Stella Young Yee Shin
Ethics of Development in a
Global Environment
March 2002
Abstract
Axis of Evil or a
Modern Hermit Kingdom? Understanding
North Korea’s
Evolution of
International Relations, Juche Politics, and Challenges in the 21st
Century
The following report covering the highlights of North Korea’s policies and politics in the modern, international domain is a continuation of an in-depth research that I undertook during the fall quarter of Ethics of Development in a Global Environment (ENGR 297A). My decision to pursue further research on North Korea’s international relations in the past fifty years was spurred on by three factors: one, U.S. President George W. Bush’s recent tour around Far East Asia and his growing concern towards North Korea as a military threat; two, the deepening of my personal interest in the history of my motherland, South Korea; lastly and most importantly, the inspiration and guidance I found from professors and scholars who were willing to share their expertise for my research.
The first part of my research, titled “No Longer
Forgotten: North Korea-South Korea Relations Since the Korean War” (Fall
Quarter) traced the key events that occurred during the war and attempted to
analyze their significances and consequences.
The paper that you are about to proceed to is a sequel of the former in
the sense that it also takes a historiological approach in its
methodology. A majority of the content
is devoted to the explanation of notable events surrounding North Korea from
the end of the Korean War to the present day.
I feel that examining the events that have so profoundly shaped the
history and politics of North Korea is a progressive step towards gaining a
broader, more objective understanding not just of North Korea but of the other
countries that are inextricably linked as well. In addition to the historical milestones, I have also included
the script version of two interviews that essentially make up the “personality”
of my paper—one with Dr. John W. Lewis, Director of Project on Peace and
Cooperation in the Asian-Pacific Region at CISAC, and the other with Dr.
Gi-Wook Shin, who is a professor in the Sociology Department and Senior Fellow
of the Institute of International Studies at Stanford University. Finally, the concluding pages of my research
suggest possible solutions to remedying North Korea’s immediate ails, proposed
by experts in the area such as Erich and Marilyn Weingartner from the Food Aid
Liaison Unit (FALU) of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
Before continuing onto the main body of the paper, I would like to take this time to thank the following individuals for their patience, encouragement, and expert knowledge: Professor Bruce Lusignan, Professor John W. Lewis, Professor Gi-Wook Shin, and Dr. Hae-Myung Byun. I feel honored to have grown under your guidance.
Introduction
“There ain’t no D in the DMZ…”
- A common saying among American GIs on duty in the area
The year of 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War. Although the war officially “ended” on July 27, 1953 with the signing of a cease-fire, it also signaled the beginning of a cold war that has lingered over the Korean peninsula to this very day. Since then, North Korea’s relationship with the United States and South Korea may be best described as a roller coaster ride. From the artificial emergence of the two Koreas to President George W. Bush’s recent denunciation of North Korea as an “axis of evil,” the remote Stalinist regime has experienced both dramatic peaks and trenches in its political relations with foreign countries. It is almost inconceivable to believe that North Korea-South Korea relations have experienced both the brink of reunification and the brink of war in the same decade. Although much hope for a peaceful relationship, if not a reunification, between the two Koreas has been on the international agenda for decades, North Korea remains an unpredictable, caustic existence to many wary countries today. The purpose of this report is to urge the international audience to acknowledge and understand the fact that North Korea has not always been a target for suspicion. In fact, the isolated Northern state is very much misunderstood on many levels, and history has proven that the best approach may not be to further distance its regime with harsh sanctions and condemnations, but to understand and coax it out of its hardened shell with an open mind.
