Page 2 of 2 Kim Jong-il's
military-first
policy By Kim Myong-chol
North
Korea, most with a rugged topography, has been
converted into a national fortress jealously
protecting its population and defenses from a
preemptive nuclear strike. Today the 23 million
people of North Korea can be evacuated into
hardened underground shelters at 20 minutes'
notice whenever the occasion
arises - a feat unthinkable
in the metropolitan US.
The Korean
People's Army, which has a proud history of being
the first to outfight the once-invincible US armed
forces, is capable of badly mauling them again in
both asymmetrical and modern warfare. The KPA's
newly formed rapid-response strike force can go
into action at a minute's notice to torch any
remotest target on the US proper from all sides.
Three facts illustrate the awesome
destructive potential of the KPA. May 1993 saw the
KPA launching two long-range missiles over Japan,
one splashing down off Honolulu and the other off
Guam. Last July, the KPA test-fired mock
nuclear-warhead-carrying missiles, all intended to
fall within Korean waters. The detonation last
October of a mini-nuke showed the extent and
sophistication of North Korea's nuclear
technology, removing a long-kept veil of strategic
ambiguity.
Now that North Korea has
emerged as a nuclear-weapons state on its own
accord, it is capable of single-handedly deterring
the US from launching a preemptive strike on it.
It can afford to forgo a peace treaty and
normalized relations with the superpower. As
things have turned out, the first nuclear test by
North Korea has gone a long way toward removing
the divided Korean Peninsula furthest from dark
clouds of war than any other time since the Korean
War and facilitated direct talks between Pyongyang
and Washington.
The net outcome of Kim
Jong-il's two-tier military-first policy is a
closer North-South Korea interchange and
cooperation in a virtual commuter marriage in an
environment of reduced tension. Visiting
Pyongyang, helping compatriots in North Korea and
inaugurating joint ventures in the North are now
in fashion in South Korea. A poll shows that two
of every three South Koreans say they would side
with the North in case of war between North Korea
and the US.
Kim Jong-il is well aware that
the existence of diplomatic relations with Baghdad
dismally failed to prevent the US from invading
Iraq on framed-up pretexts and did not serve to
convince Russia, China, the United Kingdom,
France, Israel, India or Pakistan to give up their
own independent nuclear force. To be frank, the
North Korean leader is free from the slightest
illusion about an unworkable multilateral security
guarantee as its two major rewriters, China and
Russia, failed to prevent the US from launching an
invasion of Iraq.
It is important to
remember that no European and North American
countries insisted that North Korea dismantle its
nuclear-weapons program before and after their
establishment of diplomatic relations with it.
Moreover, the nuclear test prompted no European
country to cut off diplomatic relations with North
Korea. All indications suggest that the US is out
of sync with the rest of the world regarding North
Korea.
It is all too obvious that the US
promise of a North Korea-US peace treaty, full
diplomatic relations and an end to criminalizing
North Korea are an insufficient incentive to bring
the North Korean leader to consider opting out of
the elite nuclear club.
Kim Jong-il has
every legitimate reason to stress that depending
on future US policy behavior, a reunified Korea -
a hard fact years away - will likely be a
nuclear-weapons-free zone. He will keep intact the
hard-won nuclear deterrence before full mutual
confidence is fostered between North Korea and the
US that is spelled out in a peace treaty and full
diplomatic relations.
Kim
Myong-chol is author of a number of books and
papers in Korean, Japanese and English on North
Korea. He is executive director of the Center for
Korean-American Peace. He has a PhD from the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Academy of
Social Sciences and is often called an
"unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North
Korea.
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