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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (113682)	9/2/2003 8:13:58 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

An interesting historical perspective: The socialist roots of the Korea crisis By Jeffrey Robertson The current nuclear crisis is inextricably linked to the long-term failure of the North Korean economy - a problem that arguably cannot be solved without revolutionary change. Contrary to accepted public opinion, the current nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula did not start last October 16 with a public statement by US assistant secretary of state James Kelly alleging that North Korea had admitted to the possession of a highly enriched uranium program. Nor did it start with an earlier North Korean decision to commence a covert nuclear-weapons program in response to what it saw as an increased threat from an enraged United States, which had labeled it a member of the near-comic-book trio the "axis of evil". To determine the starting point of the current nuclear crisis we need to step farther back in history to the earliest signs of decay in a once promising socialist paradise. Indeed, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was once a proud standard-bearer for the international proletarian revolution. During the 1960s the now-cliched propaganda posters reflected a society that could vividly recount the brave struggles fought by small bands of revolutionaries against the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria. Its relatively quick recovery from the Korean War and the continuing although often stifled support from like-minded groups in South Korea kept alive the dream that a unified Korea would emerge from a groundswell of public support and opposition to the continued dominance of what were, perhaps rightly, perceived as "imperialist lackey governments" in the undemocratic South. But in the 1970s three signs emerged that inextricably link DPRK history to the current nuclear crisis - and despite an early drive to attain a nuclear capability spurred on by North Korean leader Kim Il-sung's reported fascination for nuclear weapons, not one of the three signs were linked to nuclear weapons, but rather to the economy. The first sign was heralded internationally by the failure of the DPRK to repay debts owed to international lending bodies in the 1970s, after large-scale borrowing to finance a planned heavy industries drive. According to the Economic Intelligence Unit of The Economist, North Korea has the dubious distinction of being the first in and last out of the debt crisis in the developing world. Economic mismanagement - the quiet killer of many a communist state - dealt the DPRK a drawn-out death sentence. Since the late 1970s the DPRK economy has been in decline, roughly correlating with the steady rise of South Korea as the economic miracle of this century. The second sign was the increasingly difficult international environment. The 1970s were a period when - as stated by Kim Il-sung at the Sixth Workers Party Congress in October 1980 - "the international environment of our revolution was very complex and our party was confronted with many difficult and serious revolutionary tasks". US-China and US-Soviet detente led to greater international acceptance of a divided Korean Peninsula, leaving only the DPRK to pursue its aim of unification by military means. The DPRK was further isolated by its continuing erratic militancy, losing the brief support it gained from the non-aligned movement. In 1983 the death of 17 ministers and officials in a failed assassination attempt by DPRK agents of South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan in Burma confirmed the international community's perception of North Korea as a "pariah state". The final sign was heralded by the emergence of Kim Jong-il as the likely eventual successor to the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. The emergence of Kim Jong-il did not bring in a revolutionary change of leadership style or policy, nor the revelation and admission of past wrongs that occurred in other communist leadership successions - rather it represented continuity. The father-son succession combined the worst elements of feudal autocracy with communist economic mismanagement. With the younger Kim's eventual leadership of the state based upon the political and ideological foundations built by his father, the impossibility to undertake future reform was set in stone. These three signs represented the commencement of sustained and critical economic decay that resulted in a plethora of problems - each one distinctly threatening the very existence of the DPRK, most notable amongst these was economic security. There are diverse definitions of economic security. For those living in advanced Western societies, economic security refers to an assured and stable standard of existence that provides individuals and families with the necessary level of resources to participate with dignity in their communities, going beyond mere physical survival to encompass a level of resources that promotes social inclusion. For those living in developing countries, including the DPRK, the definition can be reduced to the simplest assurance of the basic necessities of food, shelter and medicine. Assuring adequate food has always been a challenge to the DPRK. Cultivable land covers only approximately 20 percent of total land mass. The agricultural sector faces notoriously difficult seasonal variations exacerbated by a misdirected agricultural policy which has further increased vulnerability to floods, landslides and drought. Floods in 1995 and 1996, followed by drought in 1997 and 2001, devastated the agricultural sector already weakened by declining inputs of pesticides, fertilizer and machinery. The national agricultural base declined dramatically as a result of these natural disasters with annual production of rice and corn (maize) falling from 8 million tonnes in the 1980s to 2.9 million tonnes in 2000. Widespread malnutrition and famine had already devastated the country in 1994, resulting in an appeal to the United Nations World Food Program in 1995. A 1998 nutrition survey conducted by the UNWFP found 16 percent of children acutely malnourished and 62 percent chronically malnourished. Estimates of deaths from famine related illness range from 900,000 to more than 3.5 million. The DPRK also suffers from acute shortages of shelter and medicine, exacerbating the harm caused by the ongoing food crisis. According to the Korea Institute for National Reunification's White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea, the rate of housing supply in the DPRK hovers around 56-63 percent. A deficit caused primarily by a lack of raw materials and a shortage of manpower in housing construction. A similarly wide gap is apparent in the provision of healthcare. The DPRK currently faces a severe health-care crisis, with its health-care system considered in November 2001 to be near total collapse by Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, then director general of the World Health Organization. These severe economic problems have no solution which is acceptable to the North Korean regime. History has repeatedly shown that economic reform in communist states has ultimately preceded revolutionary change. Attempting economic reform will open North Korean society to the world, revealing the depth of its sordid woes. It would also raise questions on the legitimacy of the state ideology, juche, its founder, Kim Il-sung, and ultimately its greatest supporter, Kim Jong-il. Here lies the real conundrum. In pursuing a nuclear capability North Korea seeks state survival - the alleviation of the immediate perceived threat from invasion and the alleviation of chronic economic woes. However, attaining a nuclear capability can only solve the former, whereas agreeing to forgo its nuclear capability can only solve the latter. Either way, North Korea faces an immediate threat to its security - an extremely vicious circle for the DPRK, the region and the globe. atimes.com