Why N Korea's neighbors soft-pedal
sanctions By Andrei Lankov
Negotiators from the United States, Japan
and South Korea have begun talks in Beijing with
their Chinese counterpart in an effort to restart
the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear
program. This at least is one positive development
after Pyongyang's first underground nuclear test
on October 9.
The six-party talks,
involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia
and Japan, are aimed at finding a peaceful and
diplomatic solution to the North Korea nuclear
issue. The negotiations stalled
last
November, but North Korea agreed last month to
rejoin, although no date has been set. However,
beyond this, it does not appear that South Korean
leaders and their allies are willing to to deliver
the promised punishment for Pyongyang going ahead
with its test.
A few days after the
nuclear explosion in a remote North Korean mine,
the United Nations Security Council unanimously
adopted Resolution 1718, which condemned the test
and introduced a sanction regime against the
reclusive country. Even North Korea's longtime
protectors China and Russia issued suitably
harsh-worded statements, so some observers began
to talk about how the solidarity of the outraged
world would press North Koreans into surrendering
their newly acquired nuclear weapons.
However, soon the world learned news that
cast grave doubts about willingness of Beijing or
Seoul to fight the new nuclear menace. In spite of
all the rhetoric, most neighbors of North Korea
continued their economic cooperation with the
supposed "outcast" regime, and in most cases this
cooperation is based on unilateral economic
concessions to Pyongyang.
To put it
simply, both Beijing and Seoul continued to feed
the nuke-armed North Korea as if nothing had
happened. In a strict sense, they are not breaking
the letter of the UN resolution, which dealt with
a limited scope of items anyway: weapons and
luxury goods.
The Security Council
resolution has had no impact on the economic
activity in the remote northeastern corner of
North Korea where Russians and Chinese are
building transportation infrastructure for future
industrial-development projects. As was planned
before the nuclear test, the Russians began
repairing a dilapidated railway line, while the
Chinese continued with their highway-construction
project.
The lively exchanges continued
between North and South Korea, even though Seoul
is supposed to be Pyongyang's main enemy and main
target of the newly acquired nukes. There were no
delays in the normal operations of the Kumgang
(also transliterated Geumgang) project, a joint
tourist venture on the border between two Koreas.
Every day many hundreds of South Korean tourists
travel about 20 kilometers into the North to visit
the picturesque mountains and spend a few days
there, leaving their currency in the accounts of
the North Korean government. The project has
always been a major money-earner for the
cash-hungry North. The Americans tried to stop
Kumgang operations, but the South Koreans refused,
and business continued as usual.
Soon
after the nuclear test, another joint project had
a minor celebration. It was reported this month
that a number of the North Korean workers employed
by South Korean companies in Gaesong industrial
park exceeded the 10,000 mark. Gaesong industrial
park is the largest cooperative venture between
two Koreas. It is the place where South Korean
capital and technology use cheap North Korean
labor to produce internationally competitive stuff
- or at least this is what is supposed to be going
on there.
In spite of optimistic talk, so
far the project has been a money-losing enterprise
for the Southerners, and most companies stay in
Gaesong only because their government is willing
to back them financially. Thus the Americans have
some reasons to see the project as yet another
device for pumping money toward the rogue regime.
Still, Seoul, even when it talked tough, did not
do anything to slow down the project. On the
contrary, the Gaesong project is growing fast, and
so, one might suspect, are revenues it provides to
the Pyongyang regime.
It is also clear
that South Korea will not become an active
participant of the Proliferation Security
Initiative. This means it will not take part in
inspections for nuclear material hidden aboard
North Korean ships that will be stopped at sea.
By now it has become patently clear. No
international sanction regime against North Korea
worthy of its name is in place, and there is no
chance that such regime will emerge in future.
China, Russia and, above all, South Korea do not
want to punish North Korea for going nuclear.
This shows a major divergence of interests
between the United States and Japan, on one side,
and three other major players - China, Russia and
South Korea - on other. The US, being the sole
superpower, has to think globally, and North
Korean nukes do not bode well for the global
future.
