North Korea wary of Russia's return
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - The spectacle of a renascent Russian military powerhouse flexing
its muscles in Georgia conjures images of Moscow's search for power in
northeast Asia - and raises the question of the degree to which Russia's
current leaders see the Korean Peninsula as a future battleground for political
and economic influence.
The fear of Russia, an abstraction in South Korea, may be more acute in
Pyongyang, where Moscow has been alternately a benefactor and a bully ever
since installing Kim Il-sung as leader of North Korea after World War II.
Great Leader Kim and son Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, who took over
power 24 years ago after his father's death, "always said Russia was more scary
than the United States", said Kim Dong-su, a former North Korean diplomat who
defected in 1998. They believed, he said, that Russia would be "the first to do
harm in case anything happened".
Everyone agrees the Russian display of armed might in Georgia has implications
for the former satellite states of the old Soviet Union, from the Baltic
republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia through eastern Europe. The
implications are less clear for northeast Asia, especially North Korea, which
the Soviet Union supported with enormous military economic aid from 1946,
through the Korean War, until the demise of the Soviet leadership in 1991.
From one side of the Russian land mass to the other, people "are very much
concerned", said Payam Khavan, legal counsel for Georgia and a professor at
McGill University in Montreal. "They have to think what kind of precedent the
Russians are setting."
Russian aims are not quite so obvious in North Korea, where the communist
regime looks primarily to China for aid, trade and diplomatic support, but no
one doubts the Russians eventually want to play a major role. Russia holds a
seat in the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear
weapons and for years has been promoting the concept of a rail network over
which goods could travel from South Korea, through North Korea, then across
Russia, to Europe.
The Russians, though arouse the deepest suspicions among the elite surrounding
Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. They're convinced, according to high-level defectors,
that Moscow would like to bring about the overthrow of the regime and install
its own leaders through whom it could exercise tight control, at least over the
North.
As an example of the paranoia of North Korean leaders regarding Russia's aims,
Kim Dong-su cited the fate of 300 North Korean military officers who had gone
to Russia for training. Suspected of hatching a plot to overthrow the regime,
he said "they were killed up to the third generation" after getting back to
North Korea.
Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il's instincts about Russian aims stem from their own
background in Russia. The elder Kim was sheltered there as an officer in the
Soviet army during World War II while his son was actually born in or near the
eastern Siberian city of Khabarovsk, spent much of his childhood there and
later studied in Moscow.
Paradoxically, however, North Korean leaders may wish to turn to Russia for
increasing aid as South Korea's conservative President Lee Myung-bak talks in
tough terms regarding the North while attempting to improve relations with the
US, somewhat frayed under Lee's two left-leaning predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and
Roh Moo-hyun.
Russia cut off aid - and stopped accepting North Korean currency - in 1991
after the collapse of communism in Russia and eastern Europe. Moscow has
promised huge funding and technical assistance to revamp the North's rail
system so goods can move safely on tracks that are often not strong enough to
support trains going more than 15 kilometers an hour.
A resurgence of Russian influence in Pyongyang would have an enormous impact on
North Korea's armed forces as well as its dilapidated economy.
Much of the North's military equipment, including its vaunted missiles and its
entire air force, have their origin in Soviet technology. Similarly, Russian
aid built up the North's factories after the Korean War. One noteworthy example
is a steel complex in the city of Chongjin on the northeast coast. Although the
complex has fallen into disuse during North Korea's protracted economic crisis,
it exemplified North Korea's relative economic success in the 1960s and 1970s.
Washington for now sees Russia as exercising a moderating influence on North
Korea - even encouraging the North to live up to its agreement to abandon its
nuclear program and come through with an acceptable protocol for verifying what
it has done or is doing about it.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visiting Europe in pursuit of allied
pressure on Russia to pull its forces from Georgia, said Russia had actually
been cooperating with the US on North Korea and Iran.
"I don't think Russia benefits from instability on the Korean peninsula or
further North Korean proliferation," said Rice.
Defector Kim Dong-su described the evolution of North Korean policy - and the
North's economy - from the heights of the 1960s and 1970s to the depths of
near-collapse beginning in the 1980s at a meeting of the Sejong Society at
Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Kim, who defected from the North Korean Embassy in Rome, said that North Korea
had focused on winning support internationally after the Korean War but that
the economy began to deteriorate in the 1980s when the government spent heavily
on the armed forces.
"From the mid-1990s to today nuclear diplomacy was the key," he said, adding
that the objective was "as much aid as possible". One underlying fear among
North Korean leaders, he said, has been that of "ideological corruption in
China" on top of the lessons drawn from the fall of communism in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union.
For now, however, North Korean leaders may believe they have more to fear from
South Korea and the US. North-South Korean tensions have heightened as
President Lee emphasizes the need for military preparedness and North Korea
calls him a "traitor".
Lee showed his determination to improve defenses and strengthen the US alliance
with a visit to an annual US-South Korean military exercise denounced by North
Korea.
The reason for the drill "is to improve war preparedness through military
cooperation between South Korea and the US", Lee was quoted as saying. "If a
war possibly breaks out we should be fully prepared to terminate it in a single
day," he said. "Only armed with such a grim determination, we will be able to
safeguard peace."
Lee has also warned that South Korea will refuse to provide energy aid for
North Korea if the North does not agree to a realistic plan for verification of
carrying out the nuclear agreements.
Kim Dong-su and called for "a better combination of sticks and carrots" to get
the North to cooperate" - a policy that observers see as persuading Kim Jong-il
to move closer to Russia despite his fears of Moscow's real intentions.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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