Korean War II: Here We Go Again?
May 27th, 2009Sitting in my room in Kobe, Japan, I can’t escape how close Korea is to me. My neighbours to the right and across the hallway are Korean. Every morning, I hear the bell and chatter of the middle school Korean-Japanese kids rushing to class. And on a gluttonous note, I’m digesting some delicious Korean food that a Korean friend of mine and fellow exchange student made. Strewn upon my floor are essays on South Korean culture and North Korean security problems… Then I open my browser, glance at the news and witness the unthinkable. North Korea has pulled out of the armistice that had put the Korean War on pause for these past fifty-six years. This is a day after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, causing the Lee Myung-bak-led government of South Korea to join the American anti-WMD Proliferation Security Initiative with the intent of searching North Korean ships for nuclear material. As North Korea previously declared it would, it took this action as a declaration of war and reacted in such hostility. And I’m sitting here wondering if a missile will land on my head.
But this isn’t about me. The main actors in this possible nuclear conflict are North Korea, South Korea, United States of America, Russia, China, and Japan.
- North Korea. Long isolated from the global community with its only ally being China, North Korea was born out of the liberation of Korea from brutal Japanese colonialism. Splitting it at the 38th parallel, Russian forces took over the administration of the northern part of Kora while American forces took the southern part. Both proceeded to set up governments following their respective ideologies, partenering with local elites. The North came to be led by Kim Il-sung, a revolutionary fighter that opposed the Japanese colonial authority. In the South, the fervently anti-Communist Syngman Rhee was chosen to run in the election and won. The two newly created countries were from there on set on a path of war. North Korea, backed by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s in their first battle after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, fought the United Nations forces to a stalemate, causing the countries to sign an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953 and leaving them to retreat to their respective sides of the 38th parallel.
Since, North Korea has created itself an ideological system called Juche, a system of self-reliance, isolation, near holy reverence of the leaders of the Korean Communist Party and of strong anti-imperalist rhetoric. Such a system hasn’t been able however to produce the prosperity required to feed a nation such as North Korea and the country has been reliant on aid from mainly South Korea and China to survive. Kim Il-sung’s son, Kim Jong-il, then took his place and has been involved in a number of talks dubbed the “Six Party Talks” featuring North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan, the United States of America and Russia on the subject of nuclear demilitarization. Intermittently, the North has threatened to reactivate its nuclear plants if certain demands are not met, or if the sometimes heavy sanctions imposed on North Korea by the UN are not lifted.
So is this latest attempt just a way overblown temper tantrum for attention? I don’t believe so. My conspiracy theory is this: Various reports of Kim Jong-il being sick have been coming out. Now, these reports are not really rare in themselves, but coupled with reports that North Korean kids are singing songs about Kim Jong-un, the youngest son who seems to have been appointed succesor…
But why would they detonate a nuclear device? It could in itself be a show of force to the people of North Korea and to potential challengers to power within the North Korean Communist Party. In order to maintain stability, it could be important to keep the North Koreans thinking that the state is powerful, unafraid to fight off the “evil baby-eating imperialists outside” and that they are still in command.
- South Korea. Reeling from the apparent suicide of former president Roh Mooh-hyun, the economically depressed South Korea likely has little appetite for a conflict with North Korea. With the North’s artillery aimed straight at Seoul, a war would be devastating in so many ways. The current conservative president, Lee Myung-bak (born in Osaka, Japan, 40 minutes away by train from where I’m writing this) has even less of an appetite for reconciliatory approaches like the “Sunshine Policy” of his predecessors. In response to the nuclear test, South Korea joined the Proliferation Security Initiative, changing its policy to stopping and searching vessels that could contain material for the production of nuclear weaponry.
What would happen if a war were to break out? If somehow, Seoul could be saved from total destruction from North Korean artillery, it is very likely that South Korea just by itself could win a war against the starved, underfueled, undermaintained North Korean military, no matter its size. Backed with the US soldiers, the battle would likely be rather one sided. But the aftermath would be an extremely expensive unification of Korea, as South Korea would likely foot the majority of the bill for feeding and integrating North Korea into an already tightly-structured economic system. This actually has the potential to be such a setback that South Korea, already one of the world’s rich, advanced countries, could be facing hard times for a long time.
A possible scenario for integrating North Korea in a United Korea would be a federal system, where North Koreans would be kept in North Korea and slowly given the right to enter South Korea. Such a system could be one way of preventing the economic collapse of South Korea.
- United States of America. As has been said, this is Obama’s first real foreign policy challenge. How he will react to this can change the path of history. The US has been on standby in the region for nearly 60 years, watching North Korea from its bases in Japan and South Korea.
I unfortunately don’t have much to say about the US. It seems its strategy is pressuring China to tell them to calm down, as like the South Koreans, I don’t believe the US is looking forward to a burning Seoul and massive civilian casualties. It’s also important to note that the US is stretched quite thin at this point, and fighting a war on another front, even if against an army that’s rumoured (because that’s all we have for North Korea) to be in rags, is not exactly top on its wish list. What is top on its wish list though is nuclear disarmement of North Korea, and the fall of one of the few remaining Communist regimes.
- Russia.
I also don’t have much about Russia… And I’m getting tired of writing this blog entry 
But Russia is apparently readying its military, in response to a potential nuclear war in the Korean peninsula.
- China.
China is the key in all of this. It is more or less the only government that has any sort of pull with North Korea. In fact, North Korea seems to exist only because China wants it to. Seeing South Korea as an extension of the US, China prefers having a nice socialist buffer in between, and then being able to still capitalize off of South Korea technical expertise and foreign direct investments.
The support is not unanimous however and this latest nuclear surprise did not please Beijing one bit. I unfortunately can’t find the article anymore, but it seems that 20 Chinese intellectuals were questioned on the subject of if they should keep ties with North Korea or begin imposing sanctions and the results came to be split, 10 for, 10 against. You can imagine that within the Chinese Communist Party, the technocrats are carefully reconsidering if maintaining the status quo is worth it.
- Japan.
A frequent target of North Korea’s hostility, victim of kidnappings of a few of its citizens and of North Korean missile tests, with worries of missile debris falling on people’s heads, Japan is quite nervous about conflict in the Korean peninsula that would see it inevitably dragged in. With its economy dropping a record 15% of its GDP, Japan was hit further by news of this sending the yen dropping, making the economic elites rather uncomfortable. The safety of Japan is also in danger. What this could do is trigger the full re-militarization of Japan from its current restricted by Article 9 of the Japanese constitution form. This in itself could create tension and nervousness through Asia, since many countries in the area still maintain rather deep scars from World War II and the horrors of militarist Japan. While modern day Japan is clearly different from pre-World War II Japan, the massive opposition to using the Japanese Self-Defence Force to help in crisises such as in Sichuan proves that the fear still lingers.
If this does happen, who knows what else it will trigger? We might actually have a repeat of a terrible chain of events unfolding before our eyes. Or let us hope that things will resolve positively rather than destructively for all parties involved…
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