective, to deter North Korean

military activity.

This policy has continually faded in and out of public focus based on these

military tests, and in doing so has flown to the top of the agenda. The US

Government Office of Accountability displays this in figure 1. The policy cycle’s – as

well as the Issue Attention Cycle’s – accentuation of these focusing events is

incredibly useful in studying North Korean sanctions.

13 Frontline: Kim’s Nuclear Gamble 2003, television program, PBS, United States.

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0knm14zVsA&t=1898s

[Accessed 15 December 2017].

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Source: Government Accountability Office

3. Decision-Making

In moving to the third stage of the policy cycle, it is necessary to distinguish

what kind of decision-making will be analyzed. Throughout the policy cycle,

government actors make decisions, from choosing what evidence to use, which

items make the agenda, and how to identify an issue, which makes “decision

making” an almost redundant stage in this context. In this section, the focus will be

on the decision to choose a particular policy option for implementation, instead of

decision-making throughout the entire cycle.

Within this stage, there are two approaches to analyzing it, as theorized by

Parsons: power, and rationality14. Both are incredibly useful in framing a foreign

policy situation like that of North Korea’s nuclear program.

In taking North Korea through the decision making process, I find the

“elitism” perspective of power to be the most fitting, as it assumes that the decision

making process is in the hands of a limited number of actors15. This is incredibly

true when considering foreign policies in the United States: because of the

sensitivity of foreign intelligence information, the public does not have access to the

same breadth of knowledge as those in the upper echelons of the government do,

and are thus kept largely at a distance from the decision-making process. The actors

involved in creating a foreign policy in the United States are numerous: the

President acts as commander in chief and as the head of government, and he

14 Wayne Parsons (1995), Public Policy, London: Edward Elgar, p. 247.
15 Wayne Parsons (1995), Public Policy, London: Edward Elgar, p. 248.
 11

ultimately decides on a policy choice, but also looks to different government

agencies and departments to play a part in the foreign policy process by advising

him, with members of the National Security Council, such as the Central Intelligence

Agency (CIA), State and Defense Departments, and others playing a role. The

President then mediates the preferences and views of these different bodies with his

own in order to form a collective national interest16. However, as North Korean

sanctions are delivered by Executive Order, the President is the sole decision-maker.

Additionally, the decision making process in a foreign policy situation like

North Korea’s requires swift and decisive action across the government. For

example, within twelve days of North Korea’s sixth nuclear test in September 2017,

the United States through the United Nations imposed another level of sanctions

against the DPRK in response. These are all pressures under which the President

operates in attempting to execute a foreign policy.

With the elitism perspective and urgency dimension in mind, it is important

to understand how a President approaches a situation like North Korea’s: Pious

argued that “Presidents limit their searches [of alternatives] by relying on one or

more heuristics: their own ideology, or experience, or political stakes”, referring to

the theory of “bounded rationality” by Simon17. I believe the “muddling through”

approach theorized by Lindblom, which developed out of Simon’s theory, is fitting:

this approach states that a policy actor is simply trying to avoid a catastrophic result

16 HOW U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IS MADE. [ONLINE] Available

at: http://www.fpa.org/features/index.cfm?act=feature&announcement_id=45&sho
w_sidebar=0. [Accessed 7 November 2017].
17 Pious, R., 2008. Why Presidents Fail: White House Decision Making from Eisenhower

to Bush II. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, p. 260.

 12

of a policy, or at the very least attempting to avoid blame by implementing slow

changes. Each President has continually chosen to implement sanctions that have

compiled to become more comprehensive in an attempt to prevent the outbreak of

war.

That last point is a critical one: sanctions have reliably been chosen over any

other policy option that the President has been presented with since the 90s, with

the most glaring possibility being the use of military force against the DPRK.

Because of the international costs that option would present, (China, most notably,

has said that it will take the side of the victim and not the aggressor in the case of a

war between the US and the DPRK) sanctions have been chosen instead as the

international community largely supports them (at least in theory, as we will see in

the next stage).

4. Implementation

In approaching this stage, I will use the “Top-Down” framework of

understanding, described by Parsons as a “unitary ‘army’-like organization”18, it is

fitting to use for an American foreign policy. This framework additionally assumes

that “a good chain of command and a capacity to coordinate and control” is what

makes a policy successful; this could help explain the failure of sanctions

implementation through the UN and the success of those delivered solely by the

American government.

