Origins of the conflict

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a product of both Japanese Colonialism and the Pacific War. In less than half a century, the Korean Peninsula went from feudalism to occupation (Japan formally annexed Korea in 1910), attempted assimilation and division as the US and the Soviet Union arbitrarily drew lines on maps in August 1945 to conclude one kind of war as a prelude to another. In doing so, they brutally divided a Nation. It was no quisling regime. Unlike much of Eastern Europe, the regime that emerged in the North was an indigenous rather than imposed one that resonated with Korean history, culture and community. The baptism of fire that forged the North Korean nation was the Civil War of 1950-53, although the dates are deceptive as hostilities kicked off well before the official start date of 25 June 1950 with tens if not hundreds of thousands of communists and socialists dying in failed uprisings in the South and continued after - albeit on a smaller scale - with guerrilla warfare, armed incursions and assassinations on both sides of the Armistice Line until at least the sixties. It also continued by proxy elsewhere with the South's troops fighting alongside US Forces in Vietnam while the North's pilots flew MiGs for the North Vietnamese Air force at the cost of hundreds of lives and its engineers helped build the tunnels that infested the battle zones.

The Armistice signed in 1953 has still not been turned into a Peace Treaty, so UN Command - to all intents and purposes the US - is still in a state of war with North Korea. However, the cessation of fighting did give the North and the South an opportunity to rebuild. The two might as well have been on different planets - Kim Il-Sung, The Great Leader, used Stalin's approach and his Southern counterpart, Syngman Rhee, crony capitalism. In the early days, despite massive injections of aid from the US that far outweighed the more modest assistance from the Soviet Union, China and East Germany, the South lost out badly. The North's economy boomed on the foundations of coal, steel and cement and by the late sixties, on some measures, it was one of the world's top twenty industrial economies while the South's remained a basket case. (That was to change with the arrival of President Park Chung-hee as the South's dictator and his introduction of Japanese style command capitalism that, as it played out, allowed the South to overtake the United Kingdom and become the world's ninth largest exporter in 2009). But North Korean growth began to stutter and stall. Like all Stalinist economies it struggled - and failed - to make the transition from heavy to light industry, from state consumption to public consumption. Yet as late as 1984 - during a period of rapprochement - it was able to offer and deliver aid to flood victims in the South. The wheels really fell off the economy with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet Empire in 1989. No longer could it play the two competing Communist giants off against each other. Trade with the Soviet Union fell from €4 Billion to €40 Million, 1% of what had gone before, while China ended 'friendship pricing' and demanded future payments in hard currency.

The result was that the economy went into meltdown, shrinking by 10% and more a year as energy and raw material supplies dried up. In the mid-90's, the country was pushed over the edge by a series of floods and droughts that destroyed much of the harvest and flooded many of the coal mines. The consequence was a famine that led to the premature deaths of between one and three Million people and was one of the twentieth century's worst famines. It was not the famine of Africa with chaos and anarchy; rather it was organized death in slow motion. The Public Distribution Service (PDS) continued to deliver food, but it was no longer enough to live on. The vulnerable died: orphans, small children and the elderly. Amongst the surviving children, up to 25% were permanently stunted and brain damaged. The US detected the famine early on but said nothing. When Pyongyang did belatedly ask for help, they had to overcome initial scepticism amongst Aid Agencies before the extent of the problem was finally acknowledged. The unfolding tragedy is described all too graphically in Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy (Granta, 2010). In the last decade and more, the EU has provided over €500 Million in humanitarian aid and assistance to the North. In the meantime, there has been some tough questioning of the case that the famine of the nineties was self-induced. It was certainly no more self-induced than the Bengal famine of 1943 when similar numbers died and Churchill and the British Government failed to act. Hazel Smith's piece in Asia Policy in 2008 puts the causality in perspective, North Korea as the Wicked Witch of the East; Social Science as Fairy Tale.

North Korean industrial goods are not of sufficient quality to compete in the free market. Where they can compete is in sectors of the market that are distorted by politics. In the past, the Communist block countertraded/ swapped shoddy goods with each other; now, in the post-Communist era, the classic example is the arms trade. Pyongyang sells copies of Soviet small arms around the world to 'countries of concern'. It also sells its missiles. Hwasong Missiles were used by the Iranians in the 'War of the Cities' during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and ,since then, Tehran has acquired Nodong and probably Taepodong technology as Pyongyang has successively produced longer range rockets. Other purchasers include Pakistan - whose own missiles are in fact clones of North Korea's - Yemen and Syria. It has also been accused of selling its dubious nuclear weapons expertise to Syria and Burma (Myanmar), although this Pyongyang denies. Weapons sales could bring in more than €2 Billion a year in hard currency, but that’s only the small change of the global arms trade.