The Demilitarized Zone and Panmunjom
Under the terms of the armistice that halted the Korean War in 1953, all civilian activity is strictly forbidden in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) except for one closely monitored farming village on each side of the border. Due to a densely planted underground garden of deadly land mines, army patrols carefully stick to familiar, well-trodden paths. Although the DMZ presents a serene façade, brimming with rare flora and fauna, it is actually bordered by high fences of barbed wire on the north and south, and guarded on the two sides by more than a thousand guard posts, control towers, and reinforced bunkers straight across the width of the Korean peninsula. On “hair-trigger” alert behind the fortifications are two of the world’s largest aggregations of military force—1.1 million North Koreans facing 660,000 South Koreans and nearly 40,000 Americans, the latter supported by the full military power of the world’s most powerful nation. It is important to note that both sides are heavily armed and ready at a minute’s notice to fight another brutal and devastating war. The former U.S. President Bill Clinton remarked during his 1993 trip to the DMZ that it is “the scariest place on earth”(visual caption, Oberdorfer). At the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the clearing at Panmunjom, the only place along the course of the buffer zone where the barbed wire and mines are absent, hastily-built conference area have been placed squarely atop the line of demarcation. Here, the level of hostility is palpable and obvious. Northern and southern troops glare and shout obscenities at each other outside the conference buildings, and there have even been shoving matches, injuries, and death. However, the Panmunjom has also been an arena of hope: meetings of special emissaries and political leaders, both publicized and secret have taken place, as well as the passage of relief packages to ameliorate the effects of floods and famine. Potential peacemakers and political leaders from the United States and South Korea have also passed the gates. Two years ago, a South Korean filmmaker portrayed the humanistic side of military interactions between North Korean and South Korean soldiers on the DMZ in a record-breaking blockbuster, “Joint Security Area.” The movie is said to have played a landmark role in shifting the South Korean view towards North Korea, from a hostile perspective to a more sympathetic one. The film’s subtle message, that brothers must stop fighting brothers, that the homogeneous Korean race must be reunited one day, is echoed in the sentiments of many Koreans today.
Aftermath of the Korean War: A Brief Introduction of the Two Koreas
Following the cease-fire agreement that halted the Korean War in 1953, the once-homogeneous nation of the Han ancestry officially split into two devastatingly different regimes. One of the most notable consequences of the war was the hardening of ideological and political lines between North and South. The antipathy that had developed between the opposing regimes was deepened into a blood feud among family members, extending from political leaders to the bulk of the ordinary citizens who had suffered at the hands of the other side. In a sense, the thirteen-hundred old legacy and unity of the Hans, the Korean people, was destroyed along with the war.
The South Korean government, led by President Syngman Rhee, a Western-educated elite, grew increasingly dictatorial and corrupt until it was overthrown in 1960 by a student-led coup. After a year, the moderate lame-duck successor government was ousted by a military junta led by Major General Park Chung-Hee, a Japanese-trained officer who had flirted with the communist ideology right after the surrender of Japan. Park’s political background triggered concern from the United States, although it signaled hope in North Korea. Initially, its leader, Kim Il Sung, discretely sent a trusted aide to the South to make secret contact with Park. However, instead of exploring the possibility for peace negotiations, Park had the emissary arrested and executed.
In Pyongyang, Kim Il
Sung, otherwise known as the Great Leader, systematically purged his political
critics and created a highly centralized system that accorded him unlimited
power and a formidable cult of personality, much like the Mao-cult in
China. As the great communist divide
between the Soviet Union and China emerged in the mid-1950s, Kim, though
thoroughly disturbed by it, learned to play off his communist sponsors against
each other to his own advantage. In the
summer of 1961, Kim visited Moscow and persuaded Nikita Khrushchev, who was
seeking to recruit him as an ally against China, to sign a treaty of
cooperation and mutual assistance, pledging to come to Pyongyang’s aid if
another war to strike the peninsula.
After this was done, Kim made his next stop in Beijing, where he
presented Chinese leaders with his Moscow treaty and requested them to match
it, which they did by signing their own practically identical accord.
