Realistic Approach to North Korea

By Lee Byong-chul

I have always been dubious about a lot of scenarios predicting the collapse of communist North Korea ― not because I didn't believe that they were groundless, but because I didn't believe they would help build peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

Touching upon the possible fall of the Kim Jong-il regime is like giving it a jolt ― it's the kind of thing that gives the dictator and his clan an unacceptable nightmare.

Most recently, North Korea experts and pundits here in Seoul again started raising doubts about the 68-year-old Kim's judgment.

The South Korean government has strongly suggested that it has more information about the Kim regime in Pyongyang than it has made public.

In closed-door discussions, the South Korean spy agency has reportedly hinted that there might have been a coup. The classified assessments, in essence, are a mirror image of the intelligence dispute on the uncertainty of the communist regime.

North Korea suddenly introduced a new currency on Nov. 30, and closed private markets in an effort to restore the dying operation of central economic planning, but it backfired immediately.

Resistance from an unconfirmed number of the people, most of whom had already experienced the taste of capitalism through trade with neighboring China, appeared bigger than outsiders anticipated.

Inevitably, North Korea altered its tightly controlled economic system to allow people to buy and sell goods at less restricted private markets, on the grounds that the introduction of a new currency and the arbitrary confiscation of private wealth eventually angered numerous poverty-stricken people in an unbearable manner.

It's a very rare case to see the regime reverse a linchpin of socialist economic policy without further explanation.

After all, it's the long period of poverty ― widespread across the country ― that could bring down the Kim regime, although the stroke-suffering dictator himself will reportedly redouble his efforts to keep the promise of the late Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, to feed his poor people with ``white rice and meat soup.''

Under Kim Jong-il, North Korea has sharpened its nuclear weapons program and upgraded Kim's unique mode of life toward luxurious cars, expensive French cognac and Russian caviar ― using money to bolster his absolute power instead of leveling up the starving North Korean people's quality of life.

The U.N. imposed sanctions against North Korea, after Kim officially took office in 1995, one year after his father died of a heart attack, because of Pyongyang's refusal to abandon nuclear ambitions.

In contrast to this, the liberal South Korean governments' pro-North Korean policies nullified those sanctions in the name of the ``sunshine'' engagement policy.

The liberal policymakers did not realize that a cardinal truth of the government is that policy without proper leverage is effectively no policy at all.

Yet the conservative Lee Myung-bak government of South Korea will, as many critics of the half-baked sunshine policy claim, magnify those sanctions, since Lee finds it necessary to get tougher with North Korea.

If Lee's principled and transparent policy is favorably accepted by his counterpart Kim, there is a good chance the third inter-Korean summit meeting will soon be held to negotiate on the troubled North Korean nuclear issue.

And the summit would be a highly realistic game, completely different from the two previous ones that ``babysat'' the failed regime in Pyongyang.

North Korea is ripe for deflating and Kim's ``untouchable'' leadership appears to be challenged. North Koreans no longer cheer their Great Leader.

Instead, they call him just ``Jong-il'' in a derisive manner, with no honorable or admirable surname, according to a local newspaper.

It is thus no accident that some of the officials cracking down on the prices of rice and other commodities in the markets were allegedly beaten up or killed by angry residents.

In short, Kim himself has already become what we call a public enemy and his regime has turned out an abject failure. China is the only country that can pull the fragile North Korea back and slow it down.

The Kim regime is like a person whose raft (or sanctions) is floating along the river. He knows the destination where the deep and tough river is pushing him to if he continually hangs on.

So, he is on the verge of deciding whether to get off the raft or to change its direction in order to survive.

Kim needs to know that a promise to end North Korean poverty still forms the cornerstone of the Lee government, although Lee still, in Kim's eyes, seems like a long shot.

There is no doubt that North Korea will exist for a long time, despite the impulses of pundits to play up the disgraceful Kim regime's obituary.

The ill-faced Kim has lost his chance of reviving the shattered economy in many ways. His playbook that focused on a combination of brinkmanship and blackmailing does not work any longer.

It seems to have taken forever, but the heyday of Kim and his cronies is finally coming to an end.

Many national policies are in general premised on the assumption that most people will make rational decisions in calculating and maximizing their self-interest.

But South Korea and the United States should make different and wider approaches to the unpredictable regime in Pyongyang, which constantly demonstrates its tone-deafness to the new reality.

The transition to the denuclearization of North Korea depends on whether Seoul and Washington can find enough realistic leverage to enfold the country's problems into something larger.

All in all, the concerted efforts of the member states ― South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia ― for the stalled six-party talks aimed at the denuclearization of North Korea now need to focus more on the ways to keep the regime survival domestic, since the nuclear issue, albeit vital to Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, is not at the center of Pyongyang's attention.

If ever there was time for a rethinking of the Kim regime, it is now.

Lee Byong-chul is a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation. He can be reached at bcleebc@gmail.com. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the opinions of The Korea Times.