Despite making significant strides in material progress since the birth of their nation in 1953, the 52 million citizens of South Korea have lived under a host of threats. These threats emanate largely from its authoritarian and impoverished neighbour, North Korea, a nuclear-armed nation with a substantial military force and whose belligerent actions at times endanger its very existence. Propped up at first by the Soviet Union and since then by China as well, North Korea—known widely as the “Hermit Kingdom” due to its isolationist position—recklessly follows “Songun,” the Military First policy in all its affairs, domestic and international. Along with a “Seed Bearing” strategy, which includes kidnapping foreign citizens, especially South Koreans, and regularly firing lethal missiles into the seas around the Korean peninsula, it has kept the successive administrations of the Republic of Korea mindful of its capabilities to wreak havoc. Unsurprisingly, it has become the primary determinant of all South Korean priorities and policies.
KOREAN PENINSULA’S LONG HISTORY OF EXTERNAL INVASIONS
A single country until the end of the Second World War, the Korean Peninsula, with a current combined population of 88 million ethnically similar people, came to be divided as the spoils of the victorious powers, viz USA and Russia. Thereafter, these two along with China, have played a major role in the well-being of the two Korean nations. External interference in the affairs of the Korean Peninsula, euphemistically referred as the Land of the Calm, has been its bane over the centuries with scores of outright invasions and prolonged occupations of its territory by the Mongols, Manchurians, Huns and other Chinese besides Russian, and Japanese aggressors.
With Japan’s surrender to the Allies in August 1945, the Japanese colonial rule in Korea since 1910 ended. Yet, Korea did not become an independent nation. Instead, troops of adjacent Soviet Union, which had belatedly declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945, swiftly marched through virtually the entire Peninsula. USA, which had not expected an early Japanese surrender or its weak military opposition in Korea, proposed to divide Korea into two military operational zones along the 38th parallel—the North of 48,191 sq miles as the Soviet zone and the South of 37,055 sq miles as the American. Stalin was only too pleased to accept and had stopped his forces along the Parallel. The Korean nationalist leaders, upset by this arrangement, resolved to establish a People’s Republic of Korea, whose legitimacy was recognized by the occupying Soviet forces but not USA, who sent in its troops, established the US Army Military Government, and imposed martial law.
Kim Il-sung, an ex-captain in the Soviet Army, sidelined indigenous Communist leaders and organized local Communist parties throughout North Korea. By early 1947, he became Chairman of the Workers’ Party and People’s Committee, implementing sweeping land reforms and nationalizing industries, railroads, transportation, communications, and banks.
The State became the sole employer and distributor of goods. Meanwhile, American military head General Hodge carried out the “Koreanization” of American military rule, turning over administrative departments to Koreans, leaving Americans in advisory roles.
In March 1948, general elections under UN sponsorship led to a South Korean government under President Dr Syngman Rhee, recognized by the UN General Assembly as the “only lawful government.” The North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly, meanwhile, ratified the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Constitution and elected Kim Il-sung as Prime Minister. Since both sides claimed to rule over the entire Peninsula, it marked the start of an internecine war, exploited by the Soviet Union and newly liberated China under Mao Tse-tung. Both of them supported North’s military invasion of the South. The entire Peninsula was quickly overrun before the US moved forces from Japan, securing a foothold and seeking UN help to combat the communist troops.
The indecisive Korean War, which resulted in over a million deaths, ended with an Armistice in 1953. The UN-brokered ceasefire among the fighting forces halted them along the 38th parallel. Since then, this geographical latitude has come to demarcate the boundaries between the two nations. With each side vacating about a mile in width of the land under its occupation, a roughly 2-mile wide and 150-mile long Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was established. The territories retained in their possession became North Korea and South Korea, respectively, though their official names are Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Republic of Korea (ROK).
The DMZ was intended to be a buffer zone without any troops or armour. However, an elaborate network of tunnels to send in well-heeled troops was surreptitiously built under it by North Korea. In pursuance of the Mutual Defence Treaty signed a month after the Armistice in August 1953, and renewed in 1991 as the Status of Forces Agreement for US Troops in South Korea, sizeable fully equipped American troops are stationed there. Ever since, face-to-face entrenchment along with nuclear weaponization by both sides has consistently grown in ferocity. Alarmed by the North Korean nuclear program, President Clinton visited the DMZ in 1993 and called it the “scariest place on earth.” While occasional efforts have been initiated to ease tensions, the underlying dispute remains unaddressed. The two consequential issues preventing permanent peace being the denuclearization of the Peninsula and a possible reunification of the two Koreas.
DENUCLEARIZATION OF KOREA
To counter the mighty American presence and the rapidly arming South Korean defences, North Korea has justified the continuance of its nuclear and missile development programs. Apart from spending heavily on these and maintaining a standing army of over a million soldiers—estimated at 35% of its GDP—it obtained technological help initially from East Germany, Soviet Union, and for the last few decades China. Upon it stealthily acquiring nuclear capabilities and initiating a missile launch program, the UN in 2006 imposed sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. In March this year, Russia vetoed the annual renewal of a panel of experts monitoring the impositions. Though the sanctions stand strengthened over the years, Security Council remains divided on how to deal with Pyongyang and Russia as well as China who oppose any additional sanctions. Earlier this week on June 19, Putin, in a rare visit to Pyongyang, signed a mutual defense agreement with its dictator Kim Jong-un. Such shielding would embolden North Korea to continue on its hazardous path.