The nuclear issue

Pyongyang’s interest in nuclear technology dates from the sixties, but then neither the Soviet Union nor China was keen to let Kim Il-Sung share its nuclear secrets. Finally, in the late 1980’s, the Soviets let the North purchase a graphite moderated reactor that was built at Yongbyon. The reactor provided by Moscow was capable of producing weapons grade plutonium. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the removal of their nuclear umbrella, the North wanted to put this capability to use. Moscow, itself under pressure from the US, pressed hard subsequently to get Pyongyang to sign up to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They finally signed it in 1992. Thus putting the reactor under the oversight of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Subsequently, IAEA inspectors were denied access to parts of the plant where they believed plutonium reprocessing might be taking place. In March 1993, when international concern grew, Pyongyang announced it was withdrawing from the NPT, as was allowed by the Treaty’s provisions if 'supreme national interests are jeopardised'. This triggered a nuclear crisis that led to the US warming up its jets in Okinawa for a pre-emptive strike against the North. A resolution to the stand-off was brokered by former President Jimmy Carter who went on a solo mission to Pyongyang much to President Clinton’s annoyance. The result of this mission was the 1994 Framework Agreement. This offered the North, in exchange for freezing the Yongbyon plant and eventually demolishing it, the promise of two Light Water Reactors (LWR) by 2003, in the interim 500,000 tonnes of Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) a year for its conventional power stations, the lifting of the 50 year long trade embargo and the opening of diplomatic relations.

In reality, Pyongyang got little if anything. The embargo was never lifted, diplomatic relations never established, while the delivery of the HFO was fitful. The construction of the two LWRs proceeded at snail's pace. When construction was finally abandoned in 2002 over claims of a secret North Korean Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) programme to make nuclear weapons (see below), HFO deliveries stopped and the nine year programme was running more than 10 years late! Many of the Bush neo-conservatives (neo-cons) admitted that they had been merely playing for time waiting for the North to collapse. Pyongyang was left with nothing for abandoning its nuclear ambitions. In consequence, they recommenced their operations in short order, and instead of becoming a nuclear power in a decade through the HEU route – if the North even had a serious programme then – it was fast tracked to the goal in less than three years. Washington demonstrated all the tactical skill of General Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn.

Current Economic situation

All the evidence shows that Kim Jong-Il, born in 1942, is still very much in charge, despite his stroke in August 2008 and his increasingly frail appearance. Kim’s continuing authority was reinforced by events in 2009 : a second partially successful nuclear weapons’ test; the third launch of a 'Taepodong' long range missile - in another attempt to put a satellite in orbit and beat the South – whose own attempt in June 2010 exploded less than three minutes after launch - in the space race; and the visits by former US Presidents to Pyongyang ( Bill Clinton in August 2009 and Jimmy Carter, for the second and third time, in  August 2010 and April 2011).

Simultaneously, a roadmap for the succession is being put in place. This roadmap shows a re-emphasis on the Party's role within the State and the emergence of a future collective leadership, whose public face will continue to be the Kim clan, within institutional framework of the Party’ of which more below. Who will be the horse and who the rider is yet unclear. All done in the context of ‘socialist modernisation’ with an acceptance of economic - but not political - reform leading to a pragmatic variant of Chinese Market-Leninism cut with Vietnamese characteristics. This would allow the new leadership to establish its legitimacy through delivery and consequently tying the emerging urban 'entrepreneurs' to the fate of the Party and vice-versa, in what might be called a 'non-capitalist' market economy, locking the two in an embrace where ultimately they stand or fall together.

Indeed, whoever takes over is likely to follow, or after recent events be driven down, a path that is an amalgam of that of China's Deng Xiaoping, who after his accession to power in 1978 brought China's economy, in the following decade, "from the plan to the market" - massively outperforming the Eastern Europeans and Vietnam's broadly parallel doi moi (innovation/ renovation) modernisation. The first stage of Vietnamese reform can already be seen in the practice of pha rao (see below) fence-breaking - the bending of rules to get things done. As Deng said, 'White cat, black cat; who cares as long as it catches mice'. Political reform is not part of anyone's plans. In China, reform meant that State Operated Enterprises were matched by new industries run not so much by individuals, but by local government, by villages, towns and cities, and state entities, such as sections of the Armed Forces, initially acting as contractors for the centre. In Vietnam, agriculture and industry were released from the centralised economic Plan. Thanks to those reforms, hundreds of Millions were lifted out of poverty. Indeed, in China, by World Bank Measures, the poverty rate fell from 53% during the Mao era, to 16.6% today.

