In Asia Times this week Andrew Salmon writes:
Ever since 2006, when North Korea first tested a nuclear device, the broad understanding among analysts and observers has been that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal exists to deter an Iraq- or Afghanistan-style attack by nuclear-armed US forces… Of late, cracks have appeared in this long-held belief.
This reminds me of reading in the media in 2013 about how we Pyongyang watchers had all wrongly expected “Swiss-educated” Kim Jong Un to be a reformer, and were bitterly disappointed. In The Cleanest Race (2010) I had predicted a very military-first chip off the old block.
I realize “broad understanding” doesn’t mean “unanimous consensus,” but surely David Maxwell, Nicholas Eberstadt, Daniel Pinkston and I, to name just a few of us, made for a few earlier cracks in the conventional wisdom Salmon describes?
His article induced me to revisit what I’d written on this point. Like the following, from a cover story for Newsweek in 2013:
Especially subversive, now that so many of Kim Jong-un’s subjects have access to outside sources of culture and information, is the South Korean public’s manifest lack of interest in either the personality cult or unification. The regime is right to believe it cannot be secure until the peninsula is unified under its own rule. This is, of course, the “final victory” that Kim Jong-un and his media keep boldly promising the masses.
In 2016 I wrote an article for NK News entitled “Taking North Korea at its Word”:
The nuclear program has already progressed far beyond the stage needed to keep the enemy at bay. The regime hardly needs long-range missiles, or any more nuclear capability than it acquired years ago, to keep using Seoul as the world’s largest human shield.
Isn’t it time, then, that we paid more attention to the DPRK’s own declarations of its intentions? …. The slogan of “autonomous unification” … has always stood for the conquest or subjugation of South Korea.
In February 2017 I said in an interview with Reuters War College:
Those who treat the “axis of evil” remark and the bombing of Libya as watershed traumas in the North Korean psyche are really lampooning their own narrative, because if a regime has spent 50 or 60 years defying, humiliating and threatening a trigger-happy superpower like the United States, and the greatest shocks it has been dealt in return have been a rude line in a speech and an attack on a completely different country, its safety clearly does not depend on [its] developing a new kind of weapon. Its conventional artillery must have been protecting it very well indeed.
…. The very success of the nuclear program, the fact that it has gone this far, proves that it was never necessary for North Korea’s security in the first place.
So the question we have to ask ourselves in 2017 is: Why does North Korea risk its long-enjoyed security by developing long-range nukes? Why is it doing the one thing that might force America to attack, to accept even the likelihood of South Korean civilian casualties?
The only plausible goal big enough to warrant the growing risk and expense is the goal North Korea has been pursuing from day one of its existence: the unification of the peninsula.
That year saw journalists finally take notice of this view of things, as I noted in a blog entry:
For a long time there, I seemed to be the only Anglophone Koreanist who kept bringing up unification when discussing the North’s motives….[But] with every new missile launch or nuclear test, a few more people seem to realize that the North is arming too urgently, and at too great a risk to its own security, for such benign explanations to keep making sense. As a result more journalists than usual have been asking me to elaborate on my published views….. I feel safe in saying that this interpretation of North Korea’s motives has finally “arrived.”
How premature I was. Perhaps I was subconsciously trying to create a bandwagon effect. Granted, the old maddening consensus that the regime wanted to develop nukes only in order to trade them away for an aid deal had disappeared by 2017, but the newer trendy ideas were equally wishful, equally far removed from my view: the regime wanted only perfect security from US attack; it wanted to force the normalization of Pyongyang-Washington relations; it wanted a peace treaty; it wanted only to survive, to muddle through; and so on.
If memory serves, Andrei Lankov went in for most of those reassuring lines in turn, making him more popular in Foggy Bottom than yours truly. For a while there the US Embassy in Seoul would invite us in tandem to deliver North Korea briefings to people passing through. In retrospect I think the reason I was always instructed to speak first was so that Andrei could provide the quick economy-centric antidote to my nationalism-centric poison.
“Between us existed from the beginning the antagonism that unites dear friends,” as Yeats said of AE. In a Russian-language article in December 2017 Andrei nutshelled my views in indulgently-dismissive passing — including my assertion of the North’s intent to conquer the South — while expressing doubt about their “relation to reality.”
