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COMMENT
North Korea: The Japanese
card
By Thor May
BUSAN, South
Korea - North Korea has been an international drama
since its inception, and after half a century it is
natural to feel jaded with adrenalin overload. Certainly
many South Koreans seem to have learned to live with the
rhetoric of metropolitan Seoul (22 million people) being
turned into "a sea of fire" if they pick a fight with
comrades in the North. They are generally more concerned
that ramping up the drama in the North will be bad for
business, both personal and national.
That's
easy to sneer at from the comfort of another continent,
but it is a genuine and immediate worry for South
Koreans, and the true meaning behind polls that show
that they overwhelmingly "fear Washington more than
Pyongyang". Experience has taught them from the first
days of US post-World War II administration on the
peninsula that American ignorance can be deadly.
Economics is also the reason that most thinking
South Koreans are extremely wary about rapid
reintegration with North Korea. They believe, with every
justification, that the sudden collapse of the North
Korean regime would leave them with an economic and
social disaster on their hands, a disaster that would
set back Korean development for at least a generation.
Few people, least of all South Korean leaders of any
political persuasion, have illusions about the
distasteful leadership in the North, but to varying
degrees they prefer to buy that leadership off in the
hope of coaxing the Northern economy into a less
catastrophic state, and eventually absorbing it. For
somewhat different reasons, this also seems to be the
game plan of the Chinese leadership.
It is rare
to see anything written about North Korea, or by North
Koreans, that does not adopt a moral perspective. That
is probably inevitable in a state so polarized from the
community of nations and, like everyone else, I am more
or less unable to view North Korean society without
wearing the moral cloak of my own understanding. The
antidote to moral outrage is, of course, realpolitik,
but this is often more illusory than real. Illusory
because "rational" judgment is a product of the premises
we apply to a problem, and those premises, through
ignorance or willful choice, are rarely neutral. Where
realpolitik can have predictive value perhaps is in
trying to decode what might look like realpolitik to
various players. With this in mind, we might perceive
that the "pragmatic" incentives in the North Korean
equation seem rather different to folk in Pyongyang,
Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo and, of course,
Seoul.
From where I sit, it is difficult not to
feel that the North Korean saga is approaching some kind
of end-game. That is not rational to contemplate for
Seoul or Beijing. We get the feeling that Pyongyang,
which is concerned above all with regime preservation
rather than with reform, has a leadership that is
running in smaller and smaller mental circuits. Maybe
sooner than later, that has to mean some rash action
against external "enemies", or an internal coup, or
both. The US take on this North Korean malady tends to
fixate the media. We have seen all too clearly that the
current administration in Washington has a visceral
contempt for diplomacy over their version of
realpolitik. However, even Washington feels constrained
on the North Korean issue because of the problems
preemptive action would create with China, Russia and
South Korea. North Korea's stupid missile threats,
especially talk of intercontinental ballistic missiles
reaching the west coast of the United States, could
swing US politics to some kind of military action on
Korea. The big sleeper, though, is realpolitik as seen
from Japan.
The Japanese public feels directly
threatened by North Korean missiles. When that is added
to a nuclear threat, the imperatives for any Japanese
government become overwhelming. The moral dimension in
Japanese-Korean relationships (North or South) is potent
on both sides, and can be rapidly swung behind support
for violent action. There are strong historical reasons
for this moral passion, but the pragmatic importance is
that it exists as a political tool. The ordinary
Japanese public is outraged by what it sees as the
betrayal of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
groundbreaking visit to North Korea last year, and the
perfidious treatment of Japanese abductees (regardless
that Japan did its best to extinguish Korea as a nation
and a culture from 1910-45). Internally, Japan is in a
state of economic paralysis and self-recrimination after
the heady days of the 1980s. The more nationalistic wing
of the Japanese polity feels castrated by the US
security umbrella.
In short, to many the current
North Korean nuclear charade could be a beacon of hope
for the reassertion of Japanese self-respect.
I
would not be surprised to see a preemptive strike by
Japan on North Korean nuclear and missile facilities.
Washington would know about it in advance, and be
pleased. It would give Washington a free pass out of a
diplomatic impasse. Seoul would be hysterical, but
couldn't do much. In fact, by holding the North Koreans'
hands in sympathy, the South Koreans would make it that
much harder for Kim Jong-il and his cohorts to follow
through with the "sea of fire" threat. Beijing would be
secretly relieved on one level, but be appalled by
pending disintegration in North Korean, and like Moscow
holds dark memories of Japanese militaristic hubris
after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.
As for
the outcome on internal North Korean politics, that
would turn on power plays among the leadership there,
which we don't know about. We guess that at the moment
Kim Jong-il is holding a rather inept balance between
the military, party traditionalists and reformers. What
might emerge when the card deck is split is anybody's
guess.
Thor May teaches in a South
Korean university. Visit his website at http://thormay.net/
.
(©2003 Thor May. All rights
reserved. Used with permission.)
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