In North Korea, both of these can be seen in plan and practice with the Agricultural, Economic and Industrial reforms of respectively 2002 and 2003, increasing the already existing entrepreneurial activity within sections of the Military and Party and the evidence on the streets and in the shops of the North's towns and cities of an emerging market of individual consumers. In Pyongyang, Italian, Japanese and local boutiques sell stiletto heels and €40,000 gold watches, Mont Blanc pens and designer clothes. More recently the Pizza Parlour has had competition from a fast-food Hamburger joint. The prices reveal the emerging dual economy. Official salaries prior to November 2009’s currency reform were between 2 and 5000 won/ month (€0.8 - 2.0 at the then prevailing rates), while a suit costs €180, a cheeseburger €2.0 and a small coffee €0.4. Thus a single coffee costs the same as a six month season ticket on the Metro.

While the Agricultural Reforms have brought some results, the Industrial Reforms have not proved successful. Taking 95% of industry off 'The Plan', allowing them to hire and fire at will and choosing process and product has merely resulted, in the absence of energy and raw materials, in more firing than hiring, and in the partial re-ruralisation of the economy, as factory work teams are sent to grow food. Its only major success was the pha rao, with managers turning a blind eye to allow their under-employed workers space to play the market. Equally, the financial reform that “monetarised” the economy has led to serious inflation, with reports of prices rising ten times and more since the reform, and with the dearth of domestic production sucking in of imports. The flagship Tong-Il Market in Pyongyang is thronging with thousands of shoppers, but, apart from basic commodities, the goods they buy are foreign, predominately Chinese. In the interim, the North's best beer, Taedonggang, and a range of ginseng products and restaurants are now advertised on State Television.

2009's turn to heavy industry with the much publicised up-grading of the Kangson steel works may indicate a partial return to earlier policies. This now uses anthracite rather than coke in steel making and therefore domestic rather than imported raw materials, fitting with Pyongyang's enthusiasm for 'Juche' (self-sufficiency). That year’s 250 day 'Speed Battle', from May to September, saw the whole population called on to work harder and longer to raise productivity, particularly in the coal, steel and railway sectors. In July and August, the normally busy beaches of the East Coast were empty as everyone did their bit.

The currency reform that took plae in North Korea in November 2009 was badly mishandled. It came with restriction on changing old for new currency at 150,000 Won in cash and 300,000 Won in bank savings - a total of somewhat less than €200 - coupled with a ban on the use of foreign currency, and was an attempt to bring rein-in and bring under control the negative consequences of the 2002/3 economic reforms. After 2003, the turning of blind-eye by managers saw many workers, particularly women, moonlight as ‘kiosk capitalists’ buying and selling far beyond anything that might legitimately be seen in a 'Farmers Market' with clothes, cigarettes, alcohol and imported food products, along with 'pirated' computer software and games in stalls in the market halls, on the streets and in the Metro. The successful new ‘entrepreneurs’ – many fell by the wayside into the arms of the ‘loan sharks’ with their double digit monthly interest rates - joined those of the Party and Military - long running the international trading companies - with standards of living way beyond the ordinary residents of Pyongyang. These 'nouveaux riches’ began to form a new class separate from the political elite, arrogant and into conspicuous consumption. It was this that triggered the need to restore control.

Yet the clumsy attempt broke down almost immediately as the move threatened the traditional ‘entrepreneur’s’ lifestyle with their inability to spend their euros and dollars. This reform served to destroy the secret savings of the new entrepreneurs as the old notes became just so much waste paper, but the reaction was sufficiently strong that they got a public apology of sorts and the sacrifice of the official in charge as it became clear that the economic reform genii could not be put back in the bottle. Nonetheless the ‘kiosk capitalists’ have now disappeared behind closed doors to, as far as possible, inconspicuously consume their newly earned wealth.

