Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH: For fighting or deterrence?



	January 26, 2000	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH: For fighting or deterrence?
By Bradley Martin

South Korean authorities have ''confirmed that North Korea has stocked enough war food for a year and enough oil and ammunition for three to six months'', according to Dong-A Ilbo. Citing the Ministry of National Defense as its source, the Seoul daily says North Korea ''in preparation for war'' has stored 1.2 million tonnes of food at 117 storage facilities and 1.68 million tonnes of oil at 250 facilities.

The North produces some 3.5 million tonnes of grain a year on its own while its minimum need is 4.8 million tonnes, the paper said in its January 14 issue. The foreign assistance that has helped to make up the shortfall presumably would be unavailable in case of war. ''However, North Korea has been able to stock food for military purposes up to an amount similar to the estimated food shortage because it has a strong will to achieve reunification with arms.''

Many observers would dispute that last statement. There is a very substantial body of foreign opinion holding that North Korea, far from being an aggressive state that might attack the South at any moment, is a weak country that is simply seeking to defend itself against a feared attack by the United States and South Korea. In this camp are found, of course, some long-time sympathizers with North Korea and its socialist ideal. But they have been joined lately by quite a few more pragmatic people who simply feel that the North - with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and especially with the economic disaster that afflicted the North through much of the 1990s - has decisively fallen into weakness and knows that the days are past when it could mount a successful southward invasion.

From their point of view, the North could be squirreling away war rations, fuel and ammunition purely for the sake of deterring its enemies from attacking. After all, according to the Dong-A Ilbo story the South Korean ministry claims to know where the North's storage facilities are - presumably thanks to satellite photos and other intelligence. Since it's being watched, if it wants to discourage attack it would behoove Pyongyang to make sure it puts up a credible front of being ready and eager to fight well. And that, of course, requires having on hand - and visible to its enemies' spying eyes - the supplies that it would need to carry it through months of hostility.

Consider an interview with a North Korean scholar that appeared in the New Year's issue of Choson Shimpo, the Korean-language paper of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Koreans in Japan. In that interview, which was quoted at length in the January 11 issue of Seoul's JoongAng Ilbo, a Kim Il-sung University professor explains that Kim Jong-il's often noted emphasis on ''military-first'' politics is intended simply to ''defend the nation from the invasion of hostile forces''. The North Korean leader's policy is ''a comprehensive plan which includes an effective means for an economic buildup''.

The policy ''has nothing to do with military rule or a military regime'', Kim Jae-so, deputy chief of the university's economics department, is quoted as saying. And the ''powerful state'' that the current Great Leader wants to create doesn't mean a country that pursues hegemony. Rather, the policy ''has two goals: defending the system and restoring the economy''.

As noted, quite a few not especially sympathetic outsiders would accept this argument and see the North as no longer a threat to its southern neighbor. This writer is not among them. The Pyongyang regime's adamant refusal to change in any basic way (see Pyongyang Watch January 15: ''Change? What change?'') applies fully, I think, to its more than 50-year-old objective of ruling the whole peninsula. For the regime to relinquish that goal and settle permanently for taking its chances in peaceful competition with its Southern brethren would be an enormous change of course, on a par with establishing democracy, personal freedom and the market economy as the pillars of the national ideology.

There might be temporary policy shifts, such as emphasizing deterrence more than preparations for aggression whenever the regime feels itself temporarily weakened, as now. But if such a huge change of long-term policy as the renunciation of conquest were to occur, we would know about it. For it could not be accomplished without some internal turmoil. Remove one element of the ''unitary idea'' and, as the regime knows all too well, the whole system would start to unravel. We would at the minimum see some new faces, rather than continuing to watch a country being ruled for better or for worse - usually for worse - by the same people who have been in charge for decades.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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