North Korea has been in the news again, and it is never good news. At talks with the US and China in Beijing in April, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, its official name) is said to have confirmed what had long been suspected: that it already possesses some nuclear weapons. Before long it will probably have more, by either or both of two routes: a plutonium facility shut down in 1994 but restarted earlier this year; or a newer secret highly enriched uranium programme, aided by Pakistan, the US detection of which triggered the current crisis.
Having quit the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in January-the first of its 188 signatory states ever to do so-and expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, the world's last surviving Stalinist regime is effectively out of control. Its stance at the Beijing talks in April angered China, which was once a close ally of the "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung (whom Mao saved in the 1950-53 Korean war). China is still a crucial supplier of life-support aid to Kim's son and heir, the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, in charge since 1994 when Kim Il-sung died aged 82.
Antagonising your main donor is not smart. But then little that this bankrupt yet belligerent regime does makes sense. In May, the vice-foreign minister, Choe Su-hon, in London for the opening of North Korea's first embassy-located in suburban Ealing, as downtown is beyond their means-reproached EU states for short-sightedness in not accepting thousands of North Korean students. This suggests a poor grasp of western politics or budgets-as ever, there was no hint that Pyongyang would do anything so vulgar as pay.
Yet North Korea is deadly serious in ways that go beyond nuclear weapons alone. Its vast arsenal includes missiles (a particular worry to Japan and the US); suspected chemical and biological weapons; and the world's largest special forces, 100,000 strong, and fourth biggest army: 1.1m, in a nation of 22m. Looking on the bright side, there has been no terrorism since 1987 (though plenty earlier), and no link to al Qaeda. The sybaritic Dear Leader and ascetic bin Laden have little in common, but the fear is that a bankrupt, desperate maverick may sell anything to anyone.
Indeed, it already does. In April, Australian troops boarded and seized a North Korean freighter, the Pong Su, which is suspected of dropping off a 125kg cargo of heroin worth $120m. This is just the latest in a long line of similar busts around the globe, which leave no doubt that North Korea is involved at state level in drug trafficking, counterfeiting and smuggling. The term "rogue state," though much abused, is surely apt here.
This latest chapter in an ancient nation's long history began with its sundering by the superpowers in 1945. The new Korean question is how that division will end. For we are witnessing the death throes of a regime, and probably a state, which has refused to adapt either its economy or its security posture to the post-cold war era. A state which threatens the world and starves its own people-at least 1m, maybe 3m, died of famine during 1995-98-is patently dysfunctional. But the manner of North Korea's demise is not preordained and will depend on how others handle it. A soft landing is still possible, yet more drastic outcomes, such as an East German-style collapse and absorption, are arguably more probable. Nor can war be ruled out.
Korean history lesson
Before examining such possibilities in more detail, some history is in order. Not only hermetic North Korea, but the peninsula in general, is little understood in the west; even though "our" Korea, South Korea (officially the Republic of Korea), has risen from peasant poverty to become the world's 12th largest trading nation, whose brands-Samsung televisions, Hyundai cars, LG microwaves-are familiar throughout the west.
Korea is one country and a very old one. Most of the peninsula was unified in 668AD, when the southern kingdom, Shilla, conquered its northern rival, Koguryo. Despite owing much of its Confucian and Buddhist civilisation to China, to which it was long a vassal, Korea is ethnically and linguistically distinct and was in practice self-ruling. Korean inventions include moveable metal type, long before Gutenberg.
Few nations have had so bitter a passage to modernity. The 19th century found the Chosun dynasty in decay. Its efforts to keep out the wider world earned it the name "hermit kingdom," but its refusal to reform made it a "shrimp among whales": prey to whichever power achieved regional dominance. That turned out to be Meiji Japan, which trounced the Chinese and Russian empires to rule Korea brutally from 1905-45. This laid the foundations for later economic development; yet the scars-such as "comfort women" (sex slaves), who still await compensation-continue to poison ties between Japan and both Koreas.