The current goal is to achieve a strong and prosperous economy by 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-Sung's birth. The key question is cause and effect. If there are policy differences, they lie between those who believe military power comes from and is underpinned by industrial and economic strength and those who stand this causality on its head and follow a 'Military First' line. For them 'A cat cannot catch mice after knowing the taste of meat'. Inasmuch as we know anything, the new collective leadership that has been put in place tends to favour the former. The obsession with the succession means new reforms have been overlooked. Investments is the key for the future. This has been recognized by the creation of the State Capital Investment Committee, that is to take over the currently divided responsibility for inward investment from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade respectively. It will report directly to the Prime Minister’s Office. The problem is that it will be difficult if not impossible to deliver without a settlement on the Peninsula. No-one, apart possibly for Korean ‘family’, will invest in a pariah economy.

Even the little that has been achieved is under threat. One of the key motors of economic reform in China a quarter of a century ago was the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Shenzhen, cheek by jowl with Hong Kong: for many, North Korea's Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) abutting the South was believed to be capable of emulating it. Yet the on-off serial provocations by both over KIC is threatening to fatally undermine investor confidence in its reliability as a serious contributor to Southern profits and Northern reform. This was only made worse by the suspension, in Summer 2008, of the activities in the Mount Kumgang resort complex, run by Hyundai on the North's East coast. This suspension was consequent upon the death of a South Korean tourist who was shot when failing to respond to a challenge while in a restricted area in the early hours of the morning.

Current political situation

On the political level, the Party is back. After the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994, one man rule mediated through the Party was replaced by decisions increasingly shaped by a three-way tug of war between Party, Cabinet and Military co-operating, competing and clashing, issue by issue, item by item, under the ‘charismatic’ leadership of Kim Jung Il. Now the status quo ante has been restored. The first inkling of this was Rodong Sinmun's (The Central Committee of the Korean Workers Party – KWP –  daily  paper) October 8th 2008 editorial that claimed 4.2 Million domestic and 200,000 overseas visitors a year to the Party Monument. The editorial was not only a break with the past, but also a break with reality. This was obvious to any resident or visitor to Pyongyang. I was in the Capital for two weeks in August 2008, and again 12 months later, passing the Monument virtually daily, and, on two occasions, visiting for several hours. There was no sign of the required thousand visitors an hour - the most seen on at one time was two - nor was the infrastructure in place to handle this flood of pilgrims. Rather the function of the editorial - all are collectively read and studied by Party branches – was, by the very absence of any factual basis, to place on record a restored primacy for the Party after its benign neglect since Kim replaced his father in 1997. This was followed, twelve months later, by a radical internal makeover of the Party with some heavy churning and replacement of Department Heads and Section Chiefs and a new more dynamic head of the key International Department, Kim Yong Il.

The succession itself remains a family affair. The winners at last September’s Party Conference were Jang Song Taek, Kim Kyong Hui and Kim Jong Un, respectively the brother-in-law, sister and youngest son.  The previous party plenum had taken place in December 1993 and, since then, the leadership structure had withered and atrophied with death, disease and demotion more than halving the ranks of the Central Committee. Last September, in contrast, the Party’s hammer, sickle and calligraphy brush symbol adorned Pyongyang’s streets. The outcome was a new Central Committee and Politburo reflecting both generational and political change. Kim Jong Il began to delegate elements of authority amongst a core group of three family members with others on the Standing Committee of the Politburo and within the Party infrastructure. It was at least a double if not triple lock. None of the trinity has access to all the centres of power. In June 2010, Jang Song Taek was appointed Vice-Chairman of the State’s National Defence Commission. Immediately prior to the Party Conference, Kim Jong Un and Kim Kyong Hui were promoted to Generals.  At the Conference itself, Kim Kyong Hui was elected to the Politburo and her husband Jang Song Taek became an alternate member, while Kim Jong Un took the post of Vice-Chair of the Party’s Central Military Commission through which the Party exercises control over the military. As a consequence, the son is not on the Politburo, the sister is not on the Central Military Commission and her husband is not a full Politburo Member.

This trio might certainly face opposition from Kim Ok, Kim Jong Il’s wife who is not only a former division director of the National Defence Commission but who was also part of the group who accompanied Marshall Jo Myong Rok when he went to Washington to meet President Clinton in 2000. She may well be supported by the  senior officials of the Organisation and Guidance Department of the Party who clashed with Jang prior to his 2004 purge.