Although both North Korea and South Korea hinted at the prospects of an eventual reunification, there was little but hostility between them in the 1950s and 1960s. In a notable incident of January 1968, a North Korean commando team attempted to assassinate the then-president of South Korea. The assassins managed to penetrate to within a thousand yards of the Blue House, the South Korean equivalent of the White House, before being captured by police and security forces. Following the incident, the prospects for any sort of reconciliation on the divided peninsula seemed slim indeed.[1]
Political Background of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)
North Korea, officially known as the Chosun-minjuijuui-inmin-konghwaguk, or DPRK, is composed of nine provinces, or dos, under an authoritarian socialist government headed by a one-man dictatorship. Scholar and historian Nicholas Eberstadt remarked in his book, The End of North Korea, that the North Korean regime is a failure with little hope for the future:
As this bloody, brutal century comes to a close, it is apparent that the DPRK—which exemplified so many of the tragic, destructive, and ultimately unworkable political tendencies of our era—is itself a colossal failure. (Eberstadt 3)
Although North Korea’s future is indeed unpredictable, the above description fails to do justice to the initial success that the regime managed to accomplish in its nascent years. Anti-North Korean propaganda has been widespread throughout the years, but it is difficult to come across “an objective, scholarly analysis of the North’s political system”(Kil 272) that acknowledges both the ups and downs of the regime with a dispassionate voice. Few remember that the Northern government actually fared far better than the shaky South Korean structure in the 1960s and 1970s. While South Korea struggled over numerous coups and civilian uprisings against unstable regimes, its Northern neighbor maintained a relatively constant, unified state under Kim Il Sung’s socialist dictatorship in its earlier years, partly because “a harmony of interest existed there among the Kim Il Sung regime, internal forces, and the Soviet Union”(Koo 240). Immediately after gaining power, the Communist Party eliminated landlords, old colonial bureaucrats, and Japanese collaborators, and implemented a nationwide land reform in 1946. By 1948, a strong communist state had been fully established with a stable social base, solid ideological hegemony by the state, and well-developed state organizations like those of the former Soviet Union. According to renowned scholar Bruce Cumings, what gave the North Korean state such remarkable strength and unity was not merely communist ideology and network, but also the ways in which North Korean rulers used nationalism to construct their own distinctive system and garner unconditional loyalty from the people. Under this system, the state and society were “woven together under the nationalistic ideology of Juche”(241).
The term Juche roughly translates into the English
word, “self-reliance.” The very essence
of Juche is what distinguishes the North Korean regime from other
communist nations that emphasize the unity of proletariat forces around the
world. The spirit of Juche is a
complex combination of nationalism and socialism that is almost family-like in
its national intimacy. This ideology
permeated every aspect of life in North Korea from education to economy, as Kim
preached that their nation was the locus of the world, being “exclusive” and
“specially chosen.”[2] Although many outsiders have blamed the
overemphasis of Juche as the culprit of North Korea’s isolationist
policy, it was nevertheless effective in mobilizing the people against
“corrupt” Western influences. The
public supported and praised the self-reliance ideology almost religiously
despite economic hardships, as they came to regard Kim as a paternalistic
figure.
How the Juche ideology and nationalism became so
powerfully integrated into North Korean society and politics is still open to
question. One theory attributes this to
Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla experience in the 1930s. At the time, many North Korean soldiers had aided the Chinese
Communist Party against the invasion of Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. Despite their support, however, the Korean
army was betrayed by the CCP when they were accused of being collaborators with
Japanese forces. The false accusation
and subsequent killing of Korean Communist forces came as a great shock and
sign of betrayal to Kim, and it has been said that Kim never really trusted
foreigners following this incident, although he cooperated with his allies for
practical motives. A different theory
argues that North Korea’s reliance on militant nationalism follows from Kim’s
paternalistic role in the state. To the
present day, it is common for North Korean citizens to refer to Kim as “Great
Father.” Some historians believe that
this is a legacy of Kim’s paternalistic leadership during his guerrilla
experience in the 1930s, as mentioned in the previous theory. Guerrilla fighters in those days were often
young, inexperienced orphans, and it has been recorded that Kim and his wife
took care of them as if they were their own children. Consequently, a strong bond of loyalty developed between them and
Kim, and when the orphan-guerrillas grew up to be political leaders after 1945,
their fierce loyalty to the “Great Father” remained.