After its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has become more accommodative of North Korea’s actions. In exchange for supplying 11,000 containers of ammunition and bombs, North Korea secured food, fuel, and support for its ballistic missiles and other advanced weapons. Despite viewing South Korea as a more attractive economic partner (South Korea was Russia’s fifth-largest export destination before the Ukraine war), North Korea has begun to play a pivotal part in Russia’s wider confrontation with the West, helping to complicate the American strategy in Asia to undermine multilateral institutions.
Similarly, of late, China’s engagement with the two Koreas is becoming more nuanced. It recently endorsed a UN call for the denuclearization of the Peninsula. Given its own economic deceleration, it does not want to disrupt the significant bilateral capital and trade flows with South Korea. Its current overall objective seems like keeping North Korea as a stable buffer state between it and the American-allied South Korea, besides retaining influence over Pyongyang. The recent moves toward entering into greater security collaboration among Japan, South Korea, and US through a formal trilateral pact are also thwarting China from openly siding further with the North. By cementing ties with its strong allies in the Far East, the Biden administration hopes to avoid repeating the situation of the Trump era when he was demanding hefty spending sprees for hosting US troops while North Korea expanded its military.
PROSPECTS OF A REUNIFICATION
Surprisingly, despite all the war preparedness and tension, citizens of both countries continue to harbour hopes and talk openly about the possibility of reunification. Bilateral meetings between their representatives, though largely behind the scenes, have in the past resulted in formal meetings even at the level of the heads of government. The concerned external powers, USA, China, and Russia, have also taken up the subject for discussion among themselves. In 2019, President Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore first, and then followed it up by visiting Pyongyang. Though no tangible resolution or direction for future negotiations emerged, such endeavours keep alive the possibility of a merger.
To initiate any reuniting efforts, Office 101 of United Front Department (UFD), a key section in Workers’ Party in North Korea, acts as the coordinator. Reunification envisioned by it, however, is under the stewardship of Chosun, North Korea’s name for itself.
Understandably, this is not acceptable to South Korea. The fervour for reunification has waxed and waned over the years. In 1998, South Korea consciously adopted the Sunshine Policy, a foreign policy aimed at warming relations and softening North Korea’s perception of the South as adversarial. By 2010, the reconciliatory policy was altogether abandoned since it was serving to entrench “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il’s and his party’s control. Initially criticized by North Korea, the policy was later exploited to extract economic benefits from the South, granting only minimal concessions like inter-Korean family reunions. Eventually, South realized that more tangible reciprocity, such as reductions in military spending and greater concern for human rights, was warranted.
South Korean governments and its citizens remain cognizant of the huge cost to their exchequer and economy of meaningfully defending themselves against the North’s larger army. As long as a major portion of the expenses is covered by the US, South Koreans tend to remain somewhat indifferent to efforts required for a major transformation of ties. However, the periodically changing political environment and increase in the frequency of reckless threats from the North, keep reminding them of the dangers of continuing hostility.
Successive American administrations too are not inclined to altogether withdraw their troops. Apart from South Korea, the large American force based in South Korea is useful for protecting nearby Japan, which faces similar threats from North Korea and China. The US presence in South Korea also ensures the security of trade routes through the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and against the recent Chinese military moves against Taiwan.
With such geopolitical and strategic necessities, meaningful progress on the unification of the two Korean entities, might not come about for the time being. Yet the emergence of a favourable situation in the future cannot be ruled out. Progressive leadership, looking beyond the immediate and drawing lessons from the past, can bring about changes that presently appear infeasible or too distant. An enlightened world order, in which the weighing of the huge price of continued confrontation takes precedence over short-term geopolitical and material gains, cannot and should not, be ignored. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US’ Ronald Reagan had led global efforts for nuclear non-proliferation pacts. This period also saw the Berlin Wall fall, the unification of East and West Germany, and the voluntary disbandment of the Soviet Union through Gorbachev’s Perestroika, ending the Cold War. Such orderliness, even if temporary, can counter the expansionism aggressively pursued by Xi Jinping, which has been necessitating the presence of large foreign forces in the Far East.
Without Chinese and Russian support, North Korea would not be able to incessantly threaten nearly the entire free world with its stock of nuclear warheads and missiles. Similarly, South Korea, without the defence umbrella of the US, would be more amenable to peace, even if it involves sharing its economic gains and wellness with its less developed neighbour. As was the case of West Germany, which, in a handful of years after the merger, utilized the East German workforce and gained a larger market to sell its goods, South Korea can hope to capitalize on both these factors of production, which would become available in abundance from North Korea.
Worth recalling that Koreans are a diligent set of people, able to withstand the vicissitudes of fortune, both natural and man-made. A larger and more prosperous Korea would be advantageous to all its immediate neighbours. With their workforces not growing, Koreans could meet that deficiency. Besides iron ore, coal, gold, tungsten, and magnesite, the North is endowed with a significant reserve of high-quality rare earth oxide (REO), required in products ranging from common magnets to advanced missiles. The energy and rare metals disadvantage of the Far Eastern nations could partially, be offset by sources nearer home. Peace in the region can be a harbinger of greater well-being for the Koreans, who have had to live through as many as 874 bloody wars in the last 1,200 years.
* Dr Ajay Dua, a development economist and ex Union Secretary, recently visited South Korea’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to familiarize himself with the ground-situation.
Part 2 of this article analysing the potential for Indian ties will be carried next week.