The Future of the Korean Question

Barry K. Gills, University of Newcastle, UK

The best time to deal with a major crisis is before it actually happens.

The recent efforts of Joel Wit, Charles Kartman, of the Perry Mission to Pyongyang, and the launching of Benjamin Gilman's 'North Korea Threat Reduction Act of 1999' alert us to the fact that US Korea policy has arrived at a crucial watershed. Both carrots and sticks and good cop and bad cop will be needed to get the balance right to manage the situation toward a peaceful and sustainable equilibrium.

I was asked to provide an overview and an analytical framework to guide our discussions. Firstly, as a brief preface, I would like to emphasise that there is at present a historic opportunity to 'get this thing right' and to avoid the possibility of war and much human suffering on the Korean peninsula. There is likewise an opportunity to address what is a very real and acute humanitarian crisis affecting North Korea, which demands the serious attention of the international community. There is an opportunity to strengthen the framework of stability in region so that peace and democratic values may flourish in the future. It is our moral and our political duty to 'get this thing right' this time. Above all, however, and as the lessons of Kosovo tell us, 'He who wills the end, must also will the means.'

The Korean Question

First I will establish a set of analytical and historical criteria for understanding the fundamentals of the Korean Question; then examine the main problems of the Post Cold War Era; then review prescriptions presently available - in light of the fundamentals of the Korean Question.

I draw my general description of the Korean Question as follows: 'the matter of conflicting claims to domestic and international legitimacy, and the desire for national reunification'[1] At its inception the Korean conflict was perceived primarily as a geopolitical issue. The Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) were both products of the Cold War, but their antagonism has outlived it and continues to produce controversy and potential conflict. Long term regional security in Northeast Asia depends upon a resolution of the Korean conflict. During the Cold War the division of Korea was tacitly accepted as a necessary element of stability, however, the question now is whether the division is a source of instability. Despite the formal resolution of the Korean Question by the entry of both Koreas into the United Nations from autumn 1991, implying the recognition of two states and the legitimacy of both by the international community, nevertheless, ideological and military confrontation between two rival governments on the peninsula continues.

Despite their formal equality the reality of the international status of the two regimes is quite different. The essential problem is that North Korea is in crisis and has been so throughout the 1990s. The origins of the present crisis rest in North Korea's relative weakness, both economically and diplomatically, a result of its unwillingness to reform and adapt itself to changing international conditions. The separate development of North and South Korea over a period of some five decades has produced sharply different outcomes. I have analysed this separate development in some detail over the entire period in another place (Korea versus Korea: a case of contested legitimacy) [2] and therefore will not repeat myself here. However, by as early as 1994 it was already clear to my mind that the North Korean policy of 'limited reform and opening' was an approach that would probably prove 'insufficient to solve its fundamental economic problems' and that furthermore, 'If the economic crisis worsens this may eventually threaten political stability and reforms may come "too late" to save the regime". A classic syndrome of the ancien regime. Therefore, I already concluded in late 1994 that 'The progress of further economic reforms in North Korea is now crucial to the future regional security in Northeast Asia and to the prospects for ambitious new approaches towards regional economic co-operation and integration. A new security framework that takes into account the security needs of all the states in the region will be a necessary prerequisite to achieving a smooth transition to a new regional order'.[3] The situation seems little changed today.

I would now like to outline the Seven Fundamentals of the Korean Question, with reference to their continuity in the past and in the present:

1. The Geopolitical Context: which has its origins in the partition of Korea at the outset of the Cold War and is characterised by the involvement of the four great powers of the region: The US, USSR (Russia), China and Japan.

2. Separate Development: which is characterised by rival governments, ideology, economic systems and strategies of reunification. [4]

3. Government to Government monopoly on North-South relations: accompanied by a fear of or reluctance to engage in any national political process by either side; producing South Korea's exclusion of organised labour from the formal political process and from state power (via the National Security Law and other provisions); while the North pursued 'national front' tactics such as the demand for the abolition of the NSL, ANSP etc.). The key factor here has been the absence of democracy on the Korean peninsula until very recently.

4. The US-ROK military-security alliance: founded on the principle of the need to deter the DPRK from aggression, placing the ROK under the US nuclear umbrella; while the DPRK has consistently demanded the withdrawal of US military forces as a precondition of reunification.