The present North Korean political system is inherently a totalitarian socialist state. As in the few remaining socialist countries, the governing party, the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), is the official party; no other parties are allowed to compete in the political arena. No political ideas or ideologies are allowed to circulate except for the governing ideology sanctioned by the WPK—Marxism-Leninism and Kim Il Sung-ism. At the core of Kim Il Sung-ism stands the Juche ideology, Article 3 of the 1992 revised DPRK Socialist Constitution.[3] The WPK’s control over the armed forces, public security and intelligence apparatus, mass media and mass communication, education, and cultural organizations is nearly complete and comprehensive. State ownership of the means of production, centralized economic planning, management, investment, and distribution are elements that North Korea shares in common with other former socialist nations. A distinguishing feature of the regime, however, is its strict self-reliance policy and a near-religious worship of its leader.
The 1990s and the North Korean Nuclear Issue
For the sake of brevity, I will now fast-forward from the 1960s to the major political events surrounding North Korea, South Korea, and the United States in recent years. In the early 1990s, North Korea’s program to develop nuclear weapons concentrated the minds of many of the world’s political and military leaders and held their attention to an unprecedented degree. This formidable development imposed a potential threat not only to South Korea, the American troops stationed there, and the immediate Asian neighborhood; it was a credible threat to international stability and world order as well. A North Korean atomic bomb could trigger a dangerous nuclear arms competition involving South Korea, Japan, and perhaps other industrialized nations and spread nuclear ingredients and ready-made weapons to pariah states in the Middle East through North Korean sales. Moreover, an atomic weapon in the hands of an isolated and unpredictable government with a record of terrorism (e.g. the 1998 bombing of a Korean Air flight by a North Korean espionage team) would be a national security nightmare. However, the more the outside world feared it, the more its nuclear program became a valuable asset to North Korea, which had few other external sources of power and worth after the decline of its alliances with China and the former Soviet Union.
North Korea’s debut into nuclear research and production is believed to have dated back to April 1982, when an American surveillance satellite photographed what appeared to be a nuclear reactor vessel under construction near a river at Youngbyon, fifty miles north of Pyongyang. When the satellite photographs were examined more closely in Washington a few days later, they drew the intense interest of American intelligence analysts, who marked down the spot for special attention. They discovered that the layout of the power plants was surprisingly similar to old-model British and French reactors in the late 1950s, constructed to produce material for nuclear weapons. Despite these findings, however, it is difficult to ascertain when and why North Korea secretly launched its very own nuclear program as a major enterprise, mostly due to the lack of hard evidence. North Korea’s atomic program from the start was highly self-reliant, in accordance with the Juche ideology. It is believed that in the late 70s, according to an official of the Russian intelligence, Kim Il Sung authorized the North Korean Academy of Sciences, the military, and the Ministry of Public Security to launch the implementation of a nuclear weapons program, including rapid expansion and development of existing facilities at Youngbyon.
When the Bush administration took office in Washington in January 1989, its first impulse was to inform others with potential influence about what American satellites had been seeing over Youngbyon. From the North Korean side, its response to growing pressure to permit IAEA inspections was to first deny any nuclear weapons activity, and second, to insist that it would never agree while being threatened by American nuclear weapons located in South Korea. This argument was undeniably logical, and officials in Washington realized that it would be difficult to organize an international coalition to oppose North Korean nuclear weapons activity as long as American nuclear weapons were in place on the divided peninsula[4]. Also, Secretary of Defense James Schelesinger had declared in June 1975 that “if circumstances were to require the use of tactical nuclear weapons…I think that that would be carefully considered”(Oberdorfer 257).
To
condense a long, complex history of suspicion and failed nuclear negotiations
between North Korea and the United States, I will now jump ahead to the
historically significant year of 1991.
