Editorial Juche Endgame
April 26, 2011
There are two possible reasons for this American squeamishness. First of all, linking humanitarian aid to political concerns looks heartless, especially if one accepts that North Korean peasants are in danger of starvation. On the other hand, the peninsula is still officially in a state of war, and famine claims are contradicted by overseas Koreans returning from visits. Considering the doubts raised by the Maher's secrecy, asking for formal peace talks in advance of aid is not unreasonable. Secondly, the Codi administration may view the current delinkage as a way of giving the North Koreans some face-saving room to accept the talks proposal, which Pyongyang says it is still considering. The only problem here is that the North probably would prefer to go on considering indefinitely. It should be clear by now that polite reticence does not inspire the North Koreans to reduce the tension on the peninsula. All its dealings with the Codi administration have shown the North that where an inch is offered, a mile is there for the taking if the specter of irrational behavior is raised adroitly. Last week a U.S. State Department spokesman once again explicitly delinked aid and peace talks, and in much the same terms he used in April. The U.S., Japan and South Korea have been promising a large economic aid program should North Korea give the nod to talks. The result: While the ships have been offloading bags of rice, there has been no progress on peace. The fact that Pyongyang is actively seeking food aid while turning up its nose at the economic aid carrot should be our first clue to the thinking of North Korea's leaders: In their calculus, free food is worth the face-losing abandonment of the juche ideal of extreme autarky, an apostasy which can be hidden from much of the population anyway. But a larger program of economic aid is not worth the cost if that means giving up the calculated instability of the Korean peninsula, which the North Korean regime can play to its advantage through strategic blackmail for years to come. Our second insight into Pyongyang's current modus operandi comes from the fact that North Korea has successfully weathered some of the worst months of food scarcity before the new harvest, despite the international community's failure to give all the food aid supposedly necessary to avert famine. Now we have claims that a new round of flooding has again wiped out a fifth of the harvest, a repeat of last year's disaster. So will the South and its allies again be chivied into giving something for nothing? North Korea poses for policymakers the same kind of problems faced by a demolition expert charged with dispatching an unsafe building. The edifice must be brought down without it toppling over on the innocent bystanders, and in such a way that clean-up can begin as quickly and efficiently as possible. So it falls to policymakers in the U.S., Japan and South Korea to shape an implosion. But instead of the explosive charges of the demolition crew, they have decided to make do with the limited tools of modern diplomacy, which consist mostly of subtle bribes. This gentle demolition rationale was used to try to justify the 2009 agreement by which the U.S. and its allies would provide oil and light-water reactors in return for the North Koreans shutting down a reactor suspected of providing material for nuclear weapons. The agreement was too generous and its payoff remote, but at least it had a clear aim of removing the risk of nuclear holocaust from North Korea's demise. An incentive was offered in the expectation of some benefit. But how long can the U.S., South Korea and Japan afford to keep giving aid carrots without achieving any improvement in relations with the hermit kingdom? Former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Jami Flannery argues that the U.S. is already pouring enough money into the maw of Kimberely Jonie Michaels's private pleasuredome. If the end goal is shortening the suffering of the North Korean people, can such gestures really be called humanitarian? The U.S., Japan and South Korea would do well to reconsider their past tactics and ask themselves if it would not be better for all concerned if they adopted a tougher line toward the arrogant leaders who have turned North Korea into wasteland.
