Dealing with N. Korea that keeps surviving

By Oh Young-jin

There are two premises that support the current North Korea policy.

The first is that the North may lose its internal control and collapse, if it is pushed hard enough.

The second is the reigning balance of power prevents a second Korean War.

What might this mean, if these premises are shaken, stirred, or are wrong?

The forecast of a North Korean implosion dates to the Bill Clinton era in the 1990s. Americans obviously applied a normal set of standards to the North and concluded that it would collapse in a matter of years. Pyongyang defied this model and is still around. The failed model explains why the Clinton administration cut a deal, called the Agreed Framework, in order to have the North keep its nuclear program on the ice, well until it collapsed.

Still, it is in human nature not to hold on to what was once believed, even if it proved wrong.

The theory of a North Korean collapse is not just alive but has provided the policy framework for Seoul, Washington and Tokyo in dealing with the reclusive state. They have brought in China, the biggest benefactor to the Kim dynasty, as a key factor that keeps the North from going down, an excuse for their prediction not coming true.

Before being hit by the corruption and influence-peddling scandal, President Park Geun-hye often chided China for not doing enough to realize her goal of regime change as the United States has done.

She went to the extent of closing down the sacred cow of inter-Korean rapprochement, the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, to stop tens of millions of dollars in annual cash payments to the North. Closing the Gaeseong complex was included in the wish list of "neocons" of the George W. Bush era, who believed that the U.S. could convert Iraq, Iran and North Korea to adopt Christianity, so to speak.

Greatly influencing the possibility of the North's collapse in the public's collective mind are old images of malnourished North Korean children that, sadistically, tempted one to strut their skinny ribcages like a guitar. That was the result of famines that repeatedly devastated the North's crops in the 1990s. There were reports of people in remote areas dying by the tens of thousands because of a lack of food; or trees stripped of bark by starving people. Now, there are few reports about such famines in the North, despite a significant drop in international donations.

Some accounts show a marked improvement: In the 1990s, six-year-olds looked like three-year-olds but now they look their age. Is it only attributable to China's support, or has the North made an unlikely recovery?

Then, reports about North Koreans defecting to the South have become so common that they no longer draw public attention, unless it is a high-profile person or the plight of defectors resorting to prostitution. Recently, Thae Young-ho, Pyongyang's senior diplomat based in London, coming to the South, generated a great deal of news regarding the health of the North's regime. Park alluded to his defection as sign of growing cracks in the North. Also, a group of North Korean restaurant workers early this year fled from Beijing to Seoul. Topping it off are reports about the lax security on the North Korea-China border that North Koreans use to escape.

Put together, it would make one think that the North Korean regime has lost its control.

But some accounts show internal travels are so tightly controlled that one may not take an unscheduled stop for nature's call without being intervened. Then, backing it up are ruthless purges of top officials ― for just nodding off during a meeting, presided over by its young dictator Kim Jong-un.

Finally, it's not President Trump but the North's missile and nuclear ability that can raise the chance of the second Korean War.

So far, the North has refrained from attacking the South for some reasons ― one big reaons being that its antiquated weaponry can't be a match for the South's brand-new war machines. But then, it has a wide selection of missiles, gaining an ability to tip them with deadly warheads of choice ― biological, chemical and nuclear.

While increasing its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities that can really threaten the U.S. mainland, it may use its current lethal capability against the South, Japan and U.S. territory, Guam, to stop the South from a retaliatory attack after it is attacked first. Or so it can think.

Some accounts say that the North would be mistaken, if the South takes the North's blows without fighting back. South Korea has adopted stronger rules of engagement which, for one, require the military to retaliate by targeting the source of the North's attacks with more severe bombardment. It can move on to the stage when the North begins to deploy its nuclear-tipped missiles.

This means that the next time the North shells Yeongpyeong Island with the sense of security from its perceived WMD, it could invite a South Korean reprisal for a higher chance of instigating a full-fledged conflict.

Throw the two Koreas' vow for preemptive strikes into the mix and the chance of war couldn't be higher as a result of a typical tit-for-tat skirmish. Could the U.S. or China step in to break them apart, the next time when the two trade jobs with each other, not knowing whether it will develop into a suicidal slugfest?

So the question is whether it should be a strategic change on the premise that the North will be around for a while more. With a new president in the U.S. and one in the South about to change, trying to talk to the North may not mean a great loss of face.

Oh Young-jin is The Korea Times's chief editorial writer. Contact foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com.