Little is known of either Kim’s sister or son, but the brother-in-law is more notorious. Jang Song Taek (born in 1946) was Vice Director of the Party's Organisation and Guidance Department while his two brothers were prominent in the military when all three were dismissed in February 2004, as the Party was restructured by Kim because of policy clashes between Jang, then playing a conservative role, and Pak Pong Ju, the Prime Minister responsible for promoting economic reform. Jang's position at the time was not helped when Hwang Jang Yop, the most senior North Korean defector who even had been Kim Il Sung's ideology secretary, and currently living in Seoul, , named him as a potential successor. Jang has learnt his lesson and learnt it well. A repentant and reformed Jang was rapidly rehabilitated, emerging as First Director of the Party's Department of Working People's Organisation and Capital Construction. By March 2006, he was leading a 30 strong Delegation on an 11 day visit to Wuhan, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, charged with learning the lessons of China's reform process. In April 2011, Kim Jong Un was conspicuous in his absence from the session of the Supreme People’s Assembly and singularly failed to be appointed to any significant position.

The often more hidden figure who has prospered is Kim Yong Il. A family member who has added to his position of Head of the International Department of the Party, both a place on and the position as Secretary to the Central Committee.

All the pieces have been put in place for a smooth transition at the appropriate time. The next steps – if fate does not intervene – will follow in 2012 as the celebrations of the centenary of Kim Il Sung’s birth kick off. All the indications points, as previously mentioned, at a reprise of the China’s evolution with the establishment of a collective leadership within the confines of the Party with Kim Jong Un, at least formally, first amongst equals. A rapid transfer of power would probably put Jang as regent and kingmaker, while the longer game would put Kim Jong Un directly in charge.

There will also need to be a change in the picture policy. Currently, all buildings, including private homes and subway carriages, must show two - sometimes three - pictures of the 'Great President' and of the 'Great General', separately and then together. An attempt to cut back, a couple of years ago, to just the first caused so much political speculation in the West that it was rapidly reversed. But just like in Islam, when Caliphs after Mohammed eventually had to stop the practice of each preaching one step lower down than their predecessors or they would have ended up buried, there is a limit to wall space.

North Korea – a nuclear threat?

The US and Japan – and more recently South Korea - enormously overplay the threat from the North with far too much attention paid to neo-con fairy tales from Langley. Pyongyang's prime objective is regime survival. They know the first use of a nuclear weapon or a missile in anger would see them wiped off the Peninsula. North Korea's military budget may be 25% of its GNP, but it is less than 0.4% of that of the United States, Japan and South Korea combined. South Korea alone has a military budget four times larger than that of the North. As for its nuclear weapons, Washington has 100,000 times more firepower in its 'Trident' fleet alone than what Pyongyang has demonstrated then, with its two less than successful nuclear tests. Both were ‘fizzles’ where the full force of the bomb was not released due to an early break-up of the core, delivering only 10-20% of the expected destructive power. Nor does the North have a reliable or suitable platform to launch them. All three Taepodong launches, in that sense, have been failures. Even if they succeeded, they lacked a guidance system and did not have the payload capacity to carry The Complete Works of Kim Il Sung, let alone a plutonium based nuclear weapon. in Spring 2010, in that context, Washington refused point blank, to recognise North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, despite the view of Mohamed El Baradei, former director of the IAEA, that North Korea is a fully-fledged nuclear power. Such a refusal is inevitably driving Pyongyang to test for a third time. Whether this is actually the Pentagon’s objective is not clear. If anything, US and Japanese plans to deploy 'Star Wars' technologies that would allow a pre-emptive strike against the DPRK are more destabilising and dangerous as the North watches its ability to respond eroding month by month. Less worrying for Pyongyang are hints from Seoul that they might develop their own nuclear weapons. For the North, this would both justify the retention of their own nuclear deterrent, and put welcome strains on the Seoul – Washington relationship.

Pyongyang has agreed on more than one occasion to dismantle and disable its Yongbyon reactor, and even offered to more recently export its spent fuel rods to remove their ability to extract further plutonium in exchange for settlements that included fresh deliveries of HFO, removal from the 'terror state' list and diplomatic relations. All to no avail, however, there was never an agreement to give up either the plutonium that has already been reprocessed or its nuclear weapons. Nor, for that matter, was there ever a deal on missile development, production, testing or sales. The good news at least was that the 'realists' in the US State Department replaced Pentagon 'fundamentalists' in advising on North Korea's military and weapons capacity. The never very convincing claim by Washington of a second active DPRK nuclear programme, based on HEU in 2002  and for which no serious evidence was produced, is now largely discredited.

While they certainly received around a dozen first-generation gas centrifuges from the Pakistani proliferator A. Q. Khan, in the 1990’s, they were never able to access the specialised steel or the aluminium necessary to produce the thousands required for a working cascade. More recently, the situation has changed. They have shown American experts a brand new uranium enrichment plant at Yongbyon , with an experimental LWR around 2000 centrifuges producing low-level enriched uranium suitable for fuelling the plant.

