Driving forces behind North Korea’s proliferation and sanction resistance: Focusing on the internal attributes of actors within the proliferation network

This study challenges prevailing supply-side perspectives on sanctions by explaining why North Korea continues nuclear and missile development under extensive external pressure. Security and regime-survival concerns provide the baseline motivation, while resistance-oriented strategic culture shapes the meaning and legitimation of nuclear status. Political-economic and governing institutions protect priority resources, distribute prolonged costs, and incorporate controlled market activity into sanctions management. Observable strategic performance can reinforce prior commitment when official discourse converts programmatic achievements into evidence of national capability and leadership credibility. External enabling operates at two scales: China and, increasingly, Russia shape the principal structural channels of material resilience, whereas Iran and Syria illuminate selected transregional proliferation relationships. In those relationships, resistance-based solidarity conditionally amplifies strategic and material interests by raising tolerance for enforcement risk and supporting the restoration of disrupted channels. Sanctions costs are therefore interpreted, distributed, legitimated, and partially circumvented rather than transmitted directly into policy change. Sanctions are more likely to create bargaining leverage when targeted constraints are paired with clear objectives, differentiated pressure on enabling channels, and credible diplomatic engagement.