Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard post some interesting links from the best of North Korean experts as President Jimmy Carter and the “Elders” arrive in Pyongyang and China’s top nuclear negotiator, Wu Dawei and South Korea’s Foreign Minister, Kim Sung-hwan, agree to a plan for restarting Six-Party talks. First up, Victor Cha spealing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Kim Jong-il is ailing and he is clearly trying to hand power over to his 20-something year old son, Kim Jong-eun. The massive Communist party rallies in October, 2010 provided the world’s first real glimpse of Kim Jong-eun. On occasion in world history, courageous leaders have brought about monumental change. Does the young Kim, who has been educated for part of his life outside of North Korea in Switzerland, have what it takes to finally catapult the North Korean people out of the dark ages?

No. His youth is not the issue. Stalin appointed the first leader of North Korea, Kim Ilsung, and he took power at the tender age of 33. The current leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, was anointed as the successor in his 30s as well. The Kim family dynasty presumes that its leaders will rule for fifty years so they have to appoint them young.

The real problem is the system itself. Despotic regimes like North Korea cannot survive without ideology to justify their iron grip. And the ideology that accompanies Kim Jungeun’s rise appears to look backwards rather than forwards. I call it “neojuche revivalism.” This constitutes a return to a conservative and hardline “juche” (self-reliance) ideology of the 1950s and 1960s – harkening back to a day when the North was doing well relative to the now richer and democratic South. Neojuche revivalism is laced with “songun” (military-first) ideology which features the North’s emergence as a nuclear weapons state (Kim Jong-il’s one accomplishment during his rule). This revivalist ideology leaves no room for opening because it blames the past decade of poor performance on “ideological pollution” stemming from experiments with reform.

The revolution in North Korea died long ago but the young son will be forced to cling to the core but outdated ideological principles that worked during the Cold War. It is no coincidence that Kim Jong-il has frequented visits in the past two years to factory towns that used to be the center of North Korea’s mass worker mobilization (Chollima) movements of the 1950s. It is no coincidence that NKEconWatch’s website, which has the best Google earth imagery of the North, has reported the rebuilding of chemical and three vinylon factories which were the heart of Cold War-era Pyongyang’s now decrepit economy.

Neojuche revivalism is untenable in the long term. Mass mobilization of workers without reform can only work with massive inputs of food, fuel, and equipment which the Chinese will be increasingly relied upon to provide. Beijing seems content to backstop its communist brethren for the time being. But heightening world food and fuel prices because of the revolutions in the Middle East may make them a bit stingier with Kim.

Cha offers his own theory of the Yeonpyeong Island attack and the sinking of ROKS Cheonan. (Peter Hayes and Bruce Scott disagree.)

There are several theories as to why the North did this, having to do with Kim’s dislike of the conservative South Korean (ROK) government, longstanding disputes over maritime boundaries, and an internal leadership transition. But I would like to draw the committee’s attention to one other theory, in particular. North Korean officials are fond of saying that the U.S. attacked Iraq and Afghanistan because they did not have nuclear weapons, but that we would never attack them or Iran because these countries have nuclear capabilities. Kim may be engaging in more provocative conventional attacks short of war because he increasingly believes his own rhetoric that the DPRK is now a nuclear state, and therefore feels invulnerable to potential retaliation by the U.S. or the South Koreans. We know this is wrong as the North does not have a second strike capability, but this does not mean they may believe it mistakenly, particularly as they become less confident in their deteriorating conventional deterrent, including the degraded artillery sitting on the DMZ.

I cannot overemphasize to the committee how dangerous a situation this is. The following scenario is a not-too-remote and clear one. The North provokes again as part of a strategy to force the ROK government to cave to DPRK military pressure. They are unrestrained because they believe their nuclear deterrent is sufficient to prevent retaliation. But Seoul cannot tolerate another attack. What was so different about the Yeonpyeong shelling was that it was captured on television for every South Korean citizen to see. Not responding would be political suicide for an ROK president. Thus, Seoul responds with a military strike swiftly and decisively, confident in their own minds that 1) the North would not dare enter a war they would lose; or 2) the ROK could contain the escalation ladder. This sort of miscalculation on both sides, ladies and gentlemen, is how wars start.