All of this clearly means that the Bush crisis that happened in October 2002 was, at best, faulty intelligence and another 'dodgy dossier' ,‘WMD moment’, like in Iraq, or, at worst, enemy action by 'fundamentalist' neo-cons who sought a confrontation with Pyongyang and a justification for reneging on the Framework Agreement. The answer does not have to be for the US to demand intrusive inspections across the length and breadth of the country they are still at war with. They should rather ask for an annual energy audit. The quantity and quality of electricity required to run a serious cascade, requires enough energy to power a medium sized city with absolutely no voltage fluctuations.Such an audit would quickly reveal any diversion of electricity, whose scale could point either at  a serious HEU programme. Nevertheless,a technical fix does not remove political ill will. In both Washington and Tokyo, there are forces that see advantage in a continued stand-off with North Korea.

For Washington, the current disputes over US bases in Okinawa is only made worse if there was to be any US brokered Peace Treaty with the North. Indeed, a peace treaty would simultaneously extinguish Washington's rights to use a number of Japan's military facilities granted sixty years ago, in a very different climate, for the duration of the conflict with Korea. The threat from the North was also an essential factor in the equation that led then Prime Minister Hatoyama to renege on his campaign promise, before his election in September 2009, to move the Futemna base out of Okinawa, forcing his early resignation less than nine months later.

Even if Obama might change his stance, the same is not true for Japan. Japanese politicians need an enemy: first, it justifies their collaboration with Washington over the 'Star Wars' project (Theatre Missile Defence – TMD), and the expansion of the military budget. Secondly, they need a belligerent and threatening Pyongyang to provide the necessary leverage to persuade the Japanese public to vote, when they believe the time is right, for the legally mandated referendum on the question,  the 'peace clause' (Article 9) out of the ‘US imposed’ post-war Constitution. This will be achieved by fanning the flames of disputes with the North, especially with respect to the abductees’ issue. In 2002, at the North Korea-Japan Summit, Kim Jong Il admitted that North Korea had, during the seventies and eighties, abducted 13 Japanese nationals and, consequently, returned five survivors to Tokyo with Prime Minister Koizumi. Whipped up by the Japanese Press, public opinion was outraged. The Japanese Authorities understandably demanded more information on the fate of those who had died in the interim. The key case was that of Megumi Yokota who was abducted as a teenager. Pyongyang returned her remains. Tokyo tested them and said the DNA did not match and uses this as an excuse for freezing its own negotiations with the North and not delivering on Six Party Talks' commitments.

There was absolutely no excuse for the abductions, even if the Japanese dictatorship during the war years abducted hundreds of thousands of Koreans to become slave labour and to serve on the frontlines as 'comfort women'. But Japan's case rests on bad science. Nature, the world's most authoritative scientific periodical, pointed out in 2005 that the DNA tests were seriously flawed, utilising techniques that are no longer recognised as valid. Moreover, the Japanese Authorities still refuse to allow the material to be retested using recognised procedures. The situation is also complicated by a continued “ratchetting up” of the number of 'abductees' by Japanese conservative groups - thirteen, seventeen, twenty, fifty and even more, thus offering no prospect of final closure for Pyongyang. Equally, Tokyo has refused to deal with the request of the four remaining Japanese Red Army hijackers from the 1970s living in Pyongyang to return to Japan to face trial. Their continued presence in Pyongyang was Washington’s excuse for keeping North Korea on the ‘terror state’ list. Their only precondition being that unsubstantiated charges of their involvement in the abductions from Japan be dropped. All in their sixties, they would spend most or all of the rest of their lives in jail. One an avid Liverpool fan and whose favourite player is Gerrard, is having a tough time anyway with his team’s poor performance in the Premiership in 2010/2011.

At the same time, while Japan obsesses about Taepodong (Pyongyang's long range missile), North Korea has already deployed dozens and possibly as many as a hundred Nodong missiles capable of hitting almost anywhere in mainland Japan. Taepodong is an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile designed as a dual use technology to launch satellites and threaten the US's periphery. The whole world - save Japan's Ministry of Defence - accepted that the August 1998 firing of Taepodong was a failed attempt to put a satellite into orbit. The second test barely got off the ground, blowing up after 43 seconds, while the third in April 2009 recapitulated the result from eleven years earlier with the third stage failing to ignite. Japan has threatened to use pre-emptive deterrence to shoot down launch vehicles that fly over Japan at a height that puts them in international space and on the only trajectory that will achieve Pyongyang's objective. UN Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718 (2006) were ambiguous as to whether sanctions cover such launches as part of a space programme. Nevertheless, sanctions were stepped up further with June's UN Security Council Resolution 1874 (2009), which even China supported, and the blacklisting of companies and individuals involved in nuclear development. Yet any Taepodong fired in anger would not be targeted at Japan.