18 Wayne Parsons (1995), Public Policy, London: Edward Elgar, p. 465.
 13

As seen above, the President is the sole decision maker, but in order to

actually implement the policy of sanctions, the United States relies on a complex

web of agencies and departments to do so, mainly under the Treasury, Commerce

and State Departments, all of which operate under the discretion of the President

himself. Under the State Department alone, there are offices devoted to ensuring

sanctions implementation and providing guidance to other executive departments

on how to implement them19. The breadth of the American government and the

wide distribution of agencies to handle a variety of sanctioned activities and

individuals allow them to be implemented successfully, as evidenced by their UN

Sanction Implementation reports.

However, there is a significant implementation gap in sanctions that is

difficult to ignore: despite repeated sanctions against North Korea by the

international community, their behavior has not been deterred, which is the

primary objective of the policy. The literature continually suggests that partial

compliance on the part of the international community by countries like the United

States is not enough to deter North Korea; rather countries like China and Russia are

critical to the success of the policy, and their lax approach towards sanctions

implementation undermines the effect of those implemented by the United States20.

As numerous reports will point out, the failure of the policy as a whole is due

to lax enforcement by nations in the UN. Here, sanctions break from the Top-Down

19 SanctionsAlert. 2016. Primer on agencies that enforce US sanctions: Department of

State. [ONLINE] Available at: http://sanctionsalert.com/primer-on-agencies-that-

enforce-us-sanctions-department-of-state/. [Accessed 9 November 2017].
20 Noland, M, 2008. The (Non) Impact of UN Sanctions on North Korea. Peterson

Institute for International Economics., p. 7.

 14

approach in a sense: while the UN as a multinational body is above that of a single

state, its lack of authority causes the approach to collapse. UN members are

required to submit Sanctions Implementation Reports, but less than half of the 195

members have ever submitted a report to the UN sanctions committee21. To

complicate matters further, some have been sent late impeding the UN’s ability to

analyze them22, and in the case of countries like China, the reports are notably

vague23. China is consistently referred to as a major hindrance to North Korean

sanctions; as North Korea’s primary trading partner, they have veto power in the UN

security council and thus have rejected harsh sanctions proposals from the US and

Japan, and perhaps most importantly, have largely ignored the sanctions they are

expected to follow by the UN24. The UN leaves the administration of sanctions to

each individual country, and lacks the mechanisms to reprimand those states that

do not comply. Without a coercive element, sanctions resolutions passed by the UN

have received lopsided implementation, with countries that do not implement

undermining those that do. Additionally, there is a wide variation in the qualities of

the sanctions amongst countries that have chosen to implement as the resolution’s

21 Forbes. 2015. The Unbearable Lightness Of UN Sanctions On North Korea.

[ONLINE] Available
at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/claudiarosett/2015/10/30/the-unbearable-
lightness-of-un-sanctions-on-north-korea/#77e598c43a9b. [Accessed 13 December
2017].
22 Government Accountability Office. (2015). NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS United

States Has Increased Flexibility to Impose Sanctions, but United Nations Is Impeded
by a Lack of Member State Reports (GAO-15-485). Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, p. 30.
23 Noland, M, 2008. The (Non) Impact of UN Sanctions on North Korea. Peterson

Institute for International Economics., p. 4.

24 Noland, M, 2008. The (Non) Impact of UN Sanctions on North Korea. Peterson

Institute for International Economics., p. 2 -3.

 15

ambiguity leaves room for interpretation. For example, Resolution 1718 bans the

export of “luxury goods” to North Korea, but does not define what constitutes a

“luxury good,” leaving countries to their own interpretations of the statute.

While these issues have not been overcome, the UN has been making steps to

do so: “the committee has developed and issued a checklist template that helps

member states indicate the measures, procedures, legislation, and regulations or

policies that have been adopted to address various UNSCR measures relevant to

member states’ national implementation reports25.”

5. Evaluation

Much like the decision making stage of the process, “Evaluation” as a stage

seems redundant at first glance, as evaluation is present throughout the entire

policy cycle (consider how the section above contained the evaluation of

implementation). This section, however, will focus on one particular aspect of

evaluation: the evaluation of the implemented policy against its outcomes and

outputs, as well as analyzing who does this evaluation.

