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The
socialist roots of the Korea crisis
By
Jeffrey Robertson
The current nuclear crisis is
inextricably linked to the long-term failure of the
North Korean economy - a problem that arguably cannot be
solved without revolutionary change.
Contrary to
accepted public opinion, the current nuclear crisis on
the Korean Peninsula did not start last October 16 with
a public statement by US assistant secretary of state
James Kelly alleging that North Korea had admitted to
the possession of a highly enriched uranium program. Nor
did it start with an earlier North Korean decision to
commence a covert nuclear-weapons program in response to
what it saw as an increased threat from an enraged
United States, which had labeled it a member of the
near-comic-book trio the "axis of evil". To determine
the starting point of the current nuclear crisis we need
to step farther back in history to the earliest signs of
decay in a once promising socialist paradise.
Indeed, the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK) was once a proud standard-bearer for the
international proletarian revolution. During the 1960s
the now-cliched propaganda posters reflected a society
that could vividly recount the brave struggles fought by
small bands of revolutionaries against the Imperial
Japanese Army in Manchuria. Its relatively quick
recovery from the Korean War and the continuing although
often stifled support from like-minded groups in South
Korea kept alive the dream that a unified Korea would
emerge from a groundswell of public support and
opposition to the continued dominance of what were,
perhaps rightly, perceived as "imperialist lackey
governments" in the undemocratic South.
But in
the 1970s three signs emerged that inextricably link
DPRK history to the current nuclear crisis - and despite
an early drive to attain a nuclear capability spurred on
by North Korean leader Kim Il-sung's reported
fascination for nuclear weapons, not one of the three
signs were linked to nuclear weapons, but rather to the
economy.
The first sign was heralded
internationally by the failure of the DPRK to repay
debts owed to international lending bodies in the 1970s,
after large-scale borrowing to finance a planned heavy
industries drive. According to the Economic Intelligence
Unit of The Economist, North Korea has the dubious
distinction of being the first in and last out of the
debt crisis in the developing world. Economic
mismanagement - the quiet killer of many a communist
state - dealt the DPRK a drawn-out death sentence. Since
the late 1970s the DPRK economy has been in decline,
roughly correlating with the steady rise of South Korea
as the economic miracle of this century.
The
second sign was the increasingly difficult international
environment. The 1970s were a period when - as stated by
Kim Il-sung at the Sixth Workers Party Congress in
October 1980 - "the international environment of our
revolution was very complex and our party was confronted
with many difficult and serious revolutionary tasks".
US-China and US-Soviet detente led to greater
international acceptance of a divided Korean Peninsula,
leaving only the DPRK to pursue its aim of unification
by military means. The DPRK was further isolated by its
continuing erratic militancy, losing the brief support
it gained from the non-aligned movement. In 1983 the
death of 17 ministers and officials in a failed
assassination attempt by DPRK agents of South Korean
president Chun Doo-hwan in Burma confirmed the
international community's perception of North Korea as a
"pariah state".
The final sign was heralded by
the emergence of Kim Jong-il as the likely eventual
successor to the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. The
emergence of Kim Jong-il did not bring in a
revolutionary change of leadership style or policy, nor
the revelation and admission of past wrongs that
occurred in other communist leadership successions -
rather it represented continuity. The father-son
succession combined the worst elements of feudal
autocracy with communist economic mismanagement. With
the younger Kim's eventual leadership of the state based
upon the political and ideological foundations built by
his father, the impossibility to undertake future reform
was set in stone.
These three signs represented
the commencement of sustained and critical economic
decay that resulted in a plethora of problems - each one
distinctly threatening the very existence of the DPRK,
most notable amongst these was economic security.
There are diverse definitions of economic
security. For those living in advanced Western
societies, economic security refers to an assured and
stable standard of existence that provides individuals
and families with the necessary level of resources to
participate with dignity in their communities, going
beyond mere physical survival to encompass a level of
resources that promotes social inclusion. For those
living in developing countries, including the DPRK, the
definition can be reduced to the simplest assurance of
the basic necessities of food, shelter and medicine.
Assuring adequate food has always been a
challenge to the DPRK. Cultivable land covers only
approximately 20 percent of total land mass. The
agricultural sector faces notoriously difficult seasonal
variations exacerbated by a misdirected agricultural
policy which has further increased vulnerability to
floods, landslides and drought. Floods in 1995 and 1996,
followed by drought in 1997 and 2001, devastated the
agricultural sector already weakened by declining inputs
of pesticides, fertilizer and machinery. The national
agricultural base declined dramatically as a result of
these natural disasters with annual production of rice
and corn (maize) falling from 8 million tonnes in the
1980s to 2.9 million tonnes in 2000. Widespread
malnutrition and famine had already devastated the
country in 1994, resulting in an appeal to the United
Nations World Food Program in 1995. A 1998 nutrition
survey conducted by the UNWFP found 16 percent of
children acutely malnourished and 62 percent chronically
malnourished. Estimates of deaths from famine related
illness range from 900,000 to more than 3.5 million.
The DPRK also suffers from acute shortages of
shelter and medicine, exacerbating the harm caused by
the ongoing food crisis. According to the Korea
Institute for National Reunification's White Paper on
Human Rights in North Korea, the rate of housing supply
in the DPRK hovers around 56-63 percent. A deficit
caused primarily by a lack of raw materials and a
shortage of manpower in housing construction. A
similarly wide gap is apparent in the provision of
healthcare. The DPRK currently faces a severe
health-care crisis, with its health-care system
considered in November 2001 to be near total collapse by
Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, then director general of the
World Health Organization.
These severe economic
problems have no solution which is acceptable to the
North Korean regime. History has repeatedly shown that
economic reform in communist states has ultimately
preceded revolutionary change. Attempting economic
reform will open North Korean society to the world,
revealing the depth of its sordid woes. It would also
raise questions on the legitimacy of the state ideology,
juche, its founder, Kim Il-sung, and ultimately
its greatest supporter, Kim Jong-il.
Here lies
the real conundrum. In pursuing a nuclear capability
North Korea seeks state survival - the alleviation of
the immediate perceived threat from invasion and the
alleviation of chronic economic woes. However, attaining
a nuclear capability can only solve the former, whereas
agreeing to forgo its nuclear capability can only solve
the latter. Either way, North Korea faces an immediate
threat to its security - an extremely vicious circle for
the DPRK, the region and the globe.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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