While the crisis with the North played well to the Liberal Democratic Party's conservative constituency, it was initially unclear what position the Democratic Party Government, that took office in September 2009, would take. In practice, it has proved little different. The Party is a coalition of convenience between self-confident nationalists, alongside socialists and social-democrats close to Rengo, the Trade Union Confederation. The former seized the Foreign Policy agenda. Ichiro Ozawa, the eminence gris of the DPJ and  leader of its largest faction and author of their successful election strategy, was a strong nationalist whose book Blueprint for a New Japan called for a 'normal' country that projected  political and military power regionally and globally set the direction. Although now in disgrace because of serious allegations of corruption, the faction he used to lead is still powerfuland maintaining its position. The Government had committed itself to continuing with TMD. This did not change when Kan replaced Hatoyama as Prime Minister and Ozawa stood down from frontline politics. Whether March 2011’s triple tragedy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster forces cuts in the defence budget and a re-appraisal of TMD is yet to be seen.

Of course, Pyongyang has also watched the Libyan experience with close attention as the one of a 'country of concern' that allowed its nascent nuclear weapons programme to be dismantled by the US and the UK in December 2003 in exchange of a great welcome back into the global community by Washington and Brussels, although, seven years on, the two self-same countries are leading a military campaign to promote regime change on the back of an insurrection in the East of the country led by tribal opponents. This virtually guarantees Pyongyang will refuse to surrender the last products of its nuclear programme.

Other issues

Pyongyang's other issues are food, energy and human rights and as far as they’re concerned, iIt's a mixed picture. 2008's harvest was better than expected and one of the highest on record, and the 2002 reforms, that allow farmers to sell in the markets surplus production above new low and easily attainable targets, have pushed productivity up; however, there is little evidence that the exceptional nature of the 2008 harvest was not as much good luck as good judgement, a chance conjunction of weather rather than sustainable improving agricultural management. 2009 was not quite as good and 2010 worse. It is true that there are serious distribution problems, and now, for many, it is a problem of accessibility rather than availability. Be careful what you ask for, as you might get it. The reforms the West demanded have consequences. It used to be that the PDS distributed what cereals were available. Now, apart from minimum rations, North Koreans increasingly need money to access cereals. In the remote industrialised cities of the North East, like Hamhung, where few factories are working and where there is no agricultural hinterland, hunger has re-appeared. It was there that food riots were reported in the late 1990s, when the ‘arduous march’ was at its most difficult. The North has appealed for emergency food aid. Althought the full extend of the hunger is unclear, the situation in some regions is clearly critical. The tardy response from the West has is political diversion.

The Six Party Talks convened by the Chinese with the participation of North and South Korea, the US, Japan and Russia were once seen as crucial to any final settlement but they have been deadlocked. Besides, with the current Administrations in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo, this may no longer be the case. In the United States, President Obama has followed a policy of 'malign neglect' as he prioritises the Middle East over North Korea.

When former US President Carter travelled this April to Pyongyang with three former heads of state, Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, Mary Robinson of Ireland and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. They announced on their departure that Kim Jong Il stated that North Korea was willing to hold bilateral or multilateral talks at any time, on any subject without precondition but that withholding food aid to the North Korean people because of unrelated political or military issues was a human rights violation. A reiteration both of North’s current willingness to deal – in the face of the present intransigence  from the US, Japan and South-Korea – and the need for humanitarian aid.

Energy continues to be the critical input with supplies outside of the Capital providing only a few hours electricity per day. Yet any temptation by Pyongyang to accept anything short of self-reliance has been undermined by the policy somersault in Seoul, with the current South Korean President moving from the engagement policies of his two predecessors to confrontation. No plans for electricity supplied by the South across the border will be countenanced with Seoul's hand on the on-off switch. Despite the 1994 Framework Agreement that promised two LWRs as part of the exchange for ending the nuclear weapons programme, it seems unlikely that they will come back on the Agenda anytime soon. Instead the future lies with the rehabilitation and improved productivity in the coal and hydroelectric industries, a search for offshore oil and the possible exploitation of ‘renewables’, including the extensive tidal power potential on Korea's west coast.

