North Korea: opportunity amid threat
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By Bernard Rowan
For the people of South Korea, North Korea is many things: a sister/brother nation divided by the constructions of history and politics, a land of family members separated by ideology and conflict, a country of hundreds of thousands of potential refugees, a nation with a military that threatens peace and stability and a society with starved and jailed citizens away from the cinema of spirited military and civilian parades and spectacles.
North Korea has resumed its periodic flight all-over the radar as a presumptive Lilliputian to the world’s Gullivers, tiresomely working to drain attention from regional and international corners, tirelessly dangling the sticks of its outrage and determination like a petulant brat. Of late, the Kim government has mounted its own version of a 21st century charm initiative, using the new Dear Leader, his wife, Dennis Rodman and who or what knows what else to keep media attention on the North.
Democratic nations separate governments from the people for purposes of imagining and pursuing peace and progress. I am sure that many have long since grown tired of North Korea’s government. I cannot think of a ruling party in the world that deserves more opprobrium. Kim Jong-un’s regime is akin to a blood-sucking mosquito with anorexia. Its metabolism lacks self-correction mechanisms.
How should South Korea conceptualize present relations with the North, this along with predictions of a post-presidential election “show” by the North of some military sort? While the North’s apparent military and political irrationality is limited in its potential for action, there is need for continued vigilance and preparation.
South Korea and its allies should also look beyond the present to the deeper vector of North Korean failure and its portents. This is because North Korea presents an opportunity amidst its threat. At the end of the day, even if that day takes a good part of this century, the North’s regime in its current form is going to pass away. No amount of fealty to the Chinese or overtures to global challengers will enable the Kim government to shore up the failures of the North’s economy, society, and constitution.
A policy of deterrence and preparation is required. Responding to offensive potential with deterrent threats and responding directly and appropriately to military attacks are the cornerstones of prudence in this regard. It is highly unlikely that even the most arrogant, deluded, or stupid North Korean planners can mistake the futility of an attack on the South in any form but as a renegade action. (The North has even lost its window for toleration in that regard.) I hope the North realizes that such acts of misadventure could bring its ruin. The South and her allies should continue to understand that the North likes brinksmanship.
It may become the case that an arms buildup in some form will occur near term. If the international community premises stability on the avoidance of threat initiation, and in the absence of assured international means of preventing WMD proliferation without risk of intolerable damage, an arms spike may not be avoidable.
That said, the other side of advancement with respect to the North is harder to stomach but more important to digest. It is not equivalent to sending grain, promoting family visits and the necessary efforts to keep or re-open diplomatic channels and communications building.
Since the Korean Peninsula should not become another humanitarian disaster when the North’s sunset transpires, we should anticipate that fortuity by preparing for it in the present and coming decades, patiently and carefully. The South and its allies must continue to monitor and update plans for the day after the day the North fails. There should be much more attention to coordinating with China the management of humanitarian aid and refugee policies. The United States should commit to providing complete support for the transition.
South Korea also should lead by continuing to call forward a regional alliance of Asian nations for peace, and assuming the leadership role in its development. This alliance should be based upon identifying regional opportunities for cooperation and mitigating threats, such as maritime conflicts and the North Korean situation. It could replicate or utilize ASEAN or the East Asian Summit, but it might evolve as a distinct regional structure. Along the way, this initiative can harmonize with and extend synergies to the South’s ongoing economic and other trajectories.
I am tired of North Korea’s fatalism. But we cannot flag in our attention to the permanent needs of the North Korean people, which transcend the Kim regime and the North Korean party state, because those interests are also the interests of the South, its allies and the world.
Bernard Rowan is director of assessment and program quality, professor of political science and coordinator of international studies at Chicago State University, where he has taught for 19 years.