There are two types of evaluation: ex-ante (evaluation of a policy before its

implementation) and ex-poste (evaluation after the policy has been implemented on

its performance relative to initial goals). North Korean sanctions have been subject

to both approaches: before the President makes a decision on a response to North

Korean military tests, his cabinet advises him on the costs and benefits of multiple

25 Government Accountability Office. (2015). NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS United

States Has Increased Flexibility to Impose Sanctions, but United Nations Is Impeded
by a Lack of Member State Reports (GAO-15-485). Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, p. 29.
 16

policy options, and in choosing to implement sanctions, agencies such as The Office

of Economic Sanctions Policy and Implementation provide guidance to other

executive departments on how to implement the policy (an ex-ante evaluation).

Since sanctions have been implemented in 2006, there has been a significant

breadth of ex-poste evaluation on the policy.

Congress plays a significant role in the government evaluation of the policy:

under House Resolution 757, the President is required to “periodically brief”

Congress on the implementation of UN sanctions, and how the executive branch

plans to nudge other UN members to “improve” their implementations as well26. In

addition, Congress has held hearings on sanctions evaluations: in September of

2017, the Senate Banking Committee held a public session titled “Evaluating

Sanctions Enforcement and Policy Options on North Korea: Administration

Perspectives”, while the legislative branches’ Government Accountability Office has

released reports on the matter as well. In that same September 2017 session,

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) summarized the responsibilities of Congress in the

evaluation process: “What role should Congress play? Among other things, we must

require the administration to set clear policy goals, and then measure whether

China and others are making progress to curtail sanctions violations, signaling that

we’re determined to press tough sanctions enforcement. We should assess whether

there are additional sanctions needed to help enforce those already in place…27”

26 North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016.
27 Brown, Sherrod. Evaluating Sanctions Enforcement and Policy Options on North

Korea: Administration Perspectives. 116th Congress. 21 Sept. 2017, Washington D.C.

 17

While the goal of sanctions is accepted to be an end to North Korea’s

prohibited activities by choking the nation financially and making nuclear

development impractical, there are other target measurements that are looked at to

evaluate the efficacy of sanctions. The UN’s Panel of Experts is responsible for

monitoring the implementation of sanctions against the DPRK, and the think tank 38

North found in its annual report from 2017 that the policy was failing: “The

reappearance of familiar names in 2016 is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it

means that the sanctions regime’s design28 and implementation is failing to create a

wide and enduring disruption effect on North Korea’s illicit activity overseas….

Second, it means that the North Korean actors in the Panel’s previous proliferation-

focused investigations also engage in more recently sanctioned activities, such as

trade in minerals…In short, the report shows the sanctions regime to be a blunt

instrument that few countries have so far been willing to use29.”

6. Evidence Based Policy Making

The sixth and final stage of the policy cycle follows closely from the fifth: the

use of evidence in policy making. Evidence is difficult to both accumulate and use in

the case of North Korea, because both the US and the DPRK insulate their

information from the general public. As discussed in the decision making stage, the

28 “sanctions regime’s design” in this context meaning the reach and organization of

the sanctions, not to be confused with the regime of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
29 Berger, A., 2017. A Familiar Story: The New UN Report on North Korean Sanctions

Implementation | 38 North: Informed Analysis of North Korea. 38 North. Available

at: http://www.38north.org/2017/03/aberger031617/ [Accessed December 15,
2017].

 18

sensitivity of foreign intelligence keeps evidence that the government accumulates

out of public sight, while North Korea’s infamy for secrecy means that the

information that the international public receives from the nation largely comes

from state-run media. This provides a problem in the decision-making and

implementation stages of the policy:

“…officials said that gathering information on the activities of North Korean

persons and personal identifying information can be difficult because of the

nature of North Korean society, whose citizens are tightly controlled by the

government. Without sufficient information, the United States could

mistakenly designate and therefore block the assets of the wrong person,

particularly one with a common surname.30”

As previously mentioned, the lack of implementation reports to the UN has also

impeded evidence-based policy making at the UN and in the US. However, the US

government still relies on evidence to justify its use of sanctions, and also to target

individuals for them31.

