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

For decades, North Korea’s most potent insurance policy has been the threat it poses to Seoul, guaranteeing that any US move against Kim Jong-un’s regime would first exact an unbearable toll on the South.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.Such a formulation reflects US President Donald Trump’s long-held stance that allies should shoulder more of their own defence burden. But for Pyongyang, analysts say it reads more like a strategic windfall.The North will take the South hostage to ward off the risk of the United States mounting attacks“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.