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Japan at center of Pyongyang's
blackmail
By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - The present crisis on the Korean
Peninsula is not so much about Pyongyang as it is about
the security of Japan. Japanese pundits are expressing
their increasing doubts about Kim Jong-il's
dependability as well as North Korea's reformability.
Last spring North Korea finally launched a
series of economic reforms based on China's reforms, but
the results were disappointing. In fact, the economy has
shown little or no sign of improvement. The reason seems
simple: the reforms were ill-conceived and poorly
executed. The pro-reform faction in North Korea,
composed of politicians capable of actually carrying out
economic reforms, is considered too pro-China to be
dependable. Today in Pyongyang if you are pro-reform and
look admiringly at China's successful economic
turnaround, you will draw suspicion. Therefore Kim has
entrusted the reforms to people who are skeptical about
reform. The result, not surprisingly, is a bungled mess.
But if the economy doesn't improve, North Korea
will grow even weaker and more dependent on aid from
abroad, unable to live on its own. It is difficult to
evaluate the situation but one thing appears certain: if
foreign aid were withdrawn the state would collapse. If
this is the actual situation (it may or may not be, as
in North Korea very little is certain), the only way out
for the regime is blackmail. North Korea must acquire
weapons of mass destruction to demand aid and forestall
the threat of the withdrawal of this aid. The
improvement of the domestic economy through
Chinese-style reforms may be considered a price too high
to pay in political terms. North Korea doesn't want to
become dependent upon China.
In the early 1980s
the late Kim Il-sung, father and presidential
predecessor of Jong-il, was escorted through Sichuan by
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who extolled the virtues
of the ongoing Chinese reforms. Deng's goal was to
encourage North Korea to adopt reforms based on the
Chinese model. His efforts were fruitless, as North
Korea did not adopt the Chinese model. However, North
Korea and China maintained good neighborly relations.
This differs from the development of
Sino-Vietnamese relations. The two countries fought a
war, for years were less than friendly and even now are
far from being idyllic. However, Vietnam adopted
economic reforms clearly based on the Chinese
experience. In a way Chinese-style reforms in Vietnam
were possible because of the tense relations with China,
while such reforms were less appealing to North Korea,
which is apparently afraid that Chinese-style reforms it
could be tilt it too much toward China for maintaining
political independence. This illustrates the difficulty
of relations between China and countries formerly part
of its Cold War-era sphere of influence.
This
increases the need for China seriously to consider the
delicate issue of Japanese security. The challenge is
huge, because if Beijing can't help solving Japan's
security concerns, Japan will take care of them.
This week in the Yomiuri Shimbun, writer Kohei
Kawashima urged the Japanese government to stop
tolerating North Korean brinkmanship. "Neither Tokyo nor
Washington are sure of Pyongyang's real intentions.
There are optimistic views that North Korea is using the
nuclear bargaining chip only to gain economic
assistance, but some seriously believe North Korea is
thinking of arming itself with nuclear weapons," wrote
Kawashima.
"If North Korea is armed with nuclear
weapons, it will pose a serious threat to the peace and
safety of not only this region, but also the entire
world. Japan should never tolerate this ... For the sake
of national security, Japan can never abandon the goal
of a nuclear-free North Korea and the removal of its
ballistic missiles, which cover the whole Japanese
archipelago in their range," Kawashima added.
He
doesn't trust Kim Jong-il and seems to have reservations
regarding the Japanese prime minister as well. "The
Japan-North Korea Pyongyang Declaration signed by Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il on September 17 has become little more than a
scrap of paper."
Kawashima argued that the
summit produced a memorandum to guarantee Japan's
security and that within three months "normalization
talks" should have been held. This didn't occur, plus
there has been no progress on the fate of the Japanese
abducted to North Korea. All of this leaves more than a
little doubt among Japanese about Kim Jong-il's real
intentions.
If China can contribute to
guaranteeing Japan's security by finding a way to rein
in Pyongyang, this could be the basis of a new strategic
alignment in Asia. Otherwise US involvement will have to
deepen and Japan could consider rearming herself,
lifting a host of new problems for the security for the
whole of Asia. In a way the North Korean program is a
knife held to China's throat. Pyongyang's bomb poses a
threat to Japan and this in turn makes the Chinese
burden heavier than ever - it can't try to evade the
problem, it must try to solve it as soon as possible.
Moreover with nuclear weapons in North Korea,
the climate in South Korea could change dramatically,
and while most South Koreans have so far supported
dialogue with the North, the fright of the North's
blackmail could awaken new fears and change public
opinion in the South. Then China would be forced to
decide whether to back Pyongyang.
China
certainly realizes these dangers and is strongly in
favor of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. But how can
it force North Korea to back out of its program without
further damaging its ties?
Beijing has stated
that Pyongyang will halt its program if the United
States will accept holding direct talks. The US has not
accepted the offer but neither has it rejected it and
has sent many conciliatory messages to Pyongyang in
order to de-escalate the tension. To these gestures
North Korea has reacted by stepping up its war rhetoric.
This reaction, coupled with the fact that Japan doesn't
see any signs of improvement in the North Korean
economy, compounds Tokyo's worries. Consequently, there
is a growing belief that the real purpose of Pyongyang
is to have nuclear weapons in order to survive through
blackmail, not to reform and change with the aim of
peaceful reunification.
Against this analysis
there is a common sentiment that if North Korea were
about to produce new nuclear weapons the United States
would not hesitate to attack the nuclear facilities. It
would be suicidal: Samson would die with all the
Philistines.
On the contrary, if Pyongyang were
to abandon this brinkmanship it could have the
possibility to drag on for years dabbling with reforms.
It wouldn't matter whether the reforms were successful,
the waiting would help the region to prepare for the
huge expense of Korea's future reunification. One would
hope that faced with the choice of annihilation or
buying its way out, Pyongyang would choose the way out,
but this is not happening, brinkmanship continues and
rhetoric intensifies.
Certainly the
administrative structure of the North Korean government
gives it room to use such brinkmanship to the extremes
the world is now witnessing. But time is running out.
North Korea could well have just a month to stop its
nuclear program before US ally Japan feels itself backed
into a corner.
Within a month, with the first
nuclear weapon about to be completed, China could
consider the possibility of backing a US preemptive
strike against North Korea atomic facilities, the one
thing that could reassure Japan. This strike must be
first agreed with South Korea: China can't take steps
against North Korea without the strong support of South
Korea, otherwise the rapprochement with Japan would come
at the expense of its ties with South Korea. Russia
could also be brought into the picture, to avoid
Pyongyang leaning on Moscow against Beijing and avoid
Moscow feeling excluded. From its side South Korea as
well must also be concerned about Japanese alarm. The
solution of the North Korean problem will likely usher
in a new geopolitical landscape in Northeast Asia.
It is a complex diplomatic knot and there is
little time at hand, while North Korea seems to have
started the countdown to an undesirable resolution. Will
Pyongyang change its course before it is too late? Will
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors be allowed
to resume their monitoring work and reassure everybody?
Or will Pyongyang risk everything in the hope that China
will back North Korea in the end?
Because of
this gamble China could find a real opportunity to reach
out to Japan and South Korea and demonstrate its
diplomatic importance to Washington. If this were to
occur, China may end up a crucial player in the end of
North Korea.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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