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The North Korean fiasco

May 2012

  • Alexander Downer

There isn’t an English word for what the Germans call schadenfreude but the sentiment is universal; comfort at the discomfort of others. We may not like to admit it but we all feel it from time to time. I did when I saw the North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile had crashed and burned soon after takeoff.

It was welcome news. That odious regime had humiliated itself on the grand scale. The launch was to coincide with the centenary of the birth of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, sometimes known as the Great Leader. It was a time of great official celebration, celebrations which were to include a demonstration of North Korean technical excellence. 

Mind you, it’s quite something that a country with a GDP less than half the State of South Australia’s can build and launch an intercontinental missile. But it also says something about the regime’s priorities that it spends its limited resources in that way. Imagine if the South Australian government spent money on such enterprises. It would be seen as eccentric, just as it is eccentric for North Korea to build long range missiles. 

I’ve often wondered why North Korea would bother to build not just long range missiles but nuclear weapons. It also has a vast army. With a population about the same as Australia’s, North Korea has an army said to be about 5 million strong. 

The traditional view is that North Korea has made all these investments to protect itself from a South Korean and American invasion. Well, the vast army could do that, at least making any invasion very costly. But a nuclear weapon? Let’s think about it rationally.

North Korea probably has around 3 to 5 nuclear warheads. So far, they cannot attach one to a missile. It would take many years to develop that technology. They could, of course. Pakistan has and its missile technology has been sold to them by North Korea. The real question is, in what circumstances would North Korea ever use a nuclear weapon?

I don’t think they ever would. On one occasion when I was the foreign minister and he was Secretary of State, Colin Powell rang me about a North Korean related issue and we had a brief discussion about this very topic. Now Colin Powell is no Dick Cheney style neo-conservative hardliner. But he was pretty emphatic. “Alex,” he said, “if North Korea ever dropped a nuclear bomb on the South, we’d turn the North into a parking lot”. 

That’s the point. The North Korean regime isn’t suicidal. They know that the use of nuclear weapons would bring the end to their regime, and pretty quickly. So it still begs the question, why would the government of poverty stricken North Korea spend so much of its GDP on a nuclear program and long range missiles which could, conceivably, be armed with a nuclear warhead?

We can only guess but here’s a thought. During my first visit to North Korea, the then foreign minister took me to dinner at a government guest house several kilometres outside the capital, Pyongyang. Dinners are important in diplomacy. After a few drinks, the two sides open up more frankly with each other. On this occasion, the conversation turned to the issue of the re-unification of all Korea. This isn’t an issue we know much about when we speak of North Korea. I wanted to know what the North Korean vision was. After all, in the early 1950s their vision was to invade the South and impose a brutal, Stalinist regime on the whole peninsula. 

His reply was fascinating. North Korea wanted re-unification, but of a very different kind. They wanted a loose federation of two quite distinct states. The North would retain its autocratic – we would say Stalinist – system and the South its more open liberal capitalist system. There would be a federal government which would comprise representatives of the two states and they would take responsibility for Korea’s foreign relations and other essential functions like currency which would more or less unite the country.

This, I thought, is a pretty odd model. I couldn’t imagine it could ever work. But it is interesting that in both North and South Korea the leaders and their people still dream of the re-unification of their country.

So what has this to do with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs? Well, remember that the South has double the population of the North and its economy is twenty to thirty times larger. In a re-unified entity, the South would be predominant. But not totally if the North retained a significant military capability.

The North’s calculation is that if Korea re-unifies, the Americans will leave the peninsula and Korea will become a neutral country. In that environment, the North with its nuclear weapons and missiles would be a formidable partner with the South.

Personally, I think it sounds eccentric but the alternative scenario is that reunification would be on the South’s terms. The North wants re-unification but on equal terms. It can’t happen but it helps explain the otherwise eccentric policies of the North Koreans.

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