US
misreads Sino-North Korean
equation By Yong Kwon
The international audience has long become
familiar with images of North Korean soldiers
goose-stepping across Kim Il-sung Square. In fact,
the inexplicable nature of North Korean
totalitarianism is so well established that most
casual observers received the news of Kim
Jong-eun's hereditary ascendance to power as a
spectacle but without much surprise.
However, pictures of choreographed
military processions, emaciated children and
dictators who have fallen wayside of
fashion are on their own of
little help when crafting foreign policy. They
fall short of explaining how the North Korean
state managed to persevere after other states,
whose subjects had also goose-stepped across
parade grounds, disintegrated and faded into
history.
Left with this mystery and little
experience in dealing with North Korea outside the
context of a global ideological struggle, it is no
surprise that not a single US presidential
administration since the fall of the Berlin Wall
has forwarded a coherent policy towards North
Korea.
Starved for evidence to support any
kind of action to dislodge the security threat
emanating from the rogue state, many analysts have
utilized broad and often fallacious
characterizations to make sense of Pyongyang. For
example, the Korean War was for a long time
painted as a devious conspiracy by Joseph Stalin,
with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
(DPRK, North Korea) simply typecast as a Soviet
satellite state that exploited its leaders'
despotic and "orientalist" tendencies. [1] This
has since been proven faulty: It was Kim Il-sung
who pushed the war agenda on a reluctant Stalin.
[2]
The most recent misunderstanding
revolves around the idea that Pyongyang's current
leaders can be influenced by their Chinese
"patrons" to make radical changes in foreign
policy behavior. To a certain degree, one can see
this as a reasonable analysis. After all, China
controls North Korea's lifeline, providing the
majority of the impoverished country's energy and
food.
Furthermore, unlike during the Cold
War, North Korea does not have another communist
power to fall back on as an alternative. Talk of
Beijing pushing Pyongyang towards reform and
peaceful engagement with the world is rife in
Washington's many policy forums. Unfortunately,
these conclusions, based on a simple
core-periphery depiction of Sino-DPRK relations,
are as questionable as ever.
As US
representatives meet with their North Korean
counterparts in Beijing to continue discussing the
basis for denuclearization, diplomats are
searching for anything that could serve as
leverage. In their confusion, the policymaking
community continues to hoist "the China factor" as
the crucial component of a diplomatic
breakthrough.
The statement by Assistant
Secretary of State Kurt Campbell in January urging
China to "make clear the importance of restraint
by the new North Korean leadership" is a
manifestation of Washington's failure to really
grasp North Korea's position. [3] Indeed, this is
nothing new; successive US administrations have
emphasized the importance of China in working with
the DPRK. However, past errors in policymaking
makes the continuation of the same policies no
less unwarranted and nonsensical.
The
rationale for approaching Beijing despite the
historical evidence can be wrongly justified by
misinterpreting recent history. The collapse of
the Soviet Union and the impact of the famines in
the 1990s did leave China as North Korea's sole
economic benefactor. In addition, many among North
Korea's rising elites were raised, schooled or
trained in China, studying its economic and
political model.
As a result, unlike the
last power transition and famine, both the North
Korean elites and the masses are more exposed to
the outside world and are aware of its prosperity.
Furthermore, considering how the private markets
that formed out of necessity during the famine
have grown and now constitute an essential and
inseparable part of the people's lives lead many
observers to believe that Chinese economic
hegemony over North Korea will play a role in
Pyongyang's foreign policy behavior.
All
in all, it is true that North Korea is more
dependent than ever on Chinese economic aid,
investment and trade. It is also true that
Pyongyang is making unprecedented reforms to
engender cross-border economic cooperation;
nonetheless, it is still inappropriate to extend
the characteristics of a traditional
core-periphery relationship to the Sino-DPRK
relationship. North Korea is unlikely to follow
China's path towards co-existence with the
globalizing world or be influenced by its economic
disadvantage to make serious concessions anytime
soon.
The basic assumption that economic
advantage is always accompanied by political
leverage is suspect here. Professor Yafeng Xia, a
historian specializing in Sino-DPRK relations,
portrayed China as less of a lever and more of a
hammer in its relationship with North Korea. This
means that while China has the power to strangle
North Korea to death, it does not actually have
the ability to subtly influence policymaking.
Beijing simply doesn't have enough latitude to
expend economic assistance as political capital.
Furthermore, recent developments indicate
that China sees North Korea as an important source
of raw materials for energy and development in the
northeastern provinces. On top of not wishing to
upset the balance of power, there is an economic
incentive to keep the current state functioning in
order to receive exclusive rights in exploiting
North Korea's reserve of mineral resources.
Moreover, with everyone expecting a massive
spillover of instability in the case of North
Korea's collapse, it is hard to distinguish who
has leverage over whom in the current state of
affairs.
Strangely enough, American
presidential administrations should be familiar
with the fact that Washington is more successful
in negotiating with Pyongyang when North Korea is
more distant from China. The successful
negotiations leading up to the drafting of the
1994 Agreed Framework occurred during North
Korea's brief break with China over the latter's
decision to normalize diplomatic relations with
South Korea. And again in 2007, Washington managed
to make headway in the six-party talks after China
joined in pressuring North Korea following the
Banco Delta Asia money laundering scandal.
If the ongoing negotiations with the US
and the DPRK somehow succeed in restarting the
six-party talks, then the source of the success is
not necessarily Chinese influence but most likely
North Korea's own assessment of its position
vis-a-vis South Korea such as the need to lower
tensions as to not provoke an intense armed
response when the next provocations take place.
Analyzing North Korea is an extremely
distracting affair. Faced with a deficit of
reliable evidence, the task of separating myth
from reality often runs aground. It is because of
these difficulties that analysts often attempt to
apply behavioral models that are readily available
and presumed to be a common facet in every
political and social entity to the North Korean
case. The familiar model of peripheral states
subject to the political will of the economic core
appears logical and self-evident, but a closer
examination of materials that are available often
produces additional complications instead of
answers.
Nonetheless, one might have a
better chance in diplomacy when standing
well-informed rather than charging blindly into
the dark. Creating an applicable policy towards
North Korea has proven to be an immensely
difficult task, but one that must be achieved if
the United States ever hopes to bring lasting
peace to the region and to itself.
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