Selected North Korea Commentary, Part 2
This being Week One of Korean War II, there’s been a proliferation (groan) of thoughtful commentary on North Korea. Two thinkers I’ve been waiting to hear from in particular are B.R. Myers and Marcus Noland, and both have since weighed in.
Myers thinks that these provocations are motivated by “domestic political considerations:”
This does not mean that we must now waste time speculating about which of Kim’s sons will someday take over, or whether the army and the party are struggling for power. It hardly matters who succeeds Kim. All players in the elite are wedded to the same paranoid, race-based nationalism, without which the country has no reason to exist at all. [B.R. Myers, New York Times]
Commenting on the dissolution of the command economy, he writes:
The West, of course, was overjoyed to note that the North Koreans no longer took all that Communist nonsense seriously. But the spread of capitalist values is what made the current string of nuclear provocations inevitable. Simply put, the more North Korea resembles a third-rate South Korea on the economic front, the more the Kim Jong-il regime must justify its existence through a combination of radical nationalist rhetoric and victories on the military and nuclear front. This is why North Korea will never disarm, for to do so would be to declare itself irrelevant.
Marcus Noland agrees that the North Koreans are doing this for domestic reasons:
Were Kim Jong-Un, partly educated in Switzerland, to attain power anytime soon, he would be far, far younger and less experienced than his father was in 1994. And he would face an internal situation much less forgiving than 15 years earlier. After a devastating famine and a decade of lackluster economic performance, any successor will encounter greater pressure to change current policies and practices and more potential rivals than at the time of the previous succession. The three centers of power within North Korea–the Kim family clique, the military, and the party–are each divided by internal rivalries and there is evidence of opposition coalitions across the three groups. Any successor will face challenges establishing authority and consolidating power. The country has an abundance of security organizations, and score-settling, some of it violent, is likely during any interregnum. [Marcus Noland, Peterson Institute]
I may have to disagree slightly here with both Myers and Noland, two of the Korea analysts for whom I have the most respect. I do agree that the ultimate purpose is domestic. Really, Kim Jong Il cares about little else. But tying these provocations to the succession issue alone misses a few key points: first, the regime’s propaganda isn’t specifically crediting Kim Jong Un for these tests or their preparation. In what sense, then, do they legitimize him? Second, the most important domestic consideration for Kim Jong Il is the delivery of food, money, and gifts to those loyal to him. Extortion has long been an important part of North Korea’s economy, and it’s difficult to believe that suddenly, Kim Jong Il feels completely free to sever what had been an essential channel in his palace economy’s funding stream. Third, we shouldn’t ignore the degree to which the regime’s propaganda promotes Kim Jong Il’s capacity to successfully extort the United States and South Korea. All people are easy victims for their own propaganda, and no one is an easier victim than one who has neither the opportunity nor the practiced capacity to think critically.
National Review, I think, really nails it:
The only way to “solve” our North Korean dilemma is to change that government. This will not be accomplished by force: A military strike is neither practical nor desirable, given the projected casualties and the North’s ability to flatten Seoul with conventional artillery. No U.S. administration would support it. And we have no illusions that the Hermit Kingdom is ripe for a peaceful democratic transition. But even an authoritarian, Beijing-style regime that sought greater global integration and a genuine rapprochement with South Korea would be a blessing for the North’s people, for U.S. security, and for regional stability. [National Review]
Shame on the editors of the New York Times, who implicitly endorse North Korea’s horrific status quo, probably the greatest ongoing atrocity in the world today, and something the Times doesn’t so much as mention bringing to and end:
We understand that China is worried that too much pressure could topple the government, pouring refugees over the border. Beijing should be able to calibrate that pressure. [Editorial, New York Times]
Though the Times clings to the illusion that North Korea will negotiate away its nuclear weapons even absent regime change, it does join the call for sanctions. But the Times will no doubt support lifting them prematurely once North Korea comes back to the talks to stall us again, just like in February 2007.