The Korean Peninsula’s leaders are having one of their own periodic rounds of extremism, this time marked by the May 23 suicide of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il’s string of conventional and nuclear tests.
The North Korean bomb, estimated at four kilotons, hardly comes anywhere near the magnitude of the atomic bombs of 15 to 21 kilotons that America dropped on Japan 64 years ago. Indeed, this vainglorious attempt by Mr Jong-il reminds Koreans of the mother bullfrog in Aesop’s Fables who puffed herself out to imitate an ox.
Nevertheless North Korea’s world-defying belligerency is barely utter madness. Rather, it is a by-product of its own acute fears of regime collapse. Where in the world can you find a more isolated, regimented and militarised dynastic mutation of a communist totalitarian system than in North Korea? Where on earth can you see a nuclear-armed, missile-shooting panhandler such as Mr Jong-il? Is there another country where only a father and his son have ruled like demigods for the last 61 years?
And, where else but in South Korea can you find a Christian church whose registered membership runs upwards of 800,000, and where nearly 100,000 adherents attend each of the three Sunday services every week? Where else can you witness a former president commit suicide by jumping off a cliff near his home? And these in a country that had an estimated per capita income of $40 in the 1940s but has now become the world’s 12th or 13th largest economy.
Some anthropologists have attributed Korean extremism to the peninsula’s weather. Some think that Korean extremism stems from the country’s geography and history. Surrounded by hostile neighbours, such as Chinese, Mongols, and Manchus in the north and Japanese across the sea, Koreans have struggled tooth and nail for thousands of years to retain their ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political identity.
Setting the blame game aside, what can be done with Pyongyang? Alas, putting the nuke genie back in the bottle is next to impossible. The effectiveness of available options is limited, and all of them are pregnant with unpredictable political and military consequences.
The North’s economic strangulation seems to be the fallback option – think of counterfeit 100 American dollar bills after the latter’s financial sanctions were lifted against the former in 2007, with part of the forged “supernotes” being smuggled into the South. Strengthening and tightening United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718, crafted in the wake of the maiden nuclear test in October 2006, should be the immediate task. The Security Council is already at work drafting a fresh resolution. But, to make the new resolution effective, Beijing’s full and unwavering participation -- which has not yet been the case -- is critical.
And, even if new sanctions are imposed, the door to the six-party talks must be left open for Mr Jong-il – or the “Dear Leader”, as he is commonly called. At present, public opinion worldwide, particularly in South Korea and Japan, is highly volatile. A cooling-off period is necessary. Seeking dialogue with Pyongyang immediately after its missile tantrum and nuclear brinkmanship is unwise and impractical.
After tough and effective UN-led sanctions are imposed, the concerned parties must wait until Pyongyang feels the pinch of the economic squeeze. But, as the North is one of the world’s poorest and least globalised states, the effectiveness of sanctions will be limited.
At the same time, the nuclear threat is hardly the clearest, most immediate danger. The bigger threat today is actual combat, for, the day after the North’s nuclear test, the South announced its full participation in the American-led Proliferation Strategic Initiative seeking to intercept ships that may be involved in illegally transporting nuclear technology. The North blasted this South decision as a “declaration of war”. So great care and cool heads will be needed in the seas around Korea in the days and weeks to come.
Rising tension on the Korean Peninsula is shattering fast the ray of hope for re-unity that followed 10 years of progress under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments. South President Lee Myung-bak, through his flip-flops, and Mr Jong-il, with his renewed nuclear blackmail, both seem determined to see relations deteriorate.
Worsening inter-Korean relations will certainly make both sides less secure and stable politically, economically, and militarily. Caught in this vicious spiral, the North and the South will become far more vulnerable to neighbouring powers’ strategic maneuvres. As a result, growing inter-Korean hostility could ultimately prove far more lethal to the well-being of all Koreans than Mr Moo-hyun’s tragic suicide and Mr Jong-il’s futile fireworks.
And much of all those fireworks appear to work wonders for the Stalinist state’s survival too. Since 1998 when Mr Jong Il finally took over the official mantle of his father, Kim Il Sung, four years after the death of the senior Kim, the North has been a popular subject of mockery for many local watchers. Now in the face of weakening health of the 67-year-old dictator, speculation is rife that his third son, Kim Jong Un, has been anointed as the latest heir to the dynasty.
The South equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency in America has touched off a flurry of news reports on the succession issue this week. On June 1 Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers that Pyongyang had told its embassies abroad to pledge their loyalty to the youngest of Kim’s three sons. Mr Jong Un is still in his mid-20s and he needs to build up a lot of credit before he emerges as a leader in the reclusive state.
Intelligence officials in Seoul have said Mr Jong Un, educated in Switzerland, appears to be the most capable of Kim’s three sons. The North watchers also took his reported appointment to the powerful National Defence Commission this year as a possible signal that he was being groomed as a future leader. The commission is the North’s most powerful government body headed by Mr Jong Il himself.
The Seoul’s stance is that it can hardly confirm the North has chosen Mr Jong Un as the political heir to his father. But the consensus among Pyongyang’s specialists, including many researchers at government-funded think tanks in Seoul, is that the North’s recent saber-rattling is somehow connected to the succession subject.
By creating an external crisis, Pyongyang wants its own public to rally around the military, which is the power base of the Dear Leader. If the crisis is successfully solved, the credit could go to the heir and help build up his reputation. Some analysts say Mr Jong Il wants his heir to inherit nuclear weapons and long-range missiles as the strongest defence.
Such speculations reveal recent military posturing by the North. And if the North is determined to build up a case justifying the ruling family’s dynasty before the ailing leader gets incapacitated (Mr Jong Il suffered a stroke last summer), then the world will have to be prepared to cope with growing tension with the communist country.
Pyongyang’s obsession to achieve political stability through military maneuvering sets the stage for the rollback of any economic liberalisation the Stalinist state might have been playing with. With hard-line army generals gaining greater influence, bureaucrats supporting experiments with elements of a market economy must be feeling that they need to keep their heads down.
Little wonder a pilot project of inter-Korean economic cooperation at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, just north of the border between the two Koreas, has run into all sorts of problems. A few weeks ago, the North military warned the South that some 100 southern businesses operating at the complex should prepare to quit the project unless the South is willing to respect new terms and rules the North is setting.
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