The winter of 1991 marked a period of unusual progress in North-South
relations and also in North Korea’s relations with the Unites States. It was one of those rare moments when the
policies of the two Koreas were in alignment for reconciliation and agreement,
with all of the major external powers being either neutral or supportive. First of all, high-level talks between the
North and South that had begun in 1990 were resumed in the fall of 1991. The result of three days of intense
negotiation was by far the most important document adopted by the two sides
since the North-South joint statement of July 4, 1972. In the “Agreement on Reconciliation,
Non-aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between the South and the North,”
adopted and signed on December 13, 1991, the two Koreas came closer than ever
before to accepting each other’s regime as a legitimate government with a right
to exist. The document depicted the two
states as “recognizing that their relations, not being a relationship between
states, constitute a special interim relationship stemming from the process
toward unification”(262). Although
North Korea refused to deal with the issue of its nuclear program in the
agreement, it did promise to work on a separate North-South nuclear accord
before the end of the year. Later on,
in the final version of the agreement, both 
North and South promised
not to “test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use
nuclear weapons” and not to “possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium
enrichment facilities”(264). In
addition, the South agreed to cancel the 1992 U.S.-R.O.K. “Team Spirit”
military exercise in return for the North’s willingness to permit outside
inspection of its nuclear facilities at Youngbyon. Such advancements, garnished by a 
bilateral American-North
Korean meeting at the political level in 1992, rendered the situation almost
too good to be true. As the cherry on
top, in a 
symbolic
gesture, the North Korean and South Korean table tennis teams in the 1991 World
Championship Games agreed to carry a “unified flag”(Figure 4) in the opening
ceremony.
Indeed, the progress in North-South relations and North Korea-U.S. relations was too good to be true. All the promises and hopes that had been painstakingly developed came to a screeching halt in the early months of 1993, as the euphoria that had resulted from opening North Korea’s nuclear program to international inspection gave way to suspicion, antagonism, and, eventually, crisis. The rewards that Pyongyang had expected from agreeing to nuclear inspections had not developed; instead, the presence of the IAEA inspectors provided the source for accusations of cheating and new international pressures. Contributing to the setback was a worsening political climate between the North and South, aggravated in part by preparations for R.O.K. presidential elections in the winter of 1992. The real boiling point was reached, however, when the U.S. and R.O.K. defense ministers changed their original position and announced that they would resume Team Spirit military exercises in 1993, “in the absence of meaningful improvement in South-North relations, especially on bilateral nuclear inspections”(272). It was plain to see how this decision shocked and angered the North—the 1992 Team Spirit exercise had been canceled in the period of mutual accommodation that led to the IAEA inspections of Youngbyon. Its cancellation had been the most tangible evidence of its improved relationship with the United States and South Korea. Moreover, Team Spirit was personally significant to Kim Il Sung, who had been complaining bitterly about its publicly and privately for years. Within weeks, Pyongyang, citing the Team Spirit issue as the reason, abruptly canceled all North-South contacts in nearly every forum. At that point, it would have been an understatement to say that all had gone down the drain[5].
On March 8, 1993, one day prior to the kickoff of the Team Spirit Exercise, the North Korean supreme military commander Kim Jong Il (son and to-be successor of Kim Il Sung) ordered the entire nation and armed forces to switch into ready-mode for war. On March 12, North Korea declared that it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, citing the treaty’s escape clause on defending supreme national interests. The announcement of the withdrawal was regarded as an incomprehensible act of defiance and a dangerous sign that North Korea was determined to continue its production of nuclear weapons. The situation continued to fester until early 1994, when North Korea-South Korea relations hit an alarmingly all-time low.
Not many people realize to a full extent how dangerously close it was for an all-out war to ravage the Korean peninsula in 1994. In late 1993 and early 1994, as the international tension over North Korea’s nuclear program heightened again, the U.S. Command in Korea began to prepare more seriously for new hostilities. For the first time in decades, the U.S. military war plan—Operations Plan 50-27—took on the “flesh-and-blood colors of reality rather than remaining abstract papers in folders and computer programs.” To state it simply, both the United States and North Korea were ready to start firing at a moment’s notice. Fortunately, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter hurried to Pyongyang at the last minute as a “private citizen” but nevertheless in a diplomatic attempt to ease tensions on the brink of war. Carter’s visit was miraculously successful, and Kim agreed to temporarily freeze his nuclear program until the completion of the planned third round of U.S.-DPRK nuclear negotiations. Shortly after Carter left North Korea, he called on Kim Young-Sam, the South Korean President. At first, Kim was cool and apprehensive towards Carter’s mission, believing that once again the fate of the peninsular had been under high-level negotiation without his participation. However, when Carter relayed to Kim about Kim Il Sung’s offer to continue peace talks, the South Korean president immediately warmed over. Within hours, Kim Young-Sam announced his acceptance of an early and unconditional summit meeting, thereby turning Carter’s mission into a personal initiative to accomplish what his predecessors had tried, and failed, to do. In a sudden and entirely unexpected reversal of fortune, the immense tension and danger in the Korean peninsula gave way to the greatest hope in years for a historic rapprochement between the leaders of the once-warring neighbors.