But I’ll be darned if he didn’t appear in the FT the other day sounding uncannily like — well, you tell me:
“But now [the nuclear program] is clearly overkill from a defensive point of view. They don’t really need intercontinental ballistic missiles and they don’t really need a thermonuclear device. This leads me strongly to suspect that their ultimate dream is to assert their control over South Korea.”
They all come around in the end.
2
Here’s the thing though: you can’t do justice to the topic of the North’s unification/control/domination drive without also discussing South Korean politics. To talk of the former while ignoring the latter is to convey the very wrong impression that Kim can only get his way through some form of “hot” coercion. Indeed, the FT quotes Andrei as giving the following scenario:
“When the situation is favourable … the North Koreans would provoke a crisis, deploy their ICBMs, and keep the Americans out by forcing them to choose between sacrificing San Francisco or Seoul,” said Lankov. “They could then use their tactical weapons to obliterate the significant conventional superiority of the South Korean forces, and install an ambassador in Seoul with veto power over any South Korean policy they do not like,” he added, likening Kim’s ambitions to Vladimir Putin’s “demilitarisation and denazification” strategy in Ukraine.
I feel bad criticizing soundbites, because I know how much vital and qualifying context they tend to get ripped away from. Let me say it anyway: Kim needn’t go to those lengths to achieve that end. The simple reason is that South Koreans’ attitude toward their state and the would-be hegemon next door couldn’t be less like Ukraine’s.
The longer explanation, which my readers have heard ad nauseam from me already, is that the South can be much less riskily subjugated via confederation, something that North Korea began proposing in 1960, and both states formally pledged to work towards in 2000. The ROK’s Unification Ministry has promoted the concept online and around the country since 2017.
The planners and architects of confederation — like Moon’s mentor Paek Nak-chung — make clear that the main goals are a) the elimination of the American military threat to North Korea and b) the elimination of the ideological threat to the Kim regime posed by the very existence of the South Korean state. Note also the expert consensus that the supra-state body administering the confederation should be located in Kaesong, and consist of equally-sized delegations from the two states. The North’s delegation, I need hardly add, would vote en bloc, enabling it to win every vote with only one supportive vote from the more pluralist side. An easier way to veto power than risking nuclear war, eh? Lankov would no doubt agree, if he didn’t consider the imputation of a confederation drive to the South Korean left a laughable “conspiracy theory.”
Not that the inter-Korean partnership has to be accompanied by any visible institutions or formal procedures. As many here argue, it makes more sense for Seoul and Pyongyang to come together “underwater” until such a time as the masses (and the US) can be safely apprised of the new reality. The Moon years thus saw both flashy displays of nascent partnership — like the construction of the liaison office, touted in the press as the first step to confederation — and “underwater” stuff like the South’s coaching of Kim on how to deal with Trump.
Then the breakdown of US-DPRK dialogue in Hanoi in 2019 forced the Koreas to revert (as they had done in 2002 after the “axis of evil” speech) to outward frostiness. This brings me back to what I call the Fraternization Trap, i.e. the fact that any significant, lasting improvement in inter-Korean relations raises the risk of America thinking it can strike North Korea without incurring the retaliatory destruction of Seoul. It was to keep an increasingly unfriendly Trump administration from doubting the automaticity of such a retaliation that the inter-Korean liaison office had to be blown up in 2020, and Moon subjected to a string of theatrical insults he well understood the reasons for.
The spirit of partnership continued regardless, occasionally making itself plain to the public, as when Kim Yo-jong angrily demanded the passage of a law criminalizing the launch of leaflet balloons into North Korea, and South Korean lawmakers proposed relevant legislation the next day. They did this not because they feared the dictatorship but because they respected it, on nationalist grounds I have explained here at length. No coercion was necessary.
3
Contrary to what some Westerners may have assumed, the recent election to the presidency of an ostensible conservative — who is in fact an avowed admirer of the two Sunshine presidents, and a former prosecutorial scourge of the anti-North right — portends no reversal of South Korea’s drift into confederation. A slowing down or arrest of it perhaps, until the bumbling Yoon is either impeached or made irrelevant through constitutional revision, but not a reversal. His people have already pledged to abide by the 2018 Moon-Kim military agreement that effectively prevents ROK troops from rehearsing the defense of Seoul.
