Glyn Ford, Former
Member of the European Parliament and author of Talking to North Korea (2018)
and Picturing the DPRK (2024) <glynford@track2asia.eu>
Pyongyang
Picture
North Korea’s nuclear programme is the symptom
of weakness, not strength. The West confuses David with Goliath. The reality is
the Pyongyang is comprehensively out-spent, out-gunned and out-resourced by its
southern nemesis. Seoul’s military budget dwarfs that
of Pyongyang by more than an order of magnitude and growing. Bundle together
Washington, Tokyo and Seoul and it’s a factor of two
hundred. The Republic of Korea’s 10.33% increase in its
2021 military budget matched the North’s total annual
military spend.
The North
constitutionally and in its order of battle is a nuclear weapon state. Yet the
hard reality was there is no alternative, even if it providentially killed
two birds with one stone. The regime faces two threats, external and internal.
The external military threat of regime change is countered by nuclear
deterrence. The internal threat is less a ‘magnolia revolution’, more a court quarrel.
Here Kim Jong Un needs to keep the people who matter happy - proximately the
two million living within the curtilage of Pyongyang - providing bread and
circuses! For the emerging middle-class the capital has spawned new
restaurants, coffee shops and waterparks and growing domestic tourism to the
Masikryong ski resort, Mount Kumgang and, for the future, the Kalma peninsula
beach complex. All this is only possible, even for the few, with some degree of
continued economic growth.
The two key
constrictions on growth are energy and manpower. The nuclear programme, in
sharply different ways, threatens to remove both. The first with civil nuclear
power. North has a self-sufficient nuclear fuel cycle with Light Water
Reactors. The second reason why in Hanoi Kim Jong Un was not prepared to
surrender his uranium enrichment plant was in order to emulate Iran. The first
was lack of trust in Washington. It was also why the North was so happy with
the Singapore Declaration's earlier call for ‘denuclearisation of the Peninsula’, and why Pyongyang was so disgruntled with Biden when he shuffled
the language, substituting North Korea for Peninsula.
In solving their
labour crisis their nuclear deterrent is central. Confident in its check on
Seoul and Washington, it allows them to decant men out of the military. A
standing army of close to 1.4 million could free more than 100,000 men just by
cutting conscription by a year. The North has an unfashionable notion of
drivers of growth. Schooled on massive factories and mines, the answer again is
yet more of the same. It just might work, drawing on the North’s exceptional pool of cheap skilled
labour.
2024’s ‘State of
the Union’ saw Kim make public the long-held elite
belief that early re-unification could only mean assimilation, consequent on
the economic damage and disadvantage of Washington’s ‘hostile policy’, believing if only the US
got off their backs, Pyongyang - matching other Asian tigers - could grow its
economy by 10-15% year on year for decades. Then in a generation or two
re-unification could have been on the table as North and South were back in the
same economic league for the first time since the early seventies. For now
peaceful unification has disappeared into the far future with Kim disowning the
people of the South. Why? Follow the money! The promise of mass economic aid
from Seoul died in the twin pits of Southern conservatism, and the
inevitability that any future war will inevitably turn nuclear. These are blunt
weapons at the North’s war fighting incapable of
allowing any sifting of friend from foe in the South with the necessity of
painting its people black. The invaluable lessons of Kursk for the North’s military planners only reinforce the message.
Kim Il Sung made a
strategic choice after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Empire as the
long ability to play-off Beijing and Moscow ended. The US tide was in spate and
it was prudent and timely to normalise relations with Washington. A strategic
option followed by son and grandson. It came closest to fulfilment in February
2019. In Hanoi, at the last, Kim hopes were dashed. Trump’s unprecedented engagement made its
failure final. The last best opportunity blew up in Kim’s face. For the North the subversion and sabotage of Trump’s unparalleled policy of engagement by his subalterns and
subordinates established, at least to their own satisfaction, there was no path
to peaceful coexistence.
This, in
conjunction with the US ’defeat’ in Afghanistan, vacillation over
Ukraine and the inability to command Israel over Gaza, fed confrontation over
conciliation. With this ebbing of American hegemony, only reinforced by the
anarchic thrashings of Trump in his second-term, Kim, while not abandoning
his links with Beijing, sees Moscow resurrected as saviour and to partner China
as the siamese twins of Pyongyang’s jigsaw diplomacy.
He is betting that the bloc politics - paused with the death of Soviet Union -
is back as the Washington squares up to Beijing. He’s
confident that Putin will finesse Trump’s crude
attempts at a ‘reverse Nixon’ leaving the North’s future
as manoeuvring within the bloc and not outside.
Kim continues to
polish, produce and deploy his nuclear arsenal plus his IRBMs and ICBMs. The
reference in the 2024 speech to a new ’super powerful’ weapon can only allude to
his, as yet, uncompleted hydrogen bomb project. Pyongyang was remarkably
restrained when former President Yoon attempted to provoke the North into a
military response with his drones over Kim Il Sung Square, but that is no guarantee
that there will not be sparks along the DMZ.
Nevertheless
greatest concern must be around the Northern Limit Line (NLL), that arbitrary
and generous unilateral determination by Seoul that delimited the maritime
border between South and North. It does not reflect international law or the
outcome of any likely arbitration under the Law of the Sea Convention. When Kim
- as he promised - makes his own demarcation of the Median Line there will
thousands of square kilometres of sea claimed both by North and South. The
launch of Kim’s new
Choe Hyon class warship suggests the North will increasingly challenge the
legitimacy of the NLL. How the new South Korean President handles that
will be an early test of the new Administration. Accidental war is much more
likely than surprise attack, and it should be born in mind that Pyongyang’s escalatory ladder has only two rungs. Washington wins any
fight, but it could be the ultimate pyrrhic victory to end overlooking and
overseeing a radioactive wasteland. The Peninsula for the moment more
dangerous than Ukraine or Gaza.
Now after Trump’s return and Kim’s speech any way forward will be solely Washington in dialogue with
Pyongyang. Nevertheless all the evidence is that Kim has scant interest any
re-engagement now he’s nesting in the fulcrum between
his neighbours. There is absolutely no interest in talking denuclearisation.
With the US as the far stronger of the two it will need to be first mover.
No-one expects anything that costs credibility, while Kim knows US sanctions
will stay long after the cease to serve any purpose.
Were Trump to
reluctantly acknowledge Pyongyang as a de facto nuclear
weapons state like India, Pakistan and Israel, it’s not inconceivable that Kim could decide his
deterrent programmes are sufficiently mature that no further testing is
necessary, halting further adventures in nuclear weapons and missile technology
- hydrogen bomb and miniaturisation, ICBM re-entry and guidance technologies.
In parallel there could be infrastructure and mining projects that deliver rare
earths for the world market and that growth to underpin the North’s middle class who matter. The hope for the South is not that they
will be invited to inaugural talks, but that the inability and unwillingness of
Trump to transfer tens of billions to the North to deliver, will see the South
come late to the stage to reprise the role of cash cow they played in the
Agreed Framework!
Glyn Ford, Former
Member of the European Parliament and author of Talking to North Korea (2018)
and Picturing the DPRK (2024) <glynford@track2asia.eu>
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