The brink of war in 1994 and Carter’s miraculous mission is striking for two main reasons. First, it reveals the sheer potential for a full-scale war to erupt over the Korean peninsula within hours. Former U.S. Secretary of State William Perry has attested to how close the situation came to starting a second Korean War, with even more devastating consequences than the first. It has been speculated that due to the lethality of modern weapons in the urban environments of Korea, as many as 1 million people would have been killed in the resumption of a full-scale war on the peninsula, including nearly 100,000 Americans. Second, the diplomatic rises and plunges between North Korea and the U.S. show that their relationship is truly a precarious one—a relationship potent of both peace and destruction. The fact that the U.S. and North Korea were a mere step away from a bloody war is a chilling thought; however, the “reversal of fortune” by Carter’s visit also suggests that a great deal of hope still exists to one day turnaround and solidify their peace process.[6] It would be a tragic mistake for the United States or South Korea to give up this arduous process and forsake a progressive, open-minded approach toward North Korea. It is not the time to brand the isolated regime as a dangerous enemy; rather, they should maintain a level-headed perspective into the future and attempt to understand, not disregard, probably the most mysterious and misunderstood nation in the world.
North Korea, South Korea, and the United States Today
U.S. President George W. Bush’s denunciation of North Korea as an “axis of evil” in February 2002 has angered a surprisingly large number of South Koreans. His allusion to the WWII axes of Germany, Italy, and Japan is presumably meant to reinforce the idea that the enemies of the United States make up a giant lump of threat that poses danger not only to Americans but to the global community as well. More specifically, Bush’s “axis of evil” comment implies that North Korea is just as credible as an enemy force as the Middle Eastern pariah states like Iraq and Iran. Moreover, President Bush’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has called North Korea a “merchant for ballistic missile technology” that is willing to sell the weapons to “just about anybody who will buy”(“U.S. Dubs North Korea ‘Ballistic Missile Merchant’”). Rice has also described North Korea’s leadership as a “secretive and repressive regime that is trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and therefore is a danger to peace and stability”(“U.S. Dubs…”).
I
was surprised to discover that a great number of South Koreans, as well as
Korean-Americans in the United States, found such statements to be “disturbing
and offensive.” In recent years, South
Koreans have been more interested and vocal about North-South relations,
especially those pertaining to reconciliation and reunification. I 
have mentioned in my previous
paper that South Koreans still believe that they are bound to their neighbors by a common blood. According to Professor Gi-Wook Shin’s survey
on ethnic homogeneity, South Korean citizens regard themselves as a homogeneous
race, and they believe that they are all united under a common ancestry,
whether they are in the northern or southern part of the divided
peninsula. In fact, many South Koreans
hold a positive view of North Korea in many aspects, such as its ability to
preserve the Korean culture better than South Koreans. Professor Shin’s research also indicated
that over 80% of those surveyed feel that the North and South must one day form
a unitary state. Based on these
sociological findings, it is not difficult to understand why an attack on North
Korea could be equally offensive to South Koreans.
In addition to Bush and Rice’s caustic comments, the disqualification of a South Korean speed skater during the 2002 Winter Games also sparked further anti-American sentiment in the South. Many Koreans perceived the sports scandal as a deeply personal and political issue, and some even went to the extent of publicly boycotting American products in Korea. On top of all that, U.S. talk show host Jay Leno’s insensitive comment about South Koreans consuming dog meat has “poured oil of fury” over the barely-healed skating incident. Leno said Kim Dong-Sung, who was disqualified after finishing first in the 1,500-meter race, must have “kicked a dog in frustration, then eaten it after” losing the gold medal to U.S. skater Apolo Ohno (“Leno’s Olympic Dog Meat Joke Angers Koreans”). South Koreans have been sensitive over the years about references to eating dog meat following protests by international animal rights activist ahead of the World Cup finals to be held this summer.