Lankov and others are free to go on discussing North Korea’s nuke-backed unification/domination drive in isolation from the topic of South Korean politics. They should realize, however, that in doing so they may make Uncle Sam more worried and jittery about the threat of fireworks than is conducive to peace on the peninsula. I’m afraid it does no good for Andrei to add the somewhat contradictory disclaimer, on the apparent basis of nothing more than optimism, that the scenario he describes is “very unlikely.” We Koreanists may be listened to in regard to Kim’s motives, but the man’s ability and readiness to act militarily on them is for experts of a different sort to judge.
In closing let me repeat what I’ve said before: There’s no understanding the one Korea without understanding the other. I hope I don’t have to wait five more years for people to come around to that.
UPDATE: 25 May 2022:
Having expressed incredulity in 2019 at the notion that Moon Jae-in might be interested in “some unequal confederation scheme,” Lankov wrote in the Chosun Ilbo on 16 May 2022:
If America takes fright and abandons Korea, North Korea will begin an all-out attack on South Korea. The ROK military’s weaponry would be no more than toys in the face of North Korea’s tactical nuclear weapons. What would the next stage be? North Korea could unify the peninsula by absorbing the South, but there is a higher possibility of its establishing an unequal relationship through confederation. Simply put: the Hongkongification of South Korea…. Many people will think this a too pessimistic scenario. Of course it would not be easy to realize. But while the possibility of this scenario was zero until recently, I think it is now 5-10%.
I can overlook the second half of that last sentence; whatever percentage values a man chooses to put on his gut feelings are up to him. I’d like to overlook the first half of it too, if only to avoid looking like I’m hounding Andrei, but I know what will happen if it’s left unchallenged.
First, people will start thinking that North Korea has only recently made some very fundamental shift in strategy. Then we’ll start hearing about what belligerent American statements or behavior provoked it, and how we can make things right again. And still more time will be wasted.
So let’s get serious here. Kim Il Sung began calling for unification by confederation in 1960, and began talking of a North Korean nuclear program only a few years after that, according to many sources. The DPRK has been pursuing a nuclear program in earnest since the 1980’s, all along making clear in its inner-track propaganda that the ultimate objective is “final victory,” i.e. unification.
South Korea’s pro-North left has been publicly putting 2 and 2 together since about 2000, when Han Ho-seok et al began articulating the scenario of the two Koreas entering a confederation after nuclearization forces the Yankees out. The Kim Jong Un regime’s ROK-oriented propaganda has been about as explicit on this point as it could be without waking the dozing Americans. As NK News reported some 4 years ago, Uriminzokkiri said:
The current South Korean government has no need to fear or feel unnecessary repulsion about our nuclear weapon. It is a means for securing peaceful unification and the survival of the race (minjok).
And all this is why for the past several years I have blogged and spoken publicly about the nuclear program in the context of a confederation drive to which the two Koreas have repeatedly expressed their commitment. During that time the very notion of a confederation drive was subjected to mockery from various Pyongyang watchers, of whom Andrei Lankov was perhaps the most vocal and influential.
So perhaps I can be forgiven for insisting on clarification: Was there really zero possibility of the scenario in question until very recently? If so, when, why and how did things suddenly change? Wouldn’t it be closer to the truth for Andrei to say that he didn’t begin taking the scenario seriously until very recently?
UPDATE: 27 May 2022:
I was just contacted by a friend who suggested I’d misunderstood Andrei. The gist: “Surely his point is that while unification was always the North’s goal, Kim Jong Un is only now militarily capable of bringing it about by forcing the ROK into a confederation. So while there was zero chance of this happening a few years ago, now it’s a 5-10% possibility.”
