Professor Ha Young-sun
Seoul National University |
By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ― It's time for North Korea to really think about joining the international community by implementing economic reforms and starting to network with various international actors. Countries should help in the process. But ultimately it is the North Korean leadership that has to make the bold Copernican step, said a prominent South Korean political strategist.
"I have this omen that North Korea may have only one last chance to turn the table around," said Ha Young-sun, a professor of international relations at the nation's top Seoul National University, in an interview with The Korea Times.
"After the current global economic crisis is over, there will come a change in the global order. If North Korea is not prepared to deal with it with a wise strategy, it may end up suffering more than it did during its 10-year famine period in the 1990s," Ha said.
As an academic, Ha is less sensitive to the day-to-day North Korean intelligence. He is more interested in looking at the big picture of where North Korea is heading in a constantly unfolding global transformation in the coming decades.
"We'll be living in a world where it is increasingly obvious that a country cannot do it all. It has to network with others," Ha said, urging the North Korean leadership to make the courageous and bold decision of dropping its military-first policy and replacing it with an economy-first policy so that it can become a viable economy, well-networked with the rest of the world.
"Networking" is a buzz word in Ha's blueprint for the future. "There will be a very strong global consensus for the networked world. No country will then choose a military-first policy. No country will choose a self-reliance policy. That will be a very strong theme in the changed world. With a military-first ticket, North Korea will not be allowed to join the global club. That's not a valid ticket anymore," Ha said.
Since Obama became the U.S. president, he has distanced himself from the Bush-era unilateralism and has been working hard to network with the rest of the world, including the Arab and African communities. The situation is similar in Japan. Its new Hatoyama administration has been experimenting with forming a "community" with the other Asian nations ― a very unusual move for Japan.
"Even big powers are talking about networking and a multi-polar world. As a small country, North Korea will have even more difficulty if it pursues a policy of self-reliance," Ha said.
On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department officially announced that it would send President Obama's point man on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang for bilateral talks. However, the long-overdue announcement didn't state when that visit would be made, leaving room for ambiguity.
The Obama administration has been implementing the so-called "two-track" approach on North Korea, which is designed to maintain pressure on Pyongyang but also leave the door open for negotiation. Washington wants Pyongyang to first firmly commit to denuclearization, while Pyongyang wants Washington first to lift its "hostile" policy by signing a peace treaty. Neither side has budged.
"Each side has its rationale on why the other side should move first. But from my first perspective, the North Korean logic is relatively weak. If North Korea decides to denuclearize, then the rest of the chainsaws will start rolling out," Ha said.
"North Korea may not be too pleased with the U.S. offer of giving a package of incentives that is conditional on giving up its nuclear programs first. But if it doesn't change first, the chance of getting the package itself may evaporate," he said, predicting that the U.S. won't be enthusiastic to reach out to North Korea forever.
However, for North Korea, disarming would be uncharted territory. North Korea is reportedly going through a very critical period of power transition, which makes the government all the more conservative and resistant to changes.
But for Ha, this time is actually an opportunity. "It was during the power transition from Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping when China sowed the seed for economic reforms. It was when Gorbachev showed up in Russia that the nation began to change," Ha said.
North Korea has had little experience of networking with the global community at large. Telling it to network will make it nervous and apprehensive. "The role of China is particularly important here," Ha said. "China as the closest ally to North Korea can reason with North Korea. China can tell North Korea: 'Networking looks like the standards for the 21st century. That may work better. Why don't you give it a try?'"
But then again, North Korea, analysts point out, has a fear of a possible pre-emptive attack by the U.S. if it relinquishes its military-fist policy.
"But that's what Deng Xiaoping did in 1978. At that time of the Cold War, China must have considered a possible clash with the United States and would have spent the money on enhancing its arsenals. But the leadership concluded that what it needed most was to develop its economy," Ha said.
South Korea has a similar story to tell as well. The former President Park Chung-hee, who himself was from the military, made a "counter-intuitive decision" to focus on building the nation's economy in the 1970s when at that time the North Korean military forces easily outstripped that of the South Korea. "President Park realized that if South Korea pushed forward a military-first policy, the country would not be able to economically survive," Ha said.
"The North Korean leadership should also make a decisive step to embrace the economy-first policy."
sunny.lee@koreatimes.co.kr
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