North Korea’s hostage strategy packs more bite in US shake-up post-Iran

Now, a new Pentagon blueprint may have just offered that survival strategy Washington’s seal of approval.

The new National Defence Strategy, presented to a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, calls on Seoul to take “primary” responsibility for deterring North Korea, with “critical but more limited” US support.

“The North will take the South hostage to ward off the risk of the United States mounting attacks to remove its leadership, as it did in Iran and Venezuela,” said political analyst Oh Gyeong-seob, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

If Seoul, not Washington, is the primary line of defence, then Seoul is also the primary target of any retaliation. That asymmetry has always been central to Pyongyang’s deterrence logic. Analysts say this new US strategy does nothing to weaken it.