Cha concludes with a mixed-bag of the same-old measures combined with pessimistic world wearniess.

Deferring to our close ally in Seoul is critical, but an apology for Cheonan and Yeonpyeong are the highest hanging fruit on the tree, impossible to reach at this point. Moreover, North Korea’s reported offer of a meeting between Defense Secretary Gates and his counterpart is not possible at this point either given all that has happened. As a baseline, the U.S. must continue to intensify the sanctions and military exercising it has done with allies in the region to counter proliferation and punish Pyongyang for its deviant behavior.

The administration should also push forward with new consultations with the ROK on extended deterrence – both conventional and nuclear – to enhance preparedness for more DPRK provocations.

The administration should continue to seek innovative ways to enhance U.S.-ROK-Japan trilateral solidarity including a renewed effort for a collective security statement. Parties should consider seeking UN authorization for the U.S. and ROK use of force in self-defense in response to future DPRK violations of the 1953 armistice. On the nuclear negotiations front, there does not appear to be any movement at the moment, but this should not discourage those who seek to advance the human rights agenda. Here, the lowest hanging fruit in the last month or so centers on the DPRK’s request for the U.S. to restart food assistance. At issue is the remaining 330,000 tons of food left undistributed from the 2008 food agreement with the Bush administration. As USAID officials will attest, this agreement offered the best access and monitoring conditions we have ever achieved with the North including access to all but two provinces, nutritional surveys, and Korean speakers as part of the aid team. U.S. NGOs just returned from the North last month and confirm there is a need. The administration should consider this if they can obtain access and monitoring terms as good as or better than 2008, and after close consultations with Seoul. Bags of rice floating around North Korea with the American flag and written Korean saying “Gift of the American people” cannot be bad. For what it is worth, historically food assistance to North Korea has
constituted a path back to the larger diplomacy.

Chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen. Having worked on this issue in the White House and having studied it for decades, I can tell you North Korea policy truly is the land of lousy options. The choices are never between good and bad. They are always between bad and worse. Restarting food aid may sound like the same old story – rewarding bad behavior that will only elicit more bad behavior. The alternative is to do nothing on nuclear diplomacy or human rights, which is good posturing. But it will buy you a runaway nuclear program with rampant proliferation potential, and now rumblings in South Korea among some conservatives about going nuclear themselves or calling for the U.S. to reinsert tactical nuclear weapons into the ROK. This hardly seems like a good alternative.

Noland and Haggard also unveiled a neat little study Cha has done, all the more helpful because there is so little hard data available about North Korea.

In the unpublished study, Cha does a month-by-month analysis of North Korean behavior from March 1984 to the present, and finds that the North Koreans have never provoked on a major scale (defined as nuclear and missile tests or other major military provocations) when they were involved in substantive negotiations of a bilateral or multilateral nature.

Cha is appropriately cautious, however, on the inferences to be drawn. It is possible that ongoing negotiations do in fact reduce such provocations. But he also notes several disadvantages of negotiations, beyond the debate about whether they actually achieve anything. If you start negotiations with the North Koreans and break them off, the DPRK is more likely to provoke. And when the North Koreans undertake major provocations, they have in the past been rewarded with a return to negotiations. Ironically, this pattern does not seem to have persisted into the Obama administration.

Unlike Noland and Haggard, I’d like to start with optimism and go with the Hayes-Scott plan. There’s always Cha’s pessimism to fall back upon. I know it’s quixotic to ask for nuclear disarmament. But, the U.S. and its allies, with all this hardware and manpower, have the best militaries in the world. One concession on nukes would still keep the budget in the red and keep Americans employed in defense industries.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Filed under: Academia, East Asia, Korea, Military, Social Science, USA, WMD, YouTube Tagged: barack h. obama, george w bush, japan, jimmy carter, juche, kim jong il, marcus noland, north korea, nukes, roks cheonan, six party talks, songun, South Korea, stephen haggard, victor d cha, wu dawei, yeonpyeong