South Korea's 'grand' smokescreen
By Andrei Lankov
SEOUL - When President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea met with United Sates
President Barack Obama last month, both of them expressed their commitment to a
plan that the South Korean government often refers to as a "grand bargain".
This package deal is touted as a new solution to North Korea's controversial
nuclear program.
What is the "grand bargain"? In essence, Seoul makes an offer: if North Korea
surrenders its nuclear program, South Korea will
reward it with a very generous aid package. Apart from the aid and investment
package, the South Korean government has also expressed its willingness to
ensure that proper security guarantees will be given to North Korea. In a
nutshell, South Korea proposes to buy off the North Korean nuclear program, and
also promises that the price is not going to be cheap.
The "grand bargain" is presented as a new idea, but to everybody who has
followed relations between the two Koreans it looks familiar. The bargain is
not that much different from the "Denuclearization, Openness, 3000" plan
("Vision 3000" for short) touted as the official strategy of Lee Myung-bak's
government since its election in late 2007.
The only noticeable difference between the old Vision 3000 and the new "grand
bargain" is that exact figures are absent this time. Vision 3000 envisioned an
increase in North Korean per capita income to the level of US$3,000 within 10
years - hence its official name.
There was one problem with Vision 3000: it was unequivocally rejected by the
North Korean side, with a barrage of verbal abuse intensive even by the
standards of Pyongyang's propagandists, who are second to none when it comes to
name-calling.
For example, on May 30, 2008, the official North Korean wire agency, KCNA,
fumed in its highly idiosyncratic English:
No nukes, opening and 3,000
dollars [this is how the official name of the "Vision 3000" plan is rendered
into North Korean Englsihnewspeak] peddled by traitor Lee Myung-bak as a policy
toward the north suffices to prove that he is desperately pursuing the
confrontation between the north and the south in ideology [...] Lee's
pragmatism is little short of a hideous act of treachery as it is intended to
sell off the national interests to the outsiders and make the dignity and
sovereignty of the nation their plaything.
Since early 2008,
such statements have appeared in the North Korean press almost every day.
Pyongyang's leaders have already made it clear they do not see any major
difference between the "grand bargain" and the earlier proposal. On September
30, KCNA wrote: "The 'Grand Bargain' is just a replica of the watchwords of 'No
nukes, Opening and 3,000 dollars'." Well, for a change it seems that even KCNA
is telling the truth.
Significantly, the North Korean regime did limit itself to words when it
indicated its attitude to Vision 3000. But in May, North Korea conducted a
second nuclear test and stated that it had no intention of surrendering its
nuclear weapons under any conditions.
Indeed, if one considers the peculiar situation of the current North Korean
leadership, there is no reason to believe that either Vision 3000 or its more
recent version, the "Grand Bargain", will ever be acceptable to Pyongyang's
rulers.
To start with, they believe that once they give up their nuclear program they
will lose all their diplomatic leverage. They need nuclear weapons as a
deterrent but much more as a blackmail tool. Whatever they get via the "grand
bargain", they will get it through blackmail and diplomatic maneuvering.
However, to attract the attention of the great powers and play them against
each other, extracting aid and concessions in the process, Pyongyang needs a
nuclear program. North Korean strategists understand that without nukes, nobody
would pay attention to their country, economically impoverished and politically
insignificant as it is.
Second, the incentives of economic development are not that attractive to the
North Korean regime. Most governments worldwide strive to achieve the highest
possible rates of economic growth since such growth brings them popular support
and ensures that they stay in power.
In North Korea, things are different. The power of the North Korean leaders
does not depend on the ballot, and riots are not likely. As the famine of the
late 1990s demonstrated, North Korean farmers do not rebel, even when they are
starving to death.
Hence, the government is sure that it will stay in power as long as it
maintains control. The seemingly attractive proposals of aid and investment
might even prove to be dangerous, since the unavoidable result of such economic
exchanges would be a growing awareness of the outside world, from which the
North Korean populace has been isolated for decades.
When South Korean average per capita income is at least 17 times higher, North
Korean leaders understand that their populace will become ungovernable if they,
too, learn about this statistic.
The spread of knowledge of South Korea's prosperity and individual freedoms is
too likely to be destabilizing, and hence not welcomed by the regime.
Pyongyang's rulers do not mind an improvement in the lifestyles of their
subjects, but such improvement is not its major policy objective, and it is
acceptable only as long as the current rulers and/or their successors stay
firmly in control. From this point of view, conditional aid whose distribution
is managed by Pyongyang is much preferable to "normal" investment - and such
aid can be obtained largely through nuclear blackmail.
The North Korean leaders are afraid of foreign invasion, but their major
security threat comes from inside, and they know this. They might be overthrown
by a foreign invasion, but they are much more likely to be killed by their own
subjects if they are unable to keep the populace under control. Neither the US
nor, especially, South Korea, can provide a guarantee they really need - a
promise to maintain internal stability and assist in putting down a rebellion.
