Kim Jong-il: Tactical genius
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Coming from me, the title of this article might surprise you. No, I haven't
suddenly turned into dear old Kim Myong Chol, whose cheery dispatches from a
parallel universe through the looking-glass about how well North Korea is doing
- or alternatively, is ready to nuke the rest of us to kingdom come - regularly
entertain readers of Asia Times Online.
My opinion of North Korea and its leader hasn't changed. The Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a tragic man-made disaster, and those
responsible are guilty of crimes against humanity. That is surely obvious.
Still, credit where it is due. To set your face against all that globalization
and the 21st century have to offer - prosperity, democracy, creativity, freedom
- is world-historically stupid.
But if this is your chosen path, then within your self-imposed
blinkers you'd better be smart. To survive as a fierce little dinosaur in a
world of mammals entails not only sharp venomous fangs to snarl at everyone,
but also animal cunning. Keep 'em scared, and then outwit them.
Kim Jong-il is a past master at this. That's how come North Korea is still
there, unrepentant and defiant; a full generation after communist regimes
elsewhere either crumbled, as in Europe, or took a big dose of capitalism to
reinvigorate and reinvent themselves, like China or Vietnam.
To put it another way, paraphrasing a point first made I think by Robert
Kaplan: The strategy may be dire - the road to nowhere - but the Dear Leader is
a consummate, brilliant tactician.
As witness the latest peregrinations of that famous armored train. After three
trips to China in barely a year, it was high time for a change of scene.
Otherwise Chinese President Hu Jintao and co might get the idea that Kim
Jong-il had no place else to go. That would never do, and it isn't true.
Of course, if you're grounded by fear of flying then this does narrow the range
of available destinations rather. No Japan - but why would he? No to the United
States. No to most of the world, in fact.
(It wasn't always so. As a young man Kim Jong-il did fly at least once: to
Indonesia with his father Kim Il-sung in 1965. Was the flight somehow
traumatic? Did he vow "Never again"?)
But if you're tied to the rails, the tracks from Pyongyang lead to only three
other countries. South to Seoul is one possibility, in theory. In happier times
Kim Jong-il did allow the long-sundered rail link across the Demilitarized Zone
(DMZ) to be reconnected. That's progress:
Up to a point. Even under past Southern presidents friendlier than the current
hard-line Lee Myung-bak, Kim Jong-il wouldn't permit any trains actually to run
on the relinked tracks - except a few to the joint venture Kaesong Industrial
Complex (KIC), just north of the DMZ.
Still less has Kim personally ever shown any sign of taking a southbound train,
even though at the first inter-Korean summit in June 2000 he had pledged to
reciprocate former South Korea president Kim Dae-jung's historic visit to
Pyongyang. Promises, shmomises. For the second summit in 2007, the venue was
once again Pyongyang. Kim sat tight, making the South's Roh Moo-hyun come to
him.
China: Been there, done that. South Korea: No way. That leaves just one further
available itinerary - northeastwards, into Russia. Which, of course, is where
Kim Jong-il is right now.
I'm writing before we have much solid news of Kim's talks with Russia's
President Dmitry Medvedev. The venue is exotic: Ulan Ude, capital of the Buryat
Republic, just across Lake Baikal east of Irkutsk. To get there was a leisurely
three-day, 3,000km trans-Siberian journey for Kim. It would have been quicker
to cross Manchuria, but that route would have been as politically incorrect as
the old M-word I've just used is for northeast China is nowadays.
His host travelled further but faster, flying (as normal people do) in from
Sochi on the Black Sea. There, perhaps as a warm-up act for the real thing,
Medvedev had just held a meeting with Europe's version of Kim Jong-il: the
ghastly Alexander Lukashenko, shame of Belarus.
(If nothing else, he really should lose that little moustache. Who does it
remind you of ...?) [1]
Maybe this comparison is unfair to the dear leader. Lukashenko lacks Kim's
tactical skills. Russia is fed up with both of them. Not for being dictators,
of course: no problem with that. However, perverse policies, unpaid debts and
an endless begging bowl - that gets annoying.
