Kim dynasty

Engagement is best policy to thwart anachronism

North Korea officially calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The DPRK will likely have to change its official title to the SKNK (Socialist Kingdom of North Korea) in the near future, as shown by the extraordinary session of its rubberstamp parliament Monday.

The reshuffling of personnel at the abrupt Supreme People's Assembly meeting can be summed up as one purpose: another father-to-son power succession. To this end, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il elevated his brother-in-law to the No. 2 position of the most powerful state agency, and named his own long-time secretary ― or a vassal ― as prime minister. Should one call this a state or family affair?

In the process, the Dear Leader kicked out technocrats whose brief experiment with Chinese-style economic reform ended in a botched currency revamp, reverting to a centrally-planned economy.

Now everything seems to have returned to business as usual in the isolated communist regime, which is waiting for the enthronement of Kim's third son, Jong-un, sooner or later, depending on the health condition of his father. By then, the global villagers will witness the advent of what they have long doubted ― the perfection of the first communist dynasty.

Yet it would be somewhat misleading for some diplomatic watchers, local or foreign, to say the North's nuclear weapons development programs and even the controversial sinking of the South Korean warship, Cheonan, are only for this third-generational transfer of state control. True, North Korea is an anachronistic oddball, but the Pyongyang leadership has told its people that all those steps were necessary to counter the ever constant threat of the United States.

Both the nuclear crisis and naval provocation could then be seen as Pyongyang's ways of upping its stakes in negotiating with Washington. Kim Jong-il, following the pattern of his father, Kim Il-sung, has also used the U.S.-led containment and sanctions for justifying his iron-fisted rule.

All this shows that only a bolder engagement can make Pyongyang let down its guard, as demonstrated by the temporary success of the ``sunshine policy." Conservatives would refute that the North would have atomic bombs by all means, and the South's economic aid over the past decade only helped to finance the North's nuclearization.

True or not, such assertions are forgetting the fact that all things, including countries even like North Korea, are not entirely of their own making but the results of interaction with others. South Korean people haven't seen the full results of the sunshine policy, as it was scuttled, first by the U.S. Republican administration under former President George W. Bush, and later by the incumbent South Korean government.

And the biggest problem with the Lee Myung-bak administration is it has neither been a peacemaker nor a peacekeeper, as the sinking of the Cheonan has evidently shown.

The best way to strip the authoritarian rulers in the North of the opportunity to tighten their grip on the state at the expense of their people's basic rights and welfare is to induce them to open their doors ― with yet more sunshine.