There are still ways in which the efficacy of sanctions can be measured,

however: as sanctions seek to influence the DPRK’s activity by strangling their

financial resources to make nuclear development unsustainable, the effects of

sanctions on these ties is a focus for both the government and researchers. The

30 Government Accountability Office. (2015). NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS United

States Has Increased Flexibility to Impose Sanctions, but United Nations Is Impeded
by a Lack of Member State Reports (GAO-15-485). Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, p. 14.
31 Government Accountability Office. (2015). NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS United

States Has Increased Flexibility to Impose Sanctions, but United Nations Is Impeded
by a Lack of Member State Reports (GAO-15-485). Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, p. 15.
 19

evidence used is typically taken in broad strokes: what the North Korean economy is

dependent on, what imports come from where and in what quantities, and how their

economy could be strained based on that data. In addition, experts and government

figures also look to previous instances of sanctions use against South Africa and

India that were successful in deterring their military behaviors32. These

measurements are largely agreed upon, but different conclusions are reached on

whether the sanctions are sufficient given different standards for how quickly one

feels the DPRK needs to bow down, and how to predict Kim Jong Un’s potential

responses in the event of economic strain.

In September 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a press

conference at the UN that he believed sanctions were finally taking a toll on the

DPRK in a way that could influence their behavior: “…there are indications that

there are shortages, of fuel in particular, and I think we will see latent evidence of

the impact of the other sanctions that have been put in place33.” That same month,

however, Adam Szubin of John Hopkins argued that current sanctions were

insufficient:

“Most experts assess – and I agree – that a quantitative increase in sanctions

pressure will be insufficient in changing Un’s calculus… The only hope we

have lies in a qualitatively different and more severe level of pressure, one

32 Leslie Young. 2017. Sanctions alone won’t change North Korea’s behaviour, say

experts. [ONLINE] Available at: https://globalnews.ca/news/3758653/north-korea-

un-sanctions-effective/. [Accessed 9 November 2017].
33 The Atlantic. 2017. Trump Turns the Screws on North Korea. [ONLINE] Available

at: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/trump-north-
korea/540564/. [Accessed 16 December 2017].

 20

that threatens Kim Jong Un’s hold on power…But if Kim Jong Un will face the

collapse of his leadership before he relinquishes his nuclear program, then

we need to see his leadership end, whether through a military coup or other

means. And severe multilateral sanctions pressure is a route to that end…

despite some good developments over the last few months, including a

strong UN Security Council sanctions resolution, I do not believe that the

pressure is mounting at nearly a sufficient rate34.”

While there are barriers that prevent evidence from being used

comprehensively and in an unrestricted manner, both policymakers and non-

government experts help to play a role in evaluating the policy, and can come to

different conclusions based on what is at stake. As a member of the Trump

administration, Tillerson is more obligated to defend the President’s policies,

whereas an academic like Szubin is not.

Conclusion

In taking North Korean sanctions through the policy cycle, a few points of

conclusion arise: overall, the policy cycle is helpful in untangling how a chaotic and

interwoven process operates. While the stages get a bit fuzzy between the lines,

especially between implementation and evaluation, it helps to highlight some of the

key aspects of the policy making process, for instance agenda setting in emphasizing

missile tests as key events for accelerating the process.

34 Szubin, Adam. Evaluating Sanctions Enforcement and Policy Options on North

Korea: Administration Perspectives. 116th Congress. 21 Sept. 2017, Washington D.C.

 21

In a more critical light, the cycle struggles to untangle the connection

between the US and the UN. As they both operate simultaneously independently and

dependently, with each having their own series of processes but relying on each

other to function, they have to be put through the cycle together, which creates

difficulty in evaluating the process succinctly. As the tools in each stage of the

process are mainly used for domestic policies, more work needs to be done on

bringing foreign policies into the fold in order to improve the cycle so that it can

include this field as well.

This opens up a criticism that is necessary to dispel: perhaps these sanctions

do not constitute a public policy, which would explain the shortcomings of a public

policy model to explain its features. However, I would push back on this by saying

that these sanctions affect the public interest, by limiting how citizens are able to

interact with the DPRK through economic restrictions, in an attempt to establish

national security for American citizens. There is an effect on the public, be it

American, Korean, or other.

The policy cycle holds value in its capacity as an analytical tool, but its

applications seem to be more domestic-oriented than international, where the

definitions of the problem shift, multiple agendas are present, decisions are made at

multiple levels, and there are numerous bodies that have to implement the policy.

While I can’t prescribe a solution for all of these issues, they don’t need to be solved

right away, as the policy cycle has and will continue to endure.

 22

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