A formal ending of the 1950-53 Korean conflict is seen in Pyongyang as only the logical start of a process of conciliation, rather than a measure to be kept in abeyance until Kim Jong Un has made himself as helpless as Saddam and Gaddafi after they complied with US and European demands.
BEIJING: The diplomatic finesse and flexibility shown by DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un and RoC (Republic of Korea) President Moon Jae-in are steadily, almost stealthily, creating a viable pathway towards the unification of a peninsula and a people divided since 1945. Koreans are an ancient civilisation with over 5,000 years of recorded history, which puts them on par with China, India, Egypt, Greece and the Jewish people. An armed effort at unification began in 1950 by first the North Koreans and was later continued by US-South Korean forces, but ended in stalemate in 1953. Since then, the two sides are still officially in a state of war with each other, only an armistice agreement having been signed at the close of the 1950-53 hostilities. Since then, neither North nor South Korea has actively sought to incorporate the other through the use of force, although tension surrounding the DMZ (de-militarized zone) on the 38th parallel has been constant. Successive administrations in Washington have sought to ensure regime change in the DPRK, focusing particularly on eliminating the ruling Kim family through methods involving “extreme prejudice”, i.e. death. Some South Korean governments have enthusiastically participated in such actions, notably the regimes of Park Chung-hee and later that of his daughter, Park Geun-hye. The latter was later subjected to a politically charged trial and subsequent 24-year sentence of imprisonment that was grossly excessive a punishment. The younger Park (while in office during 2013-2017 as President of the RoC) was an enthusiastic proponent of DPRK regime change through leadership assassination methods, sought through techniques popular within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as well as the (South) Korean CIA. In contrast, her successor Moon Jae-in has over the decades favoured a “Sunshine Policy”, that of Seoul extending an olive branch to Pyongyang and increasing cooperation between the two sides of the Korean peninsula. This was earlier attempted by President Roh Tae-woo (1988-1993) and for a couple of years afterwards by his successor Kim Young-sam, before the latter was forced by President William Jefferson Clinton to abruptly withdraw from the Sunshine Policy after Pyongyang responded with insufficient (and understandable) alacrity to Clinton commands to enforce a unilateral WMD disarmament by Pyongyang on the Iraq model. The Leadership Core in Pyongyang considered every post-1945 government in Seoul (barring in a partial manner that of Roh Tae-woo) a servant of US interests. However, about 16 months ago, Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un reached the conclusion that the current President of the RoC (Moon Jae-in) is no “servant of a foreign power”, but is instead an “independent and patriotic champion of the Korean people”. Since then, Supreme Commander Kim has opened out to President Moon in an unprecedented fashion, and the two have established a level of trust between not simply themselves but the two sides that would have been inconceivable just a year ago.
South Korean Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
In some respects, Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un of the DPRK shares some personality traits with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Both are young (in their 30s) and unencumbered by past precedents or doctrines. Both are ruthless practitioners of power, and are willing to accept high stakes gambles in the field of policy, if convinced that doing so is in the interests of their respective countries. Crown Prince Mohammad is presently facing a global attack from the Wahhabi International lobby and its many agents of influence, principally President Erdogan of Turkey and Emmanuel Macron of France. Their purpose is to either dislodge him from succeeding King Salman or to so weaken the Crown Prince that he abandons his unprecedented drive against Wahhabism, an initiative by Mohammad bin Salman that is crucial to the future of the Saudi people. In the case of Kim Jong Un, he is (according to those working with him) consumed by the “patriotic desire to see the Korean race and land unified” once again, a vision that he shares with Moon, and for which both seem willing to walk as many “extra miles” as it will take to initiate a process that would end in unification within a period of around 15-20 years. That is, if such processes are allowed to continue by South Korea’s international partners, notably the US, which in the case of the Korean peninsula is as mindful of its Japanese ally’s interests as it is of Israel’s needs in the Middle East. Interestingly, it is the cordiality towards Israel shown by Crown Prince Mohammad, accompanied by his efforts at displacing Wahhabism as the dominant ideology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) that are the two factors driving President Recip Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to somehow end the leadership of the Crown Prince within KSA. He is working together with leadership, media and policy elements in the US and Europe that have long been beholden to the Wahhabi International. The neo-Wahhabi Head of State of Turkey has succeeded in clothing himself as a votary of press freedom with several credulous international publications, even while he has suppressed non-Wahhabi media in Turkey in a manner unprecedented under civilian rule in that important non-EU but essentially European Muslim-majority country. The deceased Saudi citizen, Jamal Khashoggi, was no journalist, but was a regime change activist lobbying against Crown Prince Mohammad on behalf of a Wahhabi-leaning faction within the Al Saud family. Western media has misleadingly portrayed Khashoggi as a journalist, although that was far from his actual occupation, which was to act as an operative for groups affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood. This act of jugglery was carried out with skill by Jamal Khashoggi, and this despite his close financial links with elements of the very Saudi royalty that the Brotherhood has long been seeking to depose, together with the other GCC rulers, all of whom are anathema to the Brotherhood, which incidentally has established recessed branches in some parts of India, notably Kozhikode, Hyderabad and Kolkata.