One could blame the unfortunate timing of offenses and miscommunications for the recent rise of anti-Americanism in South Korea. The Jay Leno joke seems to have been the final straw after both the Winter Games scandal and Bush’s denunciation of North Korea. What I feel is most important from all these issues is that South Koreans always have and will continue to be loyal to the latent ties that bind them to their neighbors in the North. This feeling of unity may have nothing to do with political motives or preferences; it is simply a manifestation of the age-old belief that all Koreans share a single, common ancestry under the Han bloodline. No one can say for sure what the future has in store for the divided peninsula. In fact, no one can ascertain the future of North Korea’s dynamic relationship with South Korea and the United States, either. However, one should keep the following question in mind during this critical time in history: “Is it truly beneficial to world stability for a superpower to shove a hesitant, unpredictable hermit back into its shell?” My personal belief is that the key may be to coax it out into the sunlight, rather than cornering it back into its own shadow.
Personal Interviews
I would like to conclude my paper with two interviews I conducted to gain more background information on North Korea’s changing relations with South Korea and the United States. The first interview is with Dr. John W. Lewis, who is the Director of Project on Peace and Cooperation in the Asian-Pacific Region at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). The second interview is with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, who is a professor in the Sociology Department and Senior Fellow of the Institute of International Studies at Stanford University. Again, I would like to thank these individuals for their time, patience, and expertise.
Interview 1
Stella Shin: What can you tell us about the recent U.S. accusation that North Korea is a “merchant for ballistic missile technology”?
Dr. Lewis: I’ve been told over and over that when the President was briefed on North Korean issues, the CIA chose, for whatever reason, to focus on two things: one, starvation, and two, missiles. The President got in his head that the North Korean government was starving its people in order to make missiles. Now, the fact is that it’s backwards. The people are starving, and they need tremendous amount of aid right now, but the damage has truly been done (I can give you more research on that). The damage to the people is real…if you’ve been to North Korea, you’ll see it, it’s palpable. So that’s one side of it. But in order to get some money, they have been selling some missiles, and they are willing to put on the table (in the negotiations) the manufacture, deployment, testing, and sales of missiles, if the U.S. would normalize its relations.
SS: And about the “axis of evil” reference?
DL: The people aren’t interested in facts anymore. It’s all in this emotional response…we’ve lumped North Korea with Iraq and Iran; they’re all very different places with very different situations. On the day that the President announced this “axis of evil” comment, there was in the works, by the North Koreans, a plan to bring four former ambassadors to South Korea. They wanted them to come and just talk about how to restore the progress that had been made until the new administration came into office. After that evening, that was on Monday night, when the President made the statement, the North Koreans called up and said, “It’s over. No more.”
There
is a very strong element within this government that wants to see a number of
governments collapse. We’re out to
destroy the governments in Iraq, North Korea, probably Iran…which is
impossible. You can occupy them or
attempt to destroy them…but should anybody try that with North Korea, God help
your family in Seoul. There would be an
amazing, horrible retaliation. I don’t
think people understand that…that this is a regime that feels very strongly
about itself…it’s a survival regime.
The economy has collapsed…it’s practically a barter economy…but the
people are still surviving. What more
can you do to these people? We can kill more people if we choose to do that…but
the immorality of that is truly staggering. We have already allowed over two million people to die just in
North Korea. The impact of all that on
the children…you would be sick to your stomach.
There
is something in the world called truth.
We may not always recognize it, but the truth is, we came incredibly
close to a full ending of the crisis on the Korean peninsula in October and
November 2000. It was within a tiny
fraction. President Bush was then
handed this opportunity (to resume working on the progress with North
Korea). He could have been the great
peacemaker within a month into office.
But he got the CIA briefing and decided that it (North Korea) was an
evil regime. But the question is, why
didn’t people who knew the facts try to persuade him otherwise? There are
regimes that are far more dangerous than the North Koreans ever could be to
us.