In other words, the "grand bargain" does not look attractive to the tiny North
Koran elite. For them, it is, essentially, an offer of payment as a reward for
committing political suicide, and as such it cannot be negotiated seriously.
If this is the case, why is Seoul so persistent with its "grand bargain"? Is it
possible that now, after unequivocal rejection, South Korean politicians still
believe that North Korea might be lured or pressed into accepting the plan? A
few of them might be so naive, but they hardly constitute a majority.
It seems that Seoul's persistence with Vision 3000 is driven by a different
consideration. By promoting a plan that is not going to be accepted, Seoul
creates a situation that gives it a pretext to avoid any meaningful interaction
with the North Korean regime.
South Korea is run by right-wing forces whose supporters have always looked on
the Kim family regime with disgust. Many of them are opponents of the economic
cooperation programs that were so enthusiastically pursued by left-wing
nationalists who dominated the two previous Seoul administrations. The South
Korean right believes that this cooperation (essentially, aid in disguise,
since it is heavily subsidized by South Korean tax-payers) is
counter-productive because it fills the coffers of Kim Jong-il's regime and
strengthens its ability to control and terrify the population - or so they
believe.
Throughout the past year, the North Korean regime attempted to use economic
projects as tools to exercise pressure on Seoul. There are essentially three
such projects, and two of them - both tourist-oriented - have recently been
stopped by the North Korean authorities.
In the summer of 2008, North Korea refused to allow a joint investigation of an
incident in the Keumgang mountains in which a South Korean tourist was shot
dead by a North Korean soldier. This led to the discontinuation of tours. Later
last year, Kaesong city tours were also abruptly stopped by North Korea. The
North Koreans have issued thinly veiled threats about the last remaining
project, Kaesong Industrial Park, where small South Korean companies employ
about 40,000 North Korean workers as "cheap labor". The South did not bow to
the pressure and Kaesong was left alone, even though threats were frequent and
a South Korean employee was detained for a few months.
Obviously, North Korea's strategists expected that a crisis in North-South
relations would lead to domestic problems, so Lee's government would have no
choice but give Pyongyang some concessions. It did not happen, since
Pyongyang's politicians overestimated their own significance.
The South Korean public is not excessively concerned with the state of
intra-Korean relations: people in the South have more important issues to worry
about - such as, for instance, the world financial crisis.
Lee Myung-bak safely ignored North Korea's histrionics for a year, so in August
the North switched into reconciliation mode. Generally, it followed the usual
North Korean tactics: first, make a crisis, make the situation as tense as
possible, then suggest a willingness to negotiate, and finally, extract
concessions for a return to the situation before the artificial crisis.
Seemingly, Pyongyang expected this time Seoul would sigh with relief once it
learned that the crisis was over and then it would immediately revive
full-scale economic cooperation (essentially, aid in disguise).
However, the approach did not work this time. In August, the South Korean
government expressed its basic intent to restart tourist projects, but soon it
became clear that it was in no hurry to do so. This time, the tactic of delay,
long a favorite tool of Pyongyang's diplomacy, was smartly applied by Seoul,
and it was Pyongyang that went crazy.
In October and November, Nodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the North Korean
regime, published articles that demanded the revival of the tourist projects -
last year the same newspaper explained that these projects had become
meaningless and Pyongyang had no choice but to stop them.
Needless to say, Seoul remains indifferent to the Nodong sinmun's
pronouncements. By now it seems clear: revival of the projects is not going to
happen any time soon. It appears as if the South has decided to teach North
Korea a lesson. The North ruined the cooperation from which it profited,
assuming it could be re-started at any time. Now Seoul is determined to
demonstrate that this is not the case, so the North, instead of getting more
concessions, has to pay a price for being provocative.
This is probably where the "grand bargain" comes into play. While a majority of
the South Korean public is indifferent (even mildly hostile) to North-South
cooperation, the current situation might be exploited by the South Korean
opposition to accuse the government of not dealing with the North properly.
The existence of the "grand bargain" solves this problem, since the South
Korean government can always point at this plan when arguing with its critics.
It is easy to say: "Look, we have developed a very generous proposal, but it is
the North which is not accepting it. So, when dealing with such people, we have
no choice but to be patient and wait until they come to their senses."
The same argument is persuasive in dealing with the international community as
well. It allows all the blame to be put on the North Korean side, which is not
accepting what appears to be a reasonable and generous proposal.
Last but not least, the "grand bargain" works well in dealing with the United
States. Essentially, it gives top priority to the major concern of the US, the
issue of non-proliferation. This is a clear signal that Seoul is taking
Washington's concerns very seriously, and the current Seoul leadership believes
that, economically and otherwise, relations with the US are more important to
the South than its relations with its troublesome and impoverished northern
neighbor.
Therefore, the "grand bargain" is a perfect smokescreen, one that defuses
pressure from supporters of cooperation while following the line right-wing
forces consider best - limited interaction.
Andrei Lankov is an associate professor at Kookmin University in Seoul,
and adjunct research fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian
Studies, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State
University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea.
He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia.
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