BRIGHT SUNSHINE POLICY
Two years ago, in South Korea’s National Assembly building, the suggestion was made that not just a “Sunshine Policy” but what was termed a “Bright Sunshine Policy” was needed in order to incentivise North Korea to abandon aggressive intent and become an active participant in the economic advancement of East Asia, and in particular the Korean peninsula. Given the innate capabilities of the Korean people, locating of more South Korean plants and processes in North Korea would ensure the economic uplift of both sides, while at the same time posing a challenge to the longstanding preponderance of Tokyo in economic terms as compared with the Korean peninsula. The single biggest obstacle to such a historically beneficial process is what may be termed Europeanist thought in the US. This is rooted in a belief in the essentiality of unity of action and thought between the European races across both sides of the Atlantic. Such a world view has created a policy matrix towards Asia that no longer reflects current reality within the continent, which has changed considerably since 1945, the year when the post-war US-Europe Atlantic Alliance took shape. Those familiar with the thinking of the Leadership Core in North Korea, say that the “anti-Trump media and political heavyweights “have been major factors behind the reluctance of Kim Jong Un to accept the Trump administration’s promises at face value”. Accepting US promises has anyway become a difficult buy, especially after the serial betrayals of US allies, especially during the Bill Clinton period (1992-2001) and the Clinton Lite years (2009-2013) of the Obama administration.
The perception in Pyongyang is that while Donald J. Trump is sincere in his intentions, he is an “endangered leader who could be sent out of office at any time”. Hence, adopting a policy which assumes that President Trump would continue in his present office even for a full four-year term and was capable of implementing policies that would endure into the future would be unwise, in the view of the leadership core. Pyongyang looks to Washington and sees senior administration officials publicly advocating and working for policies that are opposed to what the 45th President of the US himself says he wants. Indeed, they say that “over 70% of Trump’s policies are being sabotaged by his own associates”. Nikki Haley, as an example, adopted a Euro-centric line very different from the Asia-centric vision of the current US President, as does National Security Advisor John Bolton, who in the view of the North Koreans “talks and acts as though this were the 19th century when the European races dominated the Asian peoples”. Of course, such a characterisation does an injustice to Bolton, whose thinking has been far more nuanced than Euro-centric on a variety of subjects related to Asia. The US NSA diverges significantly with the dominant views in Paris or Berlin. In North Korea, even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is regarded as having the same illusions about the continuing strength of the “European races” as most of his colleagues. An example of such hubris that gets pointed out is Pompeo’s demand that there be unilateral nuclear disarmament of the DPRK, even while the country is still legally in a state of war with the US.
A formal ending of the 1950-53 Korean conflict is seen in Pyongyang as only the logical start of a process of conciliation, rather than a measure to be kept in abeyance until the DPRK has made itself “as helpless as first Saddam Hussein and later Muammar Gaddafi were after they complied with US and European demands”. They also look to Syria’s Bashar Assad, whose travails with NATO multiplied soon after his surrender of chemical stockpiles to the alliance. This concession was on the specific request of Vladimir Putin, who believed that ensuring such a unilateral concession from Damascus would reduce, if not remove, US-EU sanctions on the Russian Federation. Some of the surrendered material re-appeared in some theatres of conflict, courtesy the secret service of Turkey and France and were used to blame Assad, according to Arab observers. Such apparent breaches of good faith by what gets termed the “Washington Reactionary Establishment” have been collated and pored over by the Supreme Commander’s advisors, and have consequently sharply reduced faith in US promises of good conduct after significant concessions get made. The preference in Pyongyang is for simultaneous and measured action in an atmosphere “free of the poisonous legal and psychological state of war” between the two sides.
Given the hypothesis within the North Korean leadership that within his team, only President Trump is regarded as having a genuine commitment to the North Korean peace process, a decision was taken to signal the “firmness of resolve of Supreme Commander Kim for an honourable rather than a one-sided solution”. This was by the DPRK side cancelling or postponing at short notice scheduled meetings with aides of the US President who are considered to be on a wavelength different from their boss. The difference in wavelength “became apparent during informal interaction” between these aides and elements of North Korean officialdom. It is regarded as axiomatic that only President Trump can be relied upon to have a “clean mind” towards the DPRK and not “seek to build a trap” intended to destroy the leadership and by extension the state. During his upcoming 2019 summit with President Trump, Supreme Commander Kim is expected to reach some conclusions about the 45th US President’s likely longevity in office, and about the degree of effective control that Donald J. Trump has over US policy. Although not with the US, a breakthrough in relations has been made in relations with the RoC leadership. There is a high degree of trust in Pyongyang in the sincerity and patriotism of President Moon, and growing confidence that the Korean “wind spirit” will ensure that the RoC leader will in his quiet way resist pressure from Tokyo and Washington to reverse President Moon’s policy of engagement with the DPRK in the abrupt manner then President Kim Young Sam did earlier.
