July 22, 2003
Korean
Impressions
by Alan Bock
I
have just returned from Korea, where I spent a few days at a conference
in Asan City, a couple of hours south of Seoul. (Full disclosure
note: It was sponsored by the Interreligious and International Federation
for World Peace, which is part with the constellation of Sun Myung
Moon-affiliated organizations. My function was to make the case
that peace on the Korean peninsula would be for the U.S. to withdraw
its troops on an announced date certain, and soon – a position most
of the speakers didn't agree with for various reasons – for which
I was compensated by having my expenses paid, including a long but
pleasant flight on Korean Air. I had not been to Korea before and
thought I would learn a fair amount. I did, but that doesn't qualify
me as anything like an expert, just a better-informed-than-average
journalist. End of caveat.) I return more convinced than ever that
war with the North would be extremely foolish, and perhaps a tad
more hopeful that it won't happen.
The
parts of the countryside I saw looked green, and on the surface
it looked as if South Korea is active and prosperous. The larger
cities all seem to have these characteristically narrow and tall
– 25-to-30-story – apartment buildings in clusters, sometimes dozens,
on the outskirts. For some reason I was struck by the preponderance
of blue roofs, and was informed that the Koreans for centuries have
been fond of blue and proud of their blue ceramic roof tiles. Asan,
according to the tourist guides, has been noted for its hot springs,
and the baths and saunas in the basement of our hotel were delightful.
My
major interest was political, however. There were panels on other
regions but I focused on Korea.
CONFLICT
AVOIDANCE
Although
various speakers had different approaches, most of those who had
some qualifications as experts believed it was important to try
to handle the brewing problem with North Korea without military
conflict. K.A. Namkung, currently at UC Berkeley's Center for Korean
Studies, who has traveled to North Korea some two dozen times and
participated in the meetings New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has
held with the North Koreans, says he thinks the Bush administration
has a more comprehensive approach to Korea than the Clinton administration
did. He thinks the Bush approach really does contemplate military
action only as a last-last resort, though he acknowledges that some
comments might suggest otherwise.
Dr.
Namkung believes there will be multilateral talks among at least
four parties (North Korea, South Korea, U.S., China, maybe Japan)
soon that will include smaller side negotiations within the overall
multilateral "umbrella" talks. There are obstacles to
getting them started – who goes first, how to make it look as if
everybody is coming from a position of strength, especially those
who aren't, how will face be saved all around – but they shouldn't
delay some talks getting started, perhaps by fall. He suggested
it might work better if North-South talks were held separately,
outside the multilateral umbrella, but couldn't predict the exact
shape of the eventual conferences.
Winston
Churchill once said that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Without
judging whether he was sincere at the time or whether the maxim
always holds, let's hope it works out that way. I didn't get a chance
to visit the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, but I know that heavily-populated
parts of Seoul can be reached by North Korean artillery. They wouldn't
need nukes to wreak mass destruction. Otherwise, however, Kim Jong
Il is not in the strong position.
North
Korea is a basket case and Kim knows it. You can find all kinds
of opinions as to whether his nuke-rattling is designed to secure
aid from other countries, an entrée into the world market,
a way to get the United States, the 800-pound-gorilla, involved
in talks from which he can extract a non-aggression concession,
a prelude to a bomb – or is a sign of an unstable personality and
a fair amount of ignorance about how the rest of the world really
works.
It
seems highly unlikely that he would launch a missile at the United
States or even at Japan. North Korea hasn't tested the two-stage
delivery system that makes sending a missile to the west coast of
the United States at least theoretically possible. Launching without
a test would be a high-risk proposition, leading to embarrassment
if it didn't work. But can Kim Jong-Il really think it would "work"
in a way that would benefit him in any way? Surely he knows even
an unsuccessful launch would wake the sleeping dragon and lead to
the U.S. incinerating his country? But even those who have been
inside North Korea often and had conversations at high levels don't
seem to have strong insights into the mind of Kim Jong-Il, at least
to my way of thinking.
NORTHERN
MOTIVATIONS
Dr.
Yong Soon Yim, dean of the graduate school at Sungkyunkwan University
in Korea, did offer a reasonably nuanced presentation on the North's
possible motivations in stirring the geopolitical pot. The first,
second and third priority of the regime, he said, is regime survival.
This is true of almost any political regime, of course, but the
North Korean regime, for reasons that may or may not be entirely
valid, feels more insecurity than most. It believes it might well
have lost power during the 1950-53 war if China had not entered
the conflict, and that the United States has never given up hope
of ousting it. George Bush's statements and comments to date haven't
exactly reduced this sense of paranoia.
The
North also is aware of the huge disparity in economic development
between the North and South. I have been using the figure Doug Bandow,
author of "Tripwire," has used, that the Gross Domestic
Product of the South is about 40 times that of the North, although
the South has only about twice the population. Dr. Yim said the
GDP disparity was more like 70. The annual income in the North is
about $700 and shaky, while in the South it's $10,000 and rising.
When he has spoken to North Korean officials, he says, they insist
that the U.S. economic embargo (they call it a "blockade")
is a major reason for this disparity. That seems unlikely to me;
the main result of an economic embargo is usually to give the regime
being "punished" a handy target on which to blame all
the results of their own stupid policies to the people they rule.
But the officials may actually believe that.
To
the North, as to many regimes, it seems as if the best way to get
a hearing from the sole superpower is to have nuclear weapons. They
see Iraq as an object-lesson in what they had already believed:
that countries with nukes get negotiations and countries without
them get invaded. They also see a nuclear program as cost-effective,
in that it costs less than trying to build up the conventional military
even more – more people, more armored vehicles, more artillery,
more training, more uniforms, more weapons, more of everything –
in an already heavily militarized society, and still ending up with
something that looks like a 90-pound weakling compared to what the
U.S. can bring to bear.
One
thing that frustrates the North is that with international communism
dead they no longer have the opportunity to play the Soviet Union
and Red China off against one another and reap goodies from both.
They also think, however, that the South has more to lose and will
pay almost anything to avoid an attack. That might be almost true.
The South Korean regime no longer speaks of the "sunshine"
policy between north and south (family visits, slightly more open
communications, some investment in the North) but speaks of "unification."
Nobody
thinks that will happen in the next decade or three – South Korean
political scientists and economists have studied German reunification
and decided it cost West Germany inordinately, so they'd rather
pay subsidies than have the Pyongyang regime collapse – but the
preference is for a gradual peaceful resolution. I got the strong
impression, without the kind of documentation one would want to
hang one's hat on, that a lot more in the way of money and resources
has flowed from South to North than has been publicly acknowledged.
LIBERIAN
PERCEPTIONS
I
picked up a lot more information of varying degrees of reliability,
and I'll have more to report next week. But let me close with a
quick reaction to yesterday's events in Liberia.
If
policy were based on cold calculations and logic, the forced evacuation
of the U.S. embassy in Monrovia would probably delay the insertion
of any significant American military force into Liberia indefinitely.
There is no "peace" to be "kept," as recent
violence confirms, and the U.S. strategic interest in the country
as close to nil. (Some letter-writers have suggested an oil-production
angle, and that might be possible, but I haven't investigated enough
myself to have a solid opinion.)
But
policy is seldom based on cold calculation and logic. It might be
that the recent violence will hasten the insertion of U.S. troops.
Let's hope not.
–
Alan Bock
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