I see I presumed too much familiarity with Andrei’s work on the part of some of my readers. His position has until very recently been the common one of asserting — in direct contradiction of my own view — that neither North Korea nor the pro-North left even wants unification or confederation. In February 2019 he wrote: “The unification idea produces little optimism in both parts of the country.” Of confederation: “No serious politician in either Korea will ever consider such an option.” The reasoning, given at some length, is that these things would be equally impracticable for the South (for economic reasons) and the North (for domestic political ones). Official talk of unification/confederation in North and in South Korea is thus but “lip service.” (Andrei’s article mocking the ROK right for worrying about confederation followed several months later.)
This is why I find these latest statements so interesting. We are obviously to infer from them that the goal of the North’s nuclear weapons program has now changed. The logic behind this apparent view is what I would like to see clarified.
UPDATE: 6 July 2022:
I have it on the immense authority of native Irish speaker Myles Na gCopaleen (1911-1966) that apart from meaning “a heron’s boil,” “a sound made in an empty house by an unauthorized person,” and many other things, cur is Gaelic for “the art of predicting past events.” I see some cur on display in Lankov’s latest, “How North Korea could control the South without ever conquering it.”
In a scenario in which it wins a second Korean War in say the 2030[s] or 2040s….North Korea would probably demand the removal of what it would label reactionary forces from South Korean politics, art, education and culture…The DPRK would reserve the right to intervene in South Korean politics, easily silencing all political forces, individuals and media outlets hostile to the new system.
In other regards, South Korean life would continue in established ways….[but the North Koreans] will seek to find ways to extract their due through some forms of obligatory payments and money transfers, though this could be a difficult task. In a sense, such an unequal confederation under nearly complete North Korean control would amount to the Finlandization of South Korea.
The above scenario is discussed without mention of any of the following:
- the purge and imprisonment of scores of prominent conservatives in 2017-2018, with special prejudice shown toward people who had aroused North Korea’s anger,
- the Moon camp’s assertions in 2018 that the two Koreas had entered the first stage of confederation,
- the alacrity with which the ROK National Assembly fulfilled Kim Yo-jong’s demand for a ban on anti-North leaflet balloons,
- pro-government academics’ call for Pyongyang watchers here and abroad to engage in peace-minded self-censorship, refraining especially from statements that might make it harder for Kim Jong Un to maintain control,
- the ROK foreign ministry’s campaign to get sanctions on North Korea eased or lifted, and the attendant coalescence of the North and South Korea lobbies in Washington,
- the government’s hours-long refusal to intercede with the DPRK on behalf of a ROK fisheries official who had floated across the NLL,
- the government’s proposal to send back North Korean fishermen suspected of murder even before extradition was requested, and
- a Blue House official’s advice to the DPRK on how to maximize the propaganda effect of its military parades.
Much more in that vein can be found in my blog entries from the past five years, and more will doubtless become known to us in the months ahead. But doesn’t the above suffice to indicate that Finlandization (to use the mildest possible word for it) was well underway by the time Yoon was elected? And can anyone deny that the process would have continued under Lee Jae-myung? Again: North Korea does not need a war to get much of what it wants.
Lankov’s repeated invocation of a conderation-via-war scenario deserves attention from the many Pyongyang watchers whose desire to downplay the threat of North Korean aggression is matched only by their commitment to covering for the ROK left. They’re going to have to choose between those two urges, for if America goes on ignoring what happened here under Moon (as Lankov seems determined to do), it will be all the more likely to overestimate that threat.
UPDATE: 12 July 2022:
Two days ago the Joongang Daily published an article, “The gutting of Korea’s spy agency,” about the Moon administration’s effort to end the gathering of critical intelligence on North Korea. I read this as further confirmation that a loose confederation was already underway.
And here are photographs from 2019 of South Korean officials at Panmunjeom forcibly returning two North Korean fishermen — ROK citizens, according to this country’s constitution — to the Kim dictatorship.
UPDATE: 14 August 2022:
What better way for a pro-North ROK administration to disable counter-intelligence than to transfer domestic spy-catching duties to a police agency that has just been purged of North-critical people?
Pennmike looks into the purging prosecutors’ unconstitutional argument that online criticism of North Korea by members of the police agency constituted illegal meddling in politics. The implicit extension of the concept of the domestic is yet another indication that in 2018 the Moon government already considered itself — as many prominent people on the nationalist left considered it — the partner in a de facto confederation.