SOUTH KOREA SAFE
Even should there be a conflict between North Korea and the US-Japan alliance, South Korea is expected by its counterparts in North Korea to refuse to serve as a base of operations or participate in fighting a US-Japan war “designed to weaken the Korean race”. As a consequence, the RoC is likely to emerge relatively unscathed from such a war, except to the extent that the upper atmosphere may get affected by nuclear fallout. The main blow from the North Korean side will fall on Japan and on US bases and facilities in Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii. According to the North Korean leadership core, they have no option but to go for the nuclear option almost at the start itself, in view of the preponderance of US-Japan conventional capabilities over that of the DPRK. Special techno-scientific teams of “patriotic members of the Korean race imbued with courage derived from Marshal Kim Il-Sung are working 24/7 to improve and perfect both thermonuclear warheads” as well as delivery systems. A complete breakdown in trust during the forthcoming Trump-Kim summit in the US is likely to result in a further flurry of both nuclear as well as missile tests by the North Korean side, as specialists there believe that such a step is needed in order to ensure that “as many people in the US mainland get affected as will the population of the DPRK” in the event of an all-out conflict. Unlike the USSR, which to the end (and despite the approach of defeat) refrained from hitting targets in Pakistan throughout the 1980s Afghan war, the present leadership in Pyongyang is determined to use “whatever means it has wherever these can be of value” in military terms. It is not expected that the People’s Republic of China will directly join the conflict on the DPRK side, unlike the situation in 1950. The Chinese leadership is fully on board, according to policymakers within the CCP, with the UN-approved policy of seeking the de-nuclearization of North Korea. The difference is over methods, the Chinese side regarding the ongoing US-Japan thrust on “maximum pressure” on the DPRK to be counter-productive. There is, therefore, considerable sympathy within Beijing for South Korean efforts at convincing the DPRK that regime change in Pyongyang is not on the table and will not be, should de-nuclearization take place. The problem facing Seoul is that the bar has been set at an impossibly high level by elements of the Trump administration. They call for “complete, irreversible and verifiable” de-nuclearization, a practical and logical impossibility. Such conditions are similar to the Clinton administration’s 1990s efforts at making countries sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty “for eternity”. Neither China nor Russia will look kindly on US and Japanese efforts at seeking to force the North Korean side to submit to Washington-Tokyo demands through (in effect) further impoverishing the populace, nor will voters in South Korea forgive their government should they assist in such a tactic, which President Moon is anyway unwilling to endorse. Pyongyang classifies both China and Russia as anti-imperialist powers, while South Koreans (under President Moon) are seen as a “Korean brother”. Japan and the US are classified as “reactionary and neo-imperialist” countries seeking to “destroy not only the inherent and inevitable unity of the Korean people, but take away their very lives”.
TOWARDS KOREAN UNITY
Should President Moon take courage in his hands and defy the request from Washington and Tokyo to restart Park Guen-hye’s policy of “maximum pressure” on North Korea, the resulting flow of production facilities and migration across the DMZ may further complicate any US-Japan plans to launch a pre-emptive strike designed to take out the DPRK’s nuclear and missile stockpiles. The comradeship building up between Seoul and Pyongyang indicates that a process of slow but smooth unification is in the process of getting created. A wayside stop could be a “One Country Two Systems” or a “One Nation Two Countries” model, where both sides retain their essential characteristics for some years, while steadily achieving congruence with each other. Concerning the planned US-DPRK talks that will be attended by the Supreme Commander himself, any suggestion by Washington of seeking accountability on human rights grounds in the DPRK would be a red line. According to Pyongyang, there are no human rights violations as such, but “only countermeasures which needed to be taken to avoid an imperialist takeover” of the country. This is unlikely to satisfy “Human Rights” hawks in Washington and Tokyo, despite their longstanding silence over the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives as a consequence of military interventions by the US and its allies in a variety of countries in Asia across the decades. Given the belief in Pyongyang that the US bureaucracy is still in the control of those focused on regime change in the DPRK despite the “good intentions” of President Trump, any speedy reversal of the quiet progress being made towards more effective WMD systems (nuclear, biological and chemical) on the part of the DPRK appears remote. Unless Tokyo and Washington are willing to risk substantial casualties and strike soon and hard at the DPRK, both may be left with no option but to accept North Korea as a country that needs to be engaged with, rather than quarantined. Such a walling off of the DPRK seems even less of a possibility in a situation where China and Russia appear to be on course to follow the example of South Korea rather than that of Japan and the US. Should South Korea’s allies agree that a “Bright Sunshine” policy is the better way of reducing and finally eliminating any possibility of an attack by North Korea, and should the decks get cleared for a process of unification through stages, both Kim and Moon would merit the Nobel Peace Prize.