On 38 North, Aidan Foster-Carter ruminates on the strategic problems facing North and South Korean relations, with, I think, lessons for the United States:
A bad moment is a good time to return to first principles. [South Korean President] Moon’s administration, and all South Koreans, should indeed be thinking long-term. They also need to ponder what has gone wrong, and ask why, after almost half a century, North-South dialogue is still at first base. No Korean proverb has proved falser than Sijaki banida [“Starting is half the task”]. The first step is not half the journey—as shown by how many times Seoul and Pyongyang keep taking it and retaking it, over and over.
Thinking long-term is painful. It means jettisoning the collapsist illusions that used to seduce so many of us. At a robust age 71 or 75, depending on where you count from, the DPRK has not only outlived but outlasted its creator, the USSR. As much as one laments Korea’s division, this has become a fact of life. North Korea could be around for another 75 years—and Kim Jong Un may still be in charge half a century hence in 2069, that is, if he takes better care of his health.
Moon Jae-in, by contrast, is already a lame duck: one reason Kim has dumped him, though it only makes him more so. South Korea’s electoral calendar is remorseless. Moon still has three years left, and if Kim was strategic he would be nicer to the most simpatico ROK leader he is ever likely to face. But with grim economic figures (in part, due to perverse policies), and parliamentary elections due next year where the resurgent conservative opposition may well gain seats, Moon is no longer the commanding and popular figure he started out as.
Even if he were, and Kim were making nicer, three years hence his successor could well tear up Moon’s engagement approach. That’s what Lee Myung-bak did in 2008, simply ignoring the joint projects his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun (whom Moon served as chief of staff) had agreed with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang months earlier. A lost decade followed, undoing the small start towards reconciliation made during the “Sunshine” era (1998-2007).
One of the problems afflicting the narcissist American President Trump is his desperate, even pathological desire, for fame and prestige, and the negation of North Korea, whether through conquest and persuasion, lures him into actions that may be designed to gain that for him, but instead fail because they are high-risk, and neither he nor most of his advisors understand the mind-set of a national leader who has no time limit on his powers.
But this is not a new situation for Americans. The Cold War, which was the sometimes violent conflict through proxies between the democracies of the West and the Soviet states of the East Bloc (which did not include China due to a rivalry between the two Communist states and a disputed border), began at the end of World War II, during the Truman Administration, and lasted to 1991, the Bush I Administration. If we decide that North Korea is unacceptable in its current form of bloody dictatorship, we need to come up with a strategy, probably of containment, which can be handed off to successive Administrations.
Sound familiar? We need to bring back the relay race which was used successfully before.
And we have to use Kim’s advantages against him. He brings continuity, which means moving away from barbaric practices will be very difficult for him. Exactly how to use that is not entirely clear, but then I’m not a specialist in bringing on the collapse of states. No doubt information projected into North Korea will be part of it.
But, as Aidan notes, thinking we’re going to destroy or convert North Korea at this juncture seems to be a fantasy.