Yet here's the difference. Moscow can bully Minsk at will. In recent years, it
has restricted gas supplies and banned Belarussian milk, among udder things
(sorry). Lukashenko warned that he may "look for happiness in other parts of
the planet", but this is an empty threat since he has no cards to play - except
to hang on to Soviet-era enriched uranium which he's meant to be giving up, in
a separate quarrel with the US and European Union, which have imposed new
sanctions on him for beating up on the opposition. (The parallels with North
Korea are suggestive.)
By contrast, Kim Jong-il rolled into Sosnovy Bor - it means Pine Forest -
military base, 50 km east of Ulan Ude, with a big smile on his face, having had
in his own words "a fun trip". (Did he really say that? Such was AP's
translation. Agence France-Presse's version sounds more in character: "Thank
you for the great attention... Mr President, we are having a very pleasant
journey.")
The particular fun Kim had en route hints at what this is all about. Having
crossed the border at Khasan on Saturday, August 20, next day saw the Dear
Leader having a dam fine time. The dam in question, 139 meters high, was at
Bureya, site of the largest hydropower plant in the area - which generates more
power than Russia's sparsely populated Far East can use.
Who might buy the surplus? Moscow has long urged North Korea to let power lines
to South Korea cross its territory, but sans success. Interesting, then, for
Kim to visit this plant now.
From Bureya, the train trundled on across the tundra. (Strictly steppe - tundra
is further north - but the alliteration is pleasing.) But what else did Kim get
up to? No public activities were announced for Monday, August 22, a fact that
set the rumor mills a-grinding.
Did the Dear Leader visit Skovorodino? That's the starting point of a 1,000 km
oil pipeline to China and Russia's Pacific coast. There has long been talk of
piping oil to South Korea too. But gas is the main thing. The idea of a gas
pipeline from Russia to South Korea, via North Korea, has been around for over
20 years. The late Chung Ju-yung, Hyundai's redoubtable (and North-born)
founder, broached it on his first visit to North Korea in 1989. But he was
ahead of his time. Back then, neither Korean government was ready for anything
so radical.
Fast forward two decades, or even one, and a pipeline or electric power lines
hardly seem a big deal. Even for a Democratic People's Republic of Korea
paranoid about letting in noxious capitalist/Southern influences, energy
infrastructure is about as unthreatening as it gets. All Pyongyang has to do is
to sit there and collect a fat rent. Or if it gets bored, turn the tap off for
a bit - just for a laugh.
Not funny really, of course. When Korea was partitioned in 1945, the then
agricultural south got most of its electricity from Japanese-built
hydro-electric power plants on the far side of the 38th Parallel. Having
interrupted supplies in 1946 and 1947, Pyongyang's riposte to the proclamation
of the Republic of Korea in August 1948 was to pull the plug permanently.
Two-thirds of a century on, South Korea is the industrial giant while the North
is the dwarf. Yet the South remains resource-poor. While Kim Jong-il is in Ulan
Ude, his South Korean opposite number (and nemesis) Lee Myung-bak has been not
far away: visiting Mongolia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Energy and resources
are his key focus in all three countries.
More to the point: When Lee first met Medvedev, in Moscow almost three years
ago in September 2008 (by contrast, this is Medvedev's first meeting with Kim
Jong-il), the high point was a huge US$90 billion MOU between Russia's Gazprom
and South Korea's state-owned KoGas. The latter, the world's largest single
buyer of natural gas, will take 10 billion cubic metres annually for 30 years -
via a pipeline to be built across North Korea.
As I noted at the time, for two heads of state to announce a project whose
viability depends on a third party not yet actually party to the deal seemed
presumptuous and undiplomatic, to put it mildly. At that stage there was no
known evidence that Pyongyang would play ball.