5. The Armistice: which is merely a truce system as opposed to a formal peace treaty; which raises the question of bilateral relations among the parties and especially the issue of North-South recognition (as the South is not a signatory to the Armistice, whereas the US, China, and the DPRK are signatories).

6. No mutual recognition between the ROK and DPRK: where the rival claims to legitimacy as the sole government of the Korean nation continue and the ultimate aim of reunification is not renounced by either side.

7. No normalisation of diplomatic relations: where the formula of cross-recognition is not completed.( Although the ROK established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1990 and with China in 1992, the laggard side of the equation is North Korea and its recognition. The fault is on both sides here: i.e. DPRK intransigence and counter-productive behaviour and ROK policies (e.g. under former Presidents Roh Tae Woo and Kim Young Sam) which sought to slow the progress of cross-recognition, holding it hostage to improvement in North-South relations).

PART II

Key Problems of the Post Cold War Era

The central question of the Post Cold War Era is how to adjust to the changing geopolitical context and the international political economic environment and still maintain the conditions for peace, stability, prosperity and security in Northeast Asia and on the Korean peninsula.

Despite the general trend toward post-communist regimes common in both Eastern Europe and much of East Asia (including even China depending on your point of view), predictions of North Korea's regime collapse (once, and seemingly always, a growth industry in some quarters) were mistaken: a mistake I am pleased to say I did not make. However, although it was premature to expect the collapse of the DPRK in 1989, the probability has increased and it is now more likely that a regime collapse could indeed take place in North Korea.

However, the key question of the Post Cold War Era in Korea is this: Is the division a source of instability and perhaps future military conflict in the region? The paradox of the Post Cold War Era in Korea resides in the rapidity with which the four major powers and even South Korea reverted to the status quo of division, viewing reunification as undesirable (due to calculations of its cost, their security interests, regional rivalries, etc.). Thus began the de facto policy of 'propping up' the Kim Il Sung/Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea. However, this was mixed with a somewhat contradictory policy of 'applying pressure' on North Korea in pursuit of concessions from the regime on such matters as security issues. This risked becoming a very dangerous game of 'driving the DPRK into a corner'.

At the same time, the DPRK adopted a policy of no meaningful reform and resorted to using 'threats as bargaining chips' in order to attempt to wrest more aid and thus sustain its faltering economy. This produced a counter-productive syndrome of threat perception by those it was intended to influence, thus slowing progress towards normalisation of relations and cross-recognition or the lifting of the US economic embargo. This policy was pursued at the cost of further reducing the possibility of internal reform and entrenching the failed juche system, culminating in a slow 'death by strangulation' in the 'dying fields' of North Korea in the late 1990s. It acutely poses the question of 'reform and opening' once again (now known as the 'soft landing' scenario) versus the alternative of an internal coup or popular revolution in North Korea to overthrow the Kim Jong Il dictatorship (now known as the 'hard landing' scenario).[5]

PART III

Prescriptions of the Present

The recent political transitions in North and South Korea have been quite different. The consolidation of the Kim Jong Il regime was only a hardening of a regime already in power. The transition to the government of President Kim Dae Jung in South Korea was, in contrast, the fulfilment of the democratic transition begun against the old authoritarian system in 1987-88. Now there is an historic opportunity to make real progress and recover the ground lost during most of the 1990s, especially on the normalisation process and peaceful co-existence. The advent of democracy in South Korea alters the equation. Now is the opportunity for democratic ideology to play a transforming role in the Korean Question, if deployed well by President Kim Dae Jung, who has in his distinguished career surely established his democratic credentials.

This can be achieved by broadening the social participation in North/South relations, which President Kim Dae Jung is already doing to some extent, but without fear of the 'fifth column' element as in the past. The ROK should now seek to actively promote democratic change in both South Korea and in North Korea. In this respect the outcome of the Korean Question now depends as much on further reform in South Korea as it does on reform in North Korea. These can finally be seen as two aspects of the same process, and it is here that the historic analogy with the German process of peaceful reunification is most important and instructive.