With Pyongyang going nuclear, the
chances of proliferation have increased greatly,
and it is only a question of time before other
rogue states will start acquiring their own
nuclear weapons. Thus it is in the US interests to
use whatever means available to eradicate North
Korean nukes. This also might indeed be in the
interest of the world community at large.
However, none of the other players is a
superpower, and their concerns are necessarily
local, not global. This is not to say that Russia,
China or South Korea is happy about increasing
prospects of nuclear proliferation. After all,
radioactive fallout does not stop at national
borders, and economies of the region seriously
depend on the whims of the world market.
Nevertheless, their concerns are largely local.
Proliferation for them is a bit like the
ozone hole or global warning - an unpleasant
process they cannot do much about anyway. However,
local considerations make these countries take a
very moderate and forgiving stance on the North
Korean nuclear program.
China is not happy
about a nuclear North Korea, but probably sees it
a lesser evil than a unified Korea that is likely
to be under US influence and will perhaps even
have US military bases. Beijing does not want
this. It also does not want a collapse of another
state under communist rule - this might be a bad
news for domestic propagandists.
And last
but not least, in recent years Chinese companies
have moved into North Korea, taking over mining
and infrastructure, so such gains need be
protected as well. At the same time, the North
Korean nukes are not seen by Chinese strategists
as an immediate problem: the Chinese assume
(correctly, perhaps) that these weapons will never
target China and will not be transferred to
China's enemies. So for China, keeping North Korea
afloat is a strategic imperative.
In
recent months Beijing has undertaken some steps to
show Pyongyang its dissatisfaction with ongoing
nuclear and missile developments. Few North Korean
defectors were allowed to fly from China straight
to the US, the amount of aid was reduced, and the
price of oil was increased. Widely hailed as signs
of Chinese determination to stamp out the North
Korean nuclear program, these measures, however,
seem to have been carefully calculated to inflict
inconveniences but not to result in a collapse of
the system. In most cases, it is still "business
as usual", and there is no significant reduction
in the number of trucks and trains that every day
cross the bridges of the Yalu River.
Russia is not a major player in the Korean
game nowadays, but it has some leverage as a
potential "blockade breaker". Without sincere
cooperation from Russia, no efficient sanctions
regime will be possible, and such cooperation
seems unlikely. Moscow does not want the North
Korean regime to collapse. The country's leader
Kim Jong-il is potentially useful for numerous
diplomatic combinations, and also as a deterrent
against the Americans, who are increasingly seen
by President Vladimir Putin's Moscow as dangerous
global bullies.
However, it is South Korea
whose policy is decisive in these issues. Indeed,
in recent years North Korea was kept afloat by
generous Southern aid, with some 500,000 tons of
grain and a large amount of other supplies being
sent north every year. This aid saved countless
lives in the North, but it also contributed to
keeping the regime in control.
It has been
clear for a decade that South Korea, in spite of
all the rhetoric, does not want unification to
happen too fast or too soon. The German experience
demonstrated how vastly expensive unification
might become, and Koreans have good reasons to
believe that their situation is much worse than
that of Germany. After all, the per capita gross
national product in East Germany was roughly half
of the West German level, while in the case of
North Korea, per capita GNP is less than one-tenth
of the South Korean level.
When Seoul
politicians try to envisage what unification would
look like, they think not about nationwide
celebration of unity, but rather about a crushing
financial burden and floods of refugees. Thus it
is understandable that they want to postpone
unification to some uncertain but distant future,
on assumption that North Korea will develop its
economy somehow so the gap between two countries
will become less yawning. However, in order to
develop, North Korea has to survive first, and
this means that its current regime should not be
pushed too hard.
The Western public often
assumes that common South Koreans should be
terrified by the North Korean nukes, but this is
not really the case. It was remarkable to see how
little impact the Northern nuclear test had on
daily life in Seoul. During October, North Korean
nukes were not even a topic of street conversation
any more than results of some baseball game. There
are good reasons for such calm.