No-one is suggesting in Western terms that human rights in the North are other than dire. Quite how dire is impossible to tell. Pyongyang refuses to allow the UN rapporteur on Human Rights in the DPRK to visit, and apart from two Amnesty International visits - the latest more than 15 years ago - no internationally recognised human rights NGOs have been allowed in the country. The political camps are full of those who have fallen out with the Party, accused of corruption - rightly or wrongly - , been on the wrong side of a faction fight, or taken the responsibility for something that went wrong. Pyongyang has not yet proved willing to restart the only Human Rights dialogue it was engaged in: the Human Rights dialogue with the EU, which was suspended in 2003 when the EU, without prior notice or consultation, sponsored a resolution critical of human rights in North Korea at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. The Heritage Foundation, Washington's neo-con think tank, was delighted with the outcome, less so some EU officials who were part of the dialogue process and who said that they were just beginning to receive serious data. North Korea would be its own worst enemy if it wasn't for the other side. Here thrice told tales from decades ago in Kim Il Sung's time circulate as fresh evidence, while contemporary accounts come from organisations with their own particular axes to grind. Some stories have proved to be straight fabrications.

External Actors

As for the other external actors, China continues to be as desperate for a settlement as Pyongyang is wary of Beijing. The old phrase that Beijing and Pyongyang are a close as 'lips and teeth' has not been taken out for a talk recently, and the 2009 'Year of DPRK-China Friendship' was less than conspicuous in its fervour. August 2009’s temporary conciliatory gestures from the North to both the US and the South were as much driven by Pyongyang’s desire to show China, at the time, that they could do it alone as they were by any consequences of UN sanctions. Those with money in Pyongyang have never had it so good. In the provinces, young women send their pictures to friends in Pyongyang, hoping to find a boyfriend with the necessary residence permit. On the other hand, Beijing might be willing, as in 1950, to intervene 'to save the revolution', if things fall apart. They neither want US troops on their border following a collapse, nor military adventurism, provoking the South with repeated excursions over the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL) - where even the US fails to support Seoul's delineation (that line forms the Line of Control at sea that the De-Militarised Zone does on land).

If China did intervene, it would be an in-out operation that would achieve what was supposed to be achieved and then withdrew. Russia just wants to maintain its limited influence in the region. The EU just sits out the party, with this time around its predilection for a policy of 'No Say, No Pay', despite its enhanced Foreign Policy role that came with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in November 2009. In extremis, it takes its lead from Washington still. Back in 1994, it had no say in the menu and yet got stiffed with a disproportionate share of the bill. No viable solution works without the US.

The tragic sinking, in March 2010 in the area, of the South Korean corvette, the 'Cheonan', with the loss of 46 lives  only made things worse. This was the third serious clash in the last decade. In 1999, more than a dozen North Korean sailors died when their ship was set ablaze in a fire fight, while, in 2002, 30 North Koreans – some southern sources say up to 100 – and four South Koreans lost their lives. As recently as four months earlier, a North Korea sailor had died in a clash in the same area. Whether it was military adventurism outside of the line of command, an accident or an attack ordered from Pyongyang remains unclear; yet it has strengthened the military’s position in the North. It has also shown the capacity of the North for asymmetrical warfare with generations old weapons systems capable, in the right circumstances, of taking on the latest naval units. As for the South, the strong reaction over the ‘Cheonan’ is a reflection of a more aggressive approach in Seoul, and of the fact that, for the first time in a decade, it was perceived to come off second best. The political fallout in the South was that President Lee Myung-bak’s Grand National Party did badly in local and regional elections that followed, as young voters in particular protested not so much in favour of the North, but against the escalation of tension.

The subsequent shelling on Yeonpyeong Island by North Korea, in November 2010, while difficult to justify, needs putting in context. The shelling was in response to the refusal of a North Korean request on the ‘hot line’ between the two countries to halt live-firing exercises by the South Korean Navy in the disputed waters arounf the NLL.

Neither a North Korea backed into a corner, nor forced regime change will serve the region or the world well. The consequences for 'The North Koreans' shown in Irina's pictures will be brutal. The question is reform, collapse or war. Will Pyongyang turn out to be Beijing or Hanoi, Tirana or Bucharest, Baghdad or Hiroshima? Changing regime trumps regime change every time.

Glyn Ford

1 May 2011

Russia Policy to Pacific Rim
Relationship: EU-Two Koreas