There is now, but it has taken three years and many a zigzag to get there. Even
before Kim Jong-il's summit with Medvedev - itself originally expected in late
June, but postponed for reasons unknown - there were straws in the wind, if you
were reading the fine print.
Take the dinner that Kim Jong-il personally hosted - a rare honor indeed - on
May 18 for Mikhail Fradkov. Who is he? No head of state, so in no sense the
Dear Leader's formal equal; but the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence
Service, as well as a former prime minister.
Spooks tend to lurk in the shadows. There was surprise in Moscow that Pyongyang
chose to publicize this visit. Not that North Korea revealed the agenda. Here
the Russian news agency Interfax chimed in, reporting that the two sides
discussed three infrastructure projects that would link South Korea to Russia
via North Korea: railways, electricity and a gas pipeline.
In July, a Gazprom delegation visited Pyongyang, whose Korean Central News
Agency (KCNA) made much of this. Five separate reports detailed for example the
group's visit to the Revolutionary Martyrs' Ceremony, and its gift to Kim
Jong-il. But why had they come? KCNA kept mum.
The clincher came on August 15: Liberation Day - from Japan in 1945 - and a
holiday in both Koreas. KCNA printed, verbatim and in full, Medvedev's
congratulatory message to "Esteemed Your Excellency Kim Jong-il." This included
the following paragraph:
We have willingness to boost cooperation with
the DPRK in all directions of mutual concern including a three-party plan
encompassing Russia, the DPRK and the Republic of Korea in the fields of
gasification, energy and railway construction.
This is doubly
startling. Not only does it explicitly mention three-way cooperation, but the
phrase "Republic of Korea" is extremely rare. KCNA has only ever used this
before when it couldn't avoid it: in the text of the two summit accords, in
2000 and 2007. Otherwise it says "south Korea" (note the lower case), or
resorts to "puppet clique" and similar insults.
Back to now. After his talks with Kim Jong-il, which he called "open [and]
substantive", Medvedev still sounded cautious: "As far as I understand, North
Korea is interested in the implementation of ... a trilateral project with the
participation of Russia and South Korea."
He also gave details on the proposed pipeline: 1,700-km long, carrying 10
billion cubic metres annually. No confirmation yet from Kim Jong-il, who may be
heading for home.
At the risk of jumping the gun, let me stick my neck out. I reckon that at long
last this is for real. The pipeline and power lines will get built, and they
are a game-changer. Here's why.
Kim Jong-il's genius lies in his timing. I was puzzled why he didn't go for
this sooner, but I see now. He was holding the Russian card in reserve, waiting
for the killer moment to use it.
That moment is now. Three-way energy cooperation slays several birds with a
single stone. Diplomatically, just when China thought it had North Korea in the
bag as sole sustainer, Kim has leapt free to remind Beijing - and all of us -
that he still has other options. We are back to North Korea's old game of
playing off one power against another. He's very good at that.
Economically, it's money for old rope - or new gas. All Kim has to do is sit
and collect the rent, which some estimates put as high as $500 million a year.
Nice, for doing nothing.
Moreover, the deal must include some of that power and gas staying in the
North, where it is sorely needed. North Korea's creaking power grid, and its
industries, will get a vital boost.
Best of all, it puts the South on the spot. This is an offer Lee Myung-bak
can't refuse, neatly timed. With elections in the South next year, Lee is
already a lame duck; he can't run again. His hard line on the North has clearly
failed. His successor, left or right, will try a different tack. With fears
growing since Japan's tragedy over South Korea's dependence on nuclear power,
no one in Seoul is going to turn down a pan-Korean gas pipeline, if it
materializes.
This won't solve North Korea's problems, let alone the North Korea problem. But
yet again Kim Jong-il looks to have won a new lease of life. You have to admire
the old poker player.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and
modern Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance consultant, writer and
broadcaster on Korean affairs. A regular visitor to the peninsula, he has
followed North Korea for over 40 years.
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