First of
all, there is a widespread belief in Seoul than
North Korea will not attack unless seriously
provoked. Second, there is somewhat naive belief
that North Koreans, being nationalists, would not
use any weapon of mass destruction against fellow
Koreans. This belief appears to be unfounded.
After all, the North Korean regime has slaughtered
far more Koreans than any foreign invader in the
country's long history. However, such belief is
much present in Seoul and to some extent is
encouraged by North Korean propaganda and its
faithful parrots in the South.
Third, the
nuclear weapons per se did not increase the
threats to the South too greatly. About half of
the country's population, some 23 million people,
are inhabitants of Greater Seoul, and more or less
the entire metropolitan area lies within the range
of North Korean artillery. At least 5,000
artillery tubes are amassed in what in essence are
the northern suburbs of the city, so a couple of
crude nuclear devices, even if used against Seoul,
would not change the balance of death too much.
Thus from the South Korean point of view,
it is dangerous to put excessive pressure on the
North. If the pressure succeeds in toppling the
Kim family regime, Southerners will suffer an
unprecedented economic shock. If the pressure
drives Pyongyang to adventurism, it will be the
Koreans who will pay the price in human lives.
Proliferation is a relatively minor concern to
them. Millions of Koreans will be upset for a
brief while if they learn about a nuclear conflict
somewhere in Middle East, but they will be far
less happy if one day sounds of an artillery
barrage wake them in their beds.
Hence
Seoul's major goal is not to rock the boat, and
this is where its objective interests come into
clear contradiction with the interests of the
United States, which would prefer to punish
severely the breaker of the non-proliferation
regime, thus reducing chances that some other
country will emulate North Korea in future.
Some right-wing Americans want to believe
that South Korean passivity reflects a position of
the nationalist left, so powerful in Seoul these
days. However, it seems that the difference in the
approach reflects much more a serious divergence
of two nations' interests in regard to North
Korea. It seems that the left will lose the next
election (not because of Northern nukes, a
non-issue in South Korean domestic politics, but
because of poor economic performance).
Nonetheless, the would-be right-wing government
will be no more willing to challenge the North,
though its rhetoric might change.
Nobody
wants to alienate the Americans and openly condone
nuclear proliferation, hence the UN rhetoric, but
nobody wants North Koreans to run into really
serious trouble, hence the cautious policy of all
sides involved.
Thus like many (perhaps
most) exercises in "multilateral diplomacy", the
sanctions regime against North Korea has been a
rather pathetic failure: a lot of tough talk
indeed, but no walk.
But is this really
bad? Perhaps not. Judging by the experience of the
1990s when the North Korean regime was more
isolated than now, economic pressures alone will
not necessarily lead to its collapse. During the
great famine of the late 1990s, between a
half-million and a million people starved to death
without causing any inconvenience to the regime.
There are no reasons to believe that sanctions
would achieve much either, apart from producing
another famine and many more deaths.
In
contrast, the ongoing exchanges bring to North
Korea information about the outside world, and
this information is subversive by definition,
making more and more people wonder whether
something should be done about their country's
political and economic system, so clearly
inefficient and anachronistic. Thus the current
situation surrounding the so-called "sanctions"
might be a rare case when the hypocrisy and
duplicity of so-called "collective diplomacy" is
doing more good than harm.
Early this
month a market riot happened in the remote North
Korean city of Hoeryong. Perhaps for the first
time since 1945, a large group of North Koreans
openly and vocally protested an unpopular decision
of the local administration. This was a minor
incident, but in the long run it might be more
significant than all the meaningless invectives
delivered by the well-dressed people in the UN
Assembly Hall.
Dr Andrei Lankov
is a lecturer in the Faculty of Asian Studies,
China and Korea Center, Australian National
University. He graduated from Leningrad State
University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and
China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis
focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at the
Kookmin University, Seoul.
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2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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