There is also now an opportunity to overcome the neglect of the Korean Question evident during the 1990s, despite the Agreed Framework. However, there is a necessity for a clear policy and a clear vision to be accompanied by a comprehensive approach and policy c0-ordination. President Kim Dae Jung's 'Sunshine Policy' and President Clinton's engagement policy (with the pending Perry mission report still awaited at time of writing) are positive steps in the right direction. The convergence of ROK and US policy on North Korea offers the real possibility of regaining lost momentum and perhaps even of achieving a genuine breakthrough on North/South relations (which remains the real key to the Korean Question).

This may be a case of 'better late than never', but there is still a danger of it being 'too little too late', or even of moving in the wrong direction. This dilemma is epitomised recently by the opposition between the Perry Mission approach and that of Representative Gilman. The 'crisis theory' in Washington and its advocates are in danger of making the 'hard landing' scenario a self-fulfilling prophecy and forcing the hand of US policy in that direction. This involves the placing of US global security interests (e.g. the priority placed by the US on the missile and nuclear issues) ahead of the ROK's 'local' security, political, and economic interests (priority on reducing tension).

We do have a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions, requiring action via 'the separation of politics and economics'. We also have a security problem, requiring neither over reaction nor under reaction, both carrots and sticks.

Prescriptions:

1. Normalise relations: Complete the cross-recognition process, i.e. US-DPRK normalisation and Japan-DPRK normalisation.

2. Strengthen the Comprehensive Approach: Continue trilateral co-ordination of North Korea policy between the ROK, US, and Japan in support of the convergence of Sunshine Policy and engagement. Consider establishing a format within the US government apparatus that will facilitate continuity in implementation into the next administration.

3. Negotiate to lift the embargo: increase trade, investment, exchanges, and assistance (financial and technical) with North Korea, but in a manner that actually enhances the prospects of such contacts enhancing the impetus to reform in North Korea (as opposed to a 'buy -out' and the sealed enclave economic approach).

4. Formalise a Peace Agreement: Using the on-going 4-Party talks (with a parallel 6 Party extension including Russia and Japan), and move toward a Northeast Asia regional security dialogue, including confidence building measures and eventually consider phased ground force reductions by all parties, including the US. In the interim, continue with 'bifrontal trilateralism' which involves a parallel trilateral security dialogue between the US, China, and DPRK.

5. Resume the North-South Dialogue: with broadened social participation; deploy democratic ideology and social forces; and move boldly to establish mutual recognition between North and South Korea and the establishing of full diplomatic relations and peaceful co-existence.

[1]Barry K. Gills, Prospects for Peace and Stability in Northeast Asia: The Korean Conflict, Conflict Studies 278, Research Institute for the study of Conflict and Terrorism, (RISCT), London, February 1995, p. 1.

[2] B.K. Gills, Korea versus Korea: A case of contested legitimacy, London, Routledge, October 1996. The central thesis in this work is that the greater adaptability of the South Korean regime to change in the international environment was the decisive factor in the long term in the competition between the two economically and diplomatically. It was not simply a matter of communism versus capitalism that determined the outcome, nor simply the fact that South Korea seemed to follow a policy more favoured by history and by the world's most powerful country, i.e. the United States of America. North Korea's failure resulted from its unwillingness and inability to reform and adapt itself to changing conditions.

[3] Gills, 1995, op. cit, p. 25.

[4] As above, in Korea versus Korea I argue that it was South Korea's greater long term compatibility with and adaptability to the main trends in a changing international political economy (and its greater participation in the international system), along with its greater pragmatism on matters of ideology and policy that produced the triumph of 'economic diplomacy' by the end of the 1980s (particularly the abandonment of anti-communism as the guiding ideology of foreign policy). In contrast North Korea's rigidity, lack of compatibility with and participation in the international political economic system, the lack of adaptability of juche socialism and thus the lack of reform and openness, combined to produce failure: diplomatically and economically, and eventually politically, and led directly to the crisis situation from the late 1980s to the present.

[5] It should be pointed out that if a sudden coup or popular revolution (or a combination of the two, which is likely) were to occur, this would be a supreme moment of danger for the peninsula and the entire region. The best course of action on the part of all other governments in the region would be to strictly observe the rule of non-intervention. Any attempt to intervene, especially militarily, in such a situation in North Korea might produce unintended and possibly catastrophic consequences. The preferred outcome of such a scenario would be the emergence of a new and reformist oriented government in the North, which all partners in the region should swiftly support and 'do business' with.