The worst wound of all was division itself, so fateful, yet so casually done. After the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan sued for peace sooner than expected. But what to do with the peninsula next door? With the Soviet army pouring into Korea, partition, meant to be temporary, looked the best way to keep a western foothold. So, in Washington on a hot August night in 1945, two American colonels-one of them a young Dean Rusk-drew a line on a map of a distant nation neither of them knew, at the 38th parallel. Koreans were horrified.
By 1948 the US and Soviet zones had hardened into separate regimes. Two years later, Kim Il-sung invaded the South, but was beaten back by a US-led UN force (one of only three post-1945 military actions to be legitimated by the UN, the others being the first Gulf war and the invasion of Afghanistan). China intervened in turn to save North Korea, but US carpet bombing levelled northern cities, factories and dams, while napalm burned Korea's forests down to bare hillsides. The 1953 armistice-there is still no peace treaty-left both states in place but terribly ravaged: 4m people died. The sealed border or demilitarised zone (DMZ) has hardly budged. The 4km-wide DMZ is heavily mined and is the main reason why the US refuses to endorse the Ottawa convention on landmines. Some 37,000 US troops still remain in South Korea but there are new plans to move them away from their "tripwire" position near the DMZ to a line south of Seoul.
Since 1953 the two Koreas have competed economically and diplomatically. South Korea eschewed contacts with the North; anyone who pursued them risked death. The North, for its part, denounced the South as a US puppet and posed as the champion of reunification. Incredible as it seems now, the North took off first. It was richer than the South until the 1970s, giving it some clout in the non-aligned movement. But the South's alliance with the US and its export-oriented market model proved a more lasting formula for success, even before the USSR's demise in 1991 jolted the ageing Kim Il-sung and cut off his main source of subsidy.
That blow exposed the Great Leader's self-reliance (Juche) as a myth. As in Cuba, North Korea's economy went into free fall. Unlike in Cuba, the regime's refusal to adapt led to catastrophe. In a tragic trajectory, this once industrialised economy took a great leap backwards. GNP fell by half in the 1990s, and then famine struck. North Korea now subsists on food aid-much from its foes, the US, South Korea, and Japan-but this is falling off as needs arise elsewhere (Afghanistan, Iraq) and donors grow increasingly impatient.
North Korea rearms
North Korea still resists market reforms, which China has been urging on it for 20 years. In July 2002, it imposed drastic wage and price rises, but in the absence of supply-side measures to match, these produced little except inflation. The de facto spread of markets, as state planning and rationing have crumbled, is not reflected in economic policy. Only in June were markets even officially acknowledged.
Politically too, North Korea remains unyielding. It is true that unlike its Soviet mentor, it is still there. Yet in 2003, a polity so ossified, opaque, bizarre and cruel-gulag memoirs are starting to appear, full of horrors-with a risible cult of personality (see page 53), is surely doomed. North Korea may cling on for now, yet it refuses to evolve.
Rather, it rearms. North Korea's reaction to adversity is to build weapons of mass destruction-both in self-defence, and also as a lever for international blackmail. The first nuclear crisis came in 1993-4. The Clinton administration considered bombing the Yongbyon nuclear site, but-after Jimmy Carter intervened-signed an "agreed framework" with the North. Under this, Yongbyon was closed in exchange for two new light water reactors (LWRs) and interim fuel supplied via a consortium, Kedo (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation), mainly funded by Japan and South Korea. But the LWRs are years behind schedule, and the future of Kedo is in limbo.
Hopes for the agreed framework as a model rose when the veteran South Korean dissident Kim Dae-jung was elected president in 1997. The following year Clinton appointed former defence secretary William Perry to conduct a review of US policy towards North Korea. The review was partly in response to a North Korean missile test which overflew Japan in August 1998. Perry recommended engagement with the North, offering improved relations with the US in return for abandoning the missile programme. Meanwhile Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine" policy of reaching out to the North led to the first ever North-South summit, held in Pyongyang in June 2000, for which he won that year's Nobel peace prize.