SS: How do you foresee China’s role in helping North Korea and
possibly in reunification efforts?
DL: There was a moment when it looked like the Chinese were playing
an important role. When Marshall Cho
Myung-Nok (of North Korea) had a heart attack, then took him down to a hospital
in Beijing. The Chinese play this very
cautiously. That has always been their
policy, to play very, very slowly and cautiously. They have good relations with South Korea, and they are trying to
estimate how not only the Americans would play this out but how the South
Koreans would react. I believe, I still
believe, that the United States made a mistake in getting the Japanese
involved. The Chinese do not want to
encourage the Japanese to be the main players on the Korean peninsula. But the Americans were so insistent that we
started this process, and now there is this trilateral thing that we do with
South Korea, the U.S., and Japan, coordinating our policy. You would have to be totally ignorant of
Korean history and feeling to believe that…(it would be a good idea to have the
Japanese exert influence over South Korea).
However, Perry believed that the four-way talks, with South Korea, the
U.S., China, and Japan had worked…he has a different opinion on this. My view was: get the Chinese involved…they
could be helpful. The Japanese were not
helpful in my view.
Interview 2
Stella Shin: You mentioned in your lecture that one of
the greatest challenges faced by North Korea is to adapt its foreign policy as
it undergoes modernization in the future.
How do you think North Korea could compromise its Juche ideology with a
more open-door policy for the 21st century?
Professor Shin: I think there are two models that a
socialist country can reform to: one is the Soviet model, and the other is the
Chinese model. Obviously, the Soviet
model failed with their collapse. And
the Chinese model succeeded, relatively.
But both were similar in the way that both were trying to open up their
market to the rest of the world.
However, a fundamental difference between the two is that Gorbachev was
not only working on economic liberalization but also political democratization. So, Gorbachev opened up politically and
economically, simultaneously. On the
other hand, if you look at China, Deng Xiaoping opened up economically but not
politically. When there was a demand
for democracy in 1989, he repressed those democratic movements. I think the Chinese model is basically economic
liberalization without political opening.
I think North Korea will try to follow this model…there doesn’t seem to
be any other viable model that North Korean can follow. Having said that, the main difficulty for
North [i]Korea
is that it is not China. By 1970s,
China had no major threats, politically, and also due to its sheer size, it had
little difficulty opening up to the international market. But North Korea is very different. It is a very small country, highly
isolated…their opening up could possibly facilitate the demise of their
system. I think that is why North Korea
is in such a tough situation. Plus,
because of the huge potential market, foreign investors like Wall Street were
willing to invest in China. But North
Korea is lacking in this aspect…from the business point of view. In my view, certainly China can be a model
for North Korea, but North Korea is not China.
Therefore, there are inherent limitations in following the Chinese
model.
SS: What do you think are the crucial steps that North Korea
should follow in the next couple of years in order to ameliorate its current
problems with famine and poverty?
PS: I’m not sure how much real option they have at this
point. From my perspective, North Korea
would like to normalize its relations with the United States…but right now it
doesn’t look like the Unites States is willing to, under the Bush
administration. Still, North Korea has
to survive. As I mentioned in class,
they have been using the dual strategy of threat and negotiation. They really have nothing else to offer on
the table. Although they know that they
cannot win any war with South Korea or the United States, by threatening, they
can be a mutually destructive force. I
think probably they will continue on with this threatening and
negotiating.
SS: What role do you think the South Korean government could play
to better normalize relations between North Korea and the United States?
PS: I don’t know if President Kim Dae-Jung has done the best that
he could, especially with the backfire of his sunshine policy. Right now, I don’t think there is any strong
support among the Korean people for President Kim’s policy. Clinton was willing to support Kim’s policy,
but now Bush is in office…
I think there is a perception
among the Korean people that Kim moved too much, too fast. For example, Hyundai is nearly bankrupt from
its excessive amount of aid to North Korea.
Besides, the Korean economy isn’t too great at the moment. In principle, people support the engagement
policy, but I think they may believe that Kim’s sunshine policy just went a
little too far. Hopefully, there would
be some progress sometime next year (after the presidential elections in South
Korea).
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