But subsequent progress proved fitful, as the US under George W Bush took a harder line and North Korea blew hot and cold. Many younger South Koreans blame Bush for this. Last year they elected another pro-sunshine president, the populist outsider Roh Moo-hyun, who once called for US troops to leave South Korea. But charges that the 2000 summit included a $500m bribe to Kim Jong-il have cast a shadow over South Korea's own diplomacy, while the second nuclear crisis has made everyone edgy.
The current crisis
That crisis began last October, when the US accused the North of having a new covert highly enriched uranium nuclear programme-and claimed it had admitted this. Pyongyang has not said so publicly, but after various enigmatic hints has now said it has a right to a nuclear deterrent. Kedo suspended oil supplies; North Korea in turn expelled IAEA inspectors, restarted its Yongbyon reactor, and quit the non-proliferation treaty. It also tested two short-range missiles-one spoilt Roh Moo-hyun's swearing-in, despite his pro-sunshine leanings-and buzzed a US spy plane. Such provocations died down once the war in Iraq began, and the announcement of talks in Beijing in April prompted hopes that shock and awe had scared Kim Jong-il into suing for peace. But if anything he may have drawn the opposite conclusion: that only a credible nuclear deterrent will save him from Saddam Hussein's fate.
There matters rest as of late June-in deadlock, with no new talks planned. Nor is it only in Pyongyang that the runes are hard to read. The Bush administration's approach has been unclear and inconsistent over time. It appears to be divided, here as elsewhere, between those who would continue Clinton's engagement policy (Colin Powell) and those who would rather isolate or even overthrow the regime (the Rumsfeld-Cheney axis). The Republican view that North Korea succeeded in blackmailing Clinton is reinforced by the revelation that Kim Jong-il was cheating on the agreed framework all along. The US will not buy the same lame horse twice. Any new deal would have to be backed by inspections far more intrusive than the little Pyongyang has permitted hitherto.
Yet Kim Jong-il is still demanding money with menaces, oblivious to the risks this runs post-11th September and post-Iraq. The US seems now to be shifting to formal or informal sanctions to try to block Pyongyang's missile, drugs, and nuclear exports. Yet missile sales are legal-North Korea is not a signatory to the missile technology control regime-while drug trafficking, though disgraceful, is hardly a menace like weapons of mass destruction. And were Pyongyang either able or foolish enough to sell nuclear materials (by no means an immediate prospect), it could prove very hard to monitor or detect.
In sum, on a state already poor and isolated the practical impact of sanctions will be small, while psychologically they may make Kim Jong-il feel even more cornered. Besides, China with its long border with North Korea could undermine sanctions, even if it did not first veto them in the UN security council. Yet Beijing itself cut oil supplies for a few days in March, and may now be so alarmed by Kim Jong-il's antics as to tacitly join in stronger measures. China's new leader, Hu Jintao, is too young to be swayed by appeals to the Korean war-era comradeship of 50 years ago.
An alternative option, as considered in 1994, is bombing Yongbyon. But the enriched uranium programme is located elsewhere, probably deep underground, and reprocessing too may have been moved. The real fear, now as then, is that North Korea would react by raining 500,000 shells an hour on greater Seoul, whose 20m people are within artillery range-never mind missile range-of North Korea. A new Korean war would be more perilous than the first, a cure infinitely worse than the disease.
Unsurprisingly, South Korean leader Roh Moo-hyun rules out any military option. Yet his first meeting with Bush in May-on his first ever visit to the US-went better than expected, with Roh shifting to a harder line on North Korea. This is partly for domestic reasons: Roh faces parliamentary elections next year, and despite fears of war there are few votes now in being soft on Kim Jong-il. The mood in South Korea has changed from last year's wave of anti-US feeling, which flared up when a US tank killed two teenage girls.
Yet Bush must still tread carefully. As Roh Moo-hyun's unexpected election shows, too tough a US line risks a backlash that could even sunder the US-South Korea alliance. In economics, northeast Asia's old cold war patterns have already eroded. South Korea's main export market and investment destination is no longer the US but China, and politics could follow suit. Beijing is playing a subtle game, befriending both Koreas and preaching peace. Its long-term aim is to resume its historic role as the peninsula's hegemon. Many South Koreans might be quite content with that.
Four possible scenarios
While no one knows how this chapter of Korea's history will end, it is relatively easy to spell out the possible scenarios-and having done so, to rank them in a clear order of desirability. They are basically four.
The dream, not yet quite dead, is a soft landing. Slowly but surely, Kim Jong-il comes in from the cold, adopting reform at home and peace abroad. Tensions are defused; investment and aid from South Korea and others help the North to rebuild its shattered economy. North Korea remains its own master, but becomes a diminishing threat. A peace dividend helps South Korea afford the investments needed for Northern reconstruction. Here the best hope was when Clinton and Kim Dae-jung were in office. But Kim Jong-il blew it; his chance may not come again.
A second possibility is for the status quo to limp on, with Pyongyang alternately hinting at change and breathing fire. Containment keeps North Korea in check; the rest of us go about our business and prosper, while seeking to persuade Kim Jong-il that ours is a better way than his. The hard question is whether a nuclear North Korea now rules this out.
The third scenario is the path followed by Germany: collapse, followed by reunification through absorption. Despite sighs of relief all round that a maverick menace is no more, for South Korea this is a grim prospect. As the German precedent shows, the cost will be high. In Korea, the gaps between the two countries are even wider, it would be a case of one country, two planets. South Koreans bin more food than the North eats, are visibly taller, and export more in two days than the North in a year. So if 22m Northerners suddenly became a charge on the South Korean exchequer, the social strains would be overwhelming. Besides, the process of collapse is unlikely to be peaceful in Korea; it may well be fraught with danger.
The final scenario is Seoul's worst nightmare. As noted above, a second Korean war would be even more ghastly than the first. The DPRK would perish, but not before turning greater Seoul and beyond-maybe as far as Tokyo-into a sea of fire. Kim Jong-il might go down with a bang, using chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Millions could die. When it was all over it would cost trillions of dollars to rebuild not just the North-itself a multibillion task, even if peaceful-but the whole devastated peninsula. No game can be worth this candle.
A further worry is the unpredictable leadership on all sides. Kim Jong-il's goal is regime survival; he no longer dreams of conquering South Korea. For him, nuclear weapons are a deterrent and, as Pyongyang has recently admitted, cheaper than a vast conventional army. But the latest zigzags and defiance, including of China, are simply reckless. He might be desperate, but he-or the generals to whom he may be in thrall-are acting in ways that make it harder for the few who still want to help North Korea to do so. A hoped-for breakthrough with Japan last year backfired, when North Korea finally admitted to past kidnappings of Japanese citizens but claimed that many of the victims had since died of natural causes, and that their graves had been washed away in floods.
And what is Bush's game? Those with imperial ambitions in Washington seem keener to remake west Asia than east. Overall, the recent US approach may be read as signalling acceptance of North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons as a fait accompli, despite the risk that this could prompt South Korea, Japan, and even Taiwan to follow suit. China, however, may be less sanguine about unleashing any such regional nuclear arms race.
Many in South Korea feel caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. And at this perilous moment they are led by an untried provincial populist, who after a few months in office looks to be steering no clear course on this or any other issue. Roh Moo-hyun faces the toughest challenges of any recent South Korean president: to stop a new Korean war, and to stave off or soften the blow of North Korea's collapse. The former is feasible; the latter may not be. South Koreans should brace themselves for the unexpected, hoping for the best but planning for the worst.
Intractable as the nuclear issue is, this is only the first hurdle on a road whose end is reunification. As a Korean proverb says: over the mountains are mountains. The chapter which began in 1945 is ending, as Dean Rusk's